Appaloosa Bean Salad

As a food creativity reward for making it through these two exams, I made this for the June challenge of No Croutons Required. They have a monthly themed competition. This month's challenge was to make a soup or salad (vegetarian) containing beans. Typically when I make bean salad (to which I get to hear from P, "Beans AGAIN?"), it's a southwestern-style salad. This time I just wanted something... else. Something that didn't involve corn, and did involve eggs. I really like eggs, especially hard boiled. This salad tastes good still warm and chilled.

Anyway, enough babble. I've got piles of homework to do, so I'll just post the recipe and move along with it (and look - I'm using fractions today!).

1/2 cup appaloosa beans (you can replace these with pinto or cranberry beans, or whatever other beans you like)
3 cups water
pinch each (3g): oolong whole-leaf tea (I used tieguanyin), jasmine tea
1 tablespoon kosher salt

1/2 cup celery, stalks cut in half lengthwise, then sliced
3/4 cup diced cucumber (remove skins if you're not using persian cukes)
4 oil-soaked sun dried tomatoes, sliced or chopped
3 chopped hard-boiled eggs

Dressing:
1 teaspoon stone ground mustard
1/4 teaspoon tahini
1 1/2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (I used a little bit of the oil I was soaking the tomatoes in, too)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4-1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon fresh mint, rough chopped

Soak the beans overnight. Put them in a pot and add water. Put the tea in cheesecloth or similar and put in the water. Simmer the beans until almost tender. Add salt and simmer until tender. Remove tea, drain and chill (or you can be lazy like me and wait to chill them until it's all done). Add the remaining salad ingredients and mix. Do NOT salt anything else - the beans should be fairly salty. Whisk together all the dressing ingredients then fold into the salad. Chill. Serves 2-4