Cannellini and Coppa salad

I followed this one from Nigel, and was a little disappointed. The flavours just didn't quite mesh the way I expected them to. It's possible that we added way too much spinach, but his portion sizes were just tiny, and I knew we'd be hungry, so I added eight handfuls instead of four. Or maybe we should have used watercress instead, which would have had a lot more flavour. I also found that the olives were so big that we ended up eating them individually, and they rather overwhelmed the subtle cannelloni and herbs. I've added a few suggestions to modify the original recipe, especially the dressing, which was much weaker than it should have been. I think the whole thing would work better with tomatoes instead of olives; maybe I'll try that in future. Oh and croutons are very good with this, preferably toasted with garlic since there's none in the dressing.

Ingredients:

This does NOT look like the version in Kitchen Diaries.

• a tin of cannellini beans
• a bag of mixed spinach, watercress and other flavourful leaves
• a large handful of basil leaves
• 75g thinly sliced coppa or prosciutto
• a handful of black olives, pitted and quartered, or, a handful of cherry tomatoes, pitted and quartered
• 6 tbsp olive oil
• 4 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp dijon mustard
• 1 tsp grain mustard
• 2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves

Drain the beans, wash and spin the salad and basil leaves, and shake up all the dressing ingredients. Nigel suggests marinading the olives in the dressing but I found it made absolutely no difference since olives are so strongly-flavoured anyway. I'd just toss the whole lot together and top with croutons. Should be better with the mods :)