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So Nice, Niçoise |
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It had been a long week. Spring had sprung, then slipped a coil and left our Easter bunny with cold feet. After I watched his tracks disappear in the snow, I looked around the kitchen. Cookbooks were strewn like wet socks, recipe print-outs were spilling out of their files. I’d spent the week before playing recipe P. I., tracking down the right line-up for a family feast. Now, it was over and I needed a cup o’ joe and a lighter menu. But there wasn’t a single egg to scramble. They were all hard-boiled as a detective novel and painted as colorfully as prose.
I decided to take my taste buds to Nice to recuperate, and to use up some of those eggs. Nothing like a little taste of the French Riviera to perk things up. The classic salad of Nice—Salade Niçoise—seemed to have it all: tender greens, hearty potatoes, salty tuna, and fresh lemon. Trouble being I’d seen a lot of good salads go bad; ruined by skimpy or sloppy dressing, just an uncomposed heap on a plate. Or worse yet, intruded upon by imposter ingredients.
In the case of this salad, it’s the olives. Canned black olives have been known to work their way into almost every place a ripe olive should be. But don’t be fooled—most of the canned variety are harvested green and chemically ripened into mush. You need the real olives to stand up to this recipe—preferably Niçoise olives. If you need a stand-in, only another top-quality naturally-cured olive will do. I’ve called on Kalamata olives in this case and it’s worked out swimmingly.
One last word of caution: it doesn’t matter so much what your salad is wearing this spring (I think it’s lovely even with my everyday vinaigrette) so long as you’ve got all the parts covered. It takes time to get this salad right, tracking down all the components and dressing them separately, but when you do—ah! now that’s the kind of dinner salad to write home about.
Salade Niçoise
Dressing
¾ c. extra virgin olive oil
½ c. fresh lemon juice (about 3 lemons)
1 shallot, minced
2 tsp. Dijon mustard
4 tsp. minced fresh herbs, (thyme and oregano) or 1 tsp. dried herb de Provençe
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. freshly ground pepper
Salad
1 ½ pounds red potatoes scrubbed and cut into 1-inch pieces
Salt
1 pound fresh green beans, trimmed
2 heads tender lettuce, preferably Bibb, red or green leaf, or a mixture
2 foil pouches or one large can of solid white albacore tuna
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes
6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and quartered
½ c. Niçoise olives, or pitted and chopped Kalamata olives
10-12 anchovy fillets, rinsed and patted dry (optional)
Combine all the dressing ingredients in a jar or cruet with a tight-fitting lid and shake well before using.
Put the potatoes and a teaspoon of salt in a medium saucepan; cover with cold water and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat and cook until tender. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the potatoes to a bowl (reserving the boiling water) and toss them with ¼ cup of the dressing. Set aside to cool. Return the water to boiling, add the green beans and cook until crisp-tender, about 4 minutes. Drain thoroughly, toss with ¼ cup of dressing and refrigerate to cool.
Carefully wash and dry the lettuce, tearing it into bite-sized pieces. Working in one large bowl, toss the lettuce with 3 tablespoons of dressing, then arrange on a serving platter or divide onto dinner plates. Arrange the potatoes and green beans over the lettuce. Toss the tuna with some of the dressing and arrange on the salad(s). Toss the tomatoes with dressing and arrange. Garnish with the eggs, olives and anchovies (if using) and drizzle with the remaining dressing.
*Recipe adapted from America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook
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Editor’s Note: Angela Denstad Stigeler writes a food column each week for the Caledonia Argus. She, her husband and their two young children live in Caledonia.
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