RCP: French salade nicoise

[Jenise]

One Saturday not long ago, I was in the mood for potatoes and could just taste a good French potato salad, but Bob requested tuna sandwiches for lunch. Born out of what we both were hungry for came this new weekend lunch favorite.

2 medium sized potatoes, red or Yukon
1 can tuna packed in olive oil
1 tsp vinegar
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
4 oil cured black olives, seeded and chopped
1 tblsp chopped chives
1 tblsp chopped fresh tarragon
2 tblsp chopped parsley
1 shallot, finely diced
lettuce (chiffonade)
salt and pepper to taste

Scrub and slice potatoes in half lengthwise, then slice into bite size pieces. Cover with salted water and simmer for about 8 minutes, until a knife tip easily pierces the potato.

Meanwhile separate the tuna from the oil and reserve both. In a bowl large enough for the potatoes, mix the tuna oil with the mustard and vinegar. Season to taste. When the potatoes are done, drain quickly (the small amount of potato water that will arrive on the wet but drained potatoes is a bonus) and add to the bowl with dressing. Mix carefully with just barely mix with one turn, maybe two, then put the shallots on top to lightly soften in the evaporation from the warm potatoes. After about ten minutes and as soon as the steaming stops, add the olives, fresh herbs and tuna, and turn carefully again to just mix. Allow the flavors to meld as the potatoes come to room temperature then spoon onto the lettuce to serve with a crisp, fresh white wine.

Makes enough for three main course servings.

A few comments...

The Nicoise purists will always have to chime in, but I want to encourage using the concept as a rationale to play with the ideas in a composed salad (as opposed to a toss salad).

The one point where I will stick with the purists is the olive - Nicoise is ideal, but other brine cured black olives like kalamata are a good substitute. I find that oil cured black oilves produce too much of a metalic character in the mouth and a re usually better in cooked dishes, like beef or lamb daube.

I usually think of lettuce as a plate-liner for the nicoise salad. I try to include some of the following: French green beans, new potato, anchovy, hardboiled egg, roasted red pepper, heart of artichoke, tomato. You could expand to include grilled eggplant or zucchini, and roasted tomato instead of fresh.

I try to use a softer, Provencal or Ligurian EVOO rather than a peppery Tuscan oil.

[Jenise]

Bernie, kalamata olives are indeed delicious and had I nothing else on hand but those I would not hesitate to use them, but in this particular version, for my tastes, the unbrined salty richness of the rich oil-cured olives is the better match for the salty tuna. The olives have an anchovy-like intensity, and sparse as four chopped olives is, they are the real magic of this dish. When you get a little of everything in one bite it's sublime.

Like you, I otherwise only use them in cooked preps.

Taking no offense, your emphasis on lettuce as a plate liner and "as opposed to a tossed salad" make me think you mistakenly understood my salad to be a tossed salad--it was not. The potato, olives, tuna, shallots and herbs were mixed, yes, but the lettuce was a plate liner.

I wasn't sure of the role of the lettuce. But I was inspired to make a salade nicoise for lunch today - a dreary day in Santa Barbara.

I used Spanish ventresca bonito canned in EVOO. I cooked a potato and green beans, and made a Dijon-tarragon vinaigrette. I put tomato and kalamata on the plate and had crusty ciabatta bread. Delish!

[Jenise]

It does indeed make a great lunch--I'd not made a salade nicoise at home in some time. I think I fell out of love with it for a time, having had way too many dull, unimaginative versions of it in restaurants where the dressings were bottled and the ingredients tired, underseasoned, or unfresh. Prior to caesar salad-with-chicken's unfortunate take-over of the main course restaurant salad scene, salad nicoise was the dish most in need of rescue menu removal.