Salade Niçoise gets top billing in Sensational Salads
Liven up your salads with one of the 75 recipes in a beautifully illustrated book called Sensational Salads by London cookbook writer Kathy Kordalis (Ryland Peters & Small/firefly).
After informative pages about salad greens and how to make a good salad and dressings, Kordalis begins her 75-plus recipes with The Classics, including today’s recipe.
For the saga of the celebrated Niçoise, which is traced to the French city of Nice, see Wikipedia online.
Kordalis is likely to inspire you to add more variety in your salad-making, particularly with ideas for foods (meat, fish, cheese, roasted vegetables, nuts or legumes) that can turn a salad into a meal.
To keep the makings fresh, she advises pressing the
air out of the plastic bag of greens.
Salade Niçoise
Serves 4 Dressing:
1 teaspoon (5 ml) sea salt
1 peeled, whole garlic clove
1 teaspoon (5 ml) Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon (15 ml) white wine vinegar
6 tablespoons (90 ml) olive oil
1 tablespoon (15 ml) fresh, chopped herbs* Freshly ground pepper *Chervil, chives, flat-leaf parsley and basil are suggested. Salad:
2 cups (500 ml/1 pint box) cherry tomatoes, halved 1 medium cucumber, sliced 1 pound (500 g) baby new potatoes, cooked, sliced 1-½ cups (375 ml/150 g) green beans, cooked, sliced in half
4 to 6 green onions, thinly sliced
2 cans (170 g/8 ounces each) tuna
4 hard-boiled eggs, peeled, quartered
1 can (50 g/1-¾ ounces/ about 8 fillets) anchovies
1 cup (250 ml/100 g) pitted black olives Crusty bread
Butter
Dressing: In a mortar and pestle, crush the sea salt to a powder, then add garlic clove and pound mixture into a smooth paste. (A food processor may be used instead.)
Blend in the mustard, followed by the vinegar and some pepper, mixing until the salt has dissolved.
Mix in oil, then stir in herbs.
Just before adding dressing to salad, pour it into a screwtop jar and shake vigorously to blend.
Salad: Combine in a large bowl the tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, beans and onions, sprinkling with some of the dressing.
Arrange chunks of tuna and egg quarters on top. Add anchovies and olives. Finish with a final sprinkling of dressing.
Serve with crusty bread and butter.