The @JC100 -- Week Four inspiration

At last, a recipe I could make for the evening of 9o plus degree heat in Georgia!

Salad Nicoise (sans the cedille).  In fact, I'm thinking of taking this to a pot luck this weekend!  It's a great time of year for it, since new potatoes and green beans are in season, and some people already have local tomatoes!!

Wikipedia tells us this:

Niçoise salad (French pronunciation: [niˈswaz]), is a mixed salad consisting of various vegetables topped with tuna and anchovies. The salad is displayed on a flat plate or platter and arranged on a bed of lettuce. Ripe tomato wedges, wedges of hard-boiled eggs, are topped with canned^{[citation needed]} tuna (tinned in oil), and Niçoise Cailletier olives. Finally the salad is garnished with tinned^{[citation needed]} anchovies. The salad is served with vinaigrette.

The original version of the salad always included raw red peppers, shallots, and artichoke hearts, never potatoes. The French, especially in the Nice area, will clearly state no cooked vegetables are to be used. "[...] la salade Niçoise ne contient pas de légumes cuits."^[1]

Rumours^{[weasel words][unreliable source?]} suggest the famous choreographer Balanchine may have influenced the creation of this dish during his tenure in Monte Carlo. Others claim it is a Provençal dish.^{[citation needed]} This salad was made famous in America by "the French Chef", Julia Child.^{[citation needed]}

Salade Niçoise and its ingredients are often debated by purists. A common debate is the use of lettuce, which differs from village to village.

Salade Niçoise
From Julia's Kitchen Wisdom, by Julia Child.

Of all main-course salads, the Niçoise is my all-time favorite, with its fresh butter-lettuce foundation; its carefully cooked, beautifully green green beans; its colorful contrast of halved hard-boiled eggs, ripe red tomatoes, and black olives; all fortified by chunks of tunafish and freshly opened anchovies. It's a perfect luncheon dish, to my mind, winter, summer, spring, and fall — an inspired combination that pleases everyone.

Ingredients:

1 large head Boston-lettuce leaves, washed and dried
1 pound green beans, cooked and refreshed
1-1/2 tablespoons minced shallots
1/2 to 2/3 cup basic vinaigrette
Salt and freshly ground pepper
3 or 4 ripe red tomatoes, cut into wedges (or 10 to 12 cherry tomatoes, halved)
3 or 4 "boiling" potatoes, peeled, sliced, and cooked
Two 3-ounce cans chunk tuna, preferably oil-packed
6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and halved
1 freshly opened can of flat anchovy fillets
1/3 cup small black Niçoise-type olives
2 to 3 tablespoons capers
3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

Instructions:

Arrange the lettuce leaves on a large platter or in a shallow bowl. Shortly before serving, toss the beans with the shallots, spoonfuls of vinaigrette, and salt and pepper. Baste the tomatoes with a spoonful of vinaigrette. Place the potatoes in the center of the platter and arrange a mound of beans at either end, with tomatoes and small mounds of tuna at strategic intervals. Ring the platter with halves of hard-boiled eggs, sunny side up, and curl an anchovy on top of each. Spoon more vinaigrette over all; scatter on olives, capers, and parsley, and serve.

Yield: Serves 6

Dressing:

Difficulty: Moderate

Cook Time: 1-30 min

When Nora Ephron, director of the Julia Child movie "Julie and Julia," "Good Morning America" cooked up on of Julia's favorite salads, the Salade Nicoise. But what's a good salad without a great dressing?

Ingredients

2 strips of fresh lemon peel, 1 by 2 ½ inches each

1/4 tsp. salt, plus more, if needed

1/2 Tbs. Dijon-type prepared mustard

1 to 2 Tbs. freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 cup fine fresh oil

Freshly ground pepper

Cooking Directions

Mince the lemon peel very finely with the salt, scrape it into the mortar or bowl, and mash into a fine paste with the pestle or spoon.

Beat in the mustard and 1 tablespoon of the lemon juice; when thoroughly blended start beating in the oil by droplets to make a homogeneous sauce—easier when done with a small electric mixer.

Beat in droplets more lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste.

Recipe Summary

Main Ingredients: lemon, mustard, oil, pepper

Excerpted from The Way to Cook by Julia Child. Copyright © 1989 by Julia Child. Reprinted with permission from the publisher Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Bon appetit, y'all!
La Ging