Nicoise Salad

Now I’m not a lover of green beans, so I keep trying out different recipes with them in it.  (I use to not like beets either but I love them now. All it takes is find a recipe you like with whatever vegetable you may not be fond of). I know if I wait too long to pick beans, they will be tough and blasé so now that they are just starting to come in, I’ve picked them when they are really young and tender and I finally found a recipe with green beans in them that I like – Nicoise salad. I’ve had Nicoise salads before but I really liked the dressing on this one. And much of the ingredients came from the garden-eggs from the chickens, shallots, garlic, fresh thyme and basil for the dressing, thin vericot green beans, tomatoes, tuna from the pond (just kidding) and olives from the olive tree (yea right)! YUM! Here is the recipe (from Epicurious (from my app on the iphone!):

NICOISE SALAD

Dressing

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

2 ½ tablespoons minced shallots

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1 large clove of garlic, minced

1/2 tsp anchovy paste

1 ½ teaspoons minced fresh thyme

1 ½ tablespoons finely chopped fresh basil

1 cup olive oil

Wisk all of the above ingredients together then add the olive oil and wisk till emulsified.

For the salad:

Green beans cooked ‘al dente’

Small red potatoes-cooked and halved

Hard boiled eggs- peeled and quartered

Tuna steaks

Lettuce

Tomatoes

Black olives (Nicoise or Kalamata)

Beans and potatoes can be cooked ahead of time and kept at room temperature. Hard boil the eggs.

Grill the tuna steaks with just a little olive oil and sea salt and ground pepper. Sear till rare or med rare.

Cooked potatoes should be halved and tossed in a couple of tablespoons of the dressing and sit for a few minutes. Meanwhile put on the edges of a bed of lettuce, some quartered tomatoes, black olives, quartered hard boiled eggs, the dressed potatoes and just before serving, dress some cooked green beans and add them. Put the tuna steak in the middle of the salad drizzling the salad dressing sparingly or break up into pieces and put on top in the middle. Put a few capers on the tuna. Delicious.