Around My French Table (26 page)
Read Around My French Table Online
Authors: Dorie Greenspan
Combine the lemon juice, pistachio oil, and salt to taste in a small jar and shake until blended; or whisk together in a bowl. Pour over the salad, and toss well. Season generously with pepper (zucchini and pepper are a sublime match) and more salt if needed. Cover and chill for at least 1 hour, or for up to 3 hours.
Just before serving, toss the salad with the remaining mint.
MAKES 6 SERVINGS
SERVING
Just before you're ready to bring this dish to the table, toss it with the remaining mint—it gives it a jolt of freshness. Serve it alone or with other salads as a starter, or pair the tagliatelle with chicken or fish.
STORING
Although the tagliatelle should be chilled before serving, it really shouldn't be kept overnight.
L
IKE CAESAR SALAD, SALADE NIÇOISE
(which gets its name from its hometown, Nice) has traveled the globe and, like the Caesar, lost a little of its authenticity and excitement along the way. But even as it teeters between classic and cliché, you can see why the salad has endured: it's got lots of different textures, so it's always interesting; it's colorful, so it's always beautiful; and, most important, it's tasty—it's hard to resist the allure of hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, green beans, olives, shallots, anchovies, boiled baby potatoes, lettuce, and tuna, the salad's linchpin. The customary tuna for a salade Niçoise comes straight from the tin. In fact, when I told a French friend that I was writing this book, he said, "Please, please, please, don't go all modern and use fresh tuna!" I think he would be glad to hear that most of the time I stick to canned tuna. However, if I've got any leftovers from tuna confit (
[>]
), I make a salade Niçoise just for the chance to use them. Actually, I'm not so sure that using confit is all that modern. After all, what is canned tuna but tuna preserved in oil?
| 8-12 | small potatoes, such as fingerlings or baby Yukon Golds, scrubbed |
| ¾ | pound green beans, trimmed |
| 4 | hard-boiled eggs |
| 4-6 | handfuls Boston lettuce, mesclun, or other soft salad greens, rinsed and dried |
| 1 | shallot, finely chopped, rinsed, and patted dry |
| Salt and freshly ground pepper | |
| Double recipe of Everyday Vinaigrette ( [>] ) or Tapenade Vinaigrette ( [>] ) | |
| 2 | 5- to 6-ounce cans tuna packed in oil, drained |
| 4 | tomatoes, cut into chunks, or about 20 grape tomatoes, halved |
| About 20 Niçoise olives, pitted or not | |
| 2 | tablespoons capers, drained and patted dry |
| 8 | anchovies, rinsed and patted dry |
| Chopped fresh parsley, for garnish (optional) |
Put the potatoes in a large pot of salted water and bring to a boil. Cook until the potatoes are tender enough to be pierced easily with the tip of a knife, 10 to 20 minutes (maybe even a little longer), depending on the size and age of your potatoes. Scoop the potatoes out of the pot with a slotted spoon and put them in a bowl to cool.
Toss the green beans into the pot and cook them until tender, or crisp-tender—start checking them after 4 minutes. Drain the beans and run them under cold water, or dunk them into a bowl of cold water and ice, to cool them and set their color. Drain, then pat dry.
When you're ready to serve, depending on their size, halve or quarter the
potatoes. Peel the eggs and cut them in half. Choose a large platter (or shallow serving bowl) and put the greens on it. Sprinkle over the chopped shallot, season with salt and pepper, and drizzle over a spoonful or so of the vinaigrette; toss.
You can now compose the salad any way you wish. I'm from the symmetrical school, so I lay the ingredients out in rows, but circles or a hither-and-thither approach is fine as well. Lay the potatoes, beans, eggs, tuna, and tomatoes over the greens. Scatter over the olives and capers, and either cut the anchovies in half and crisscross the eggs with them or arrange the anchovies attractively over the salad. Season the salad with salt and pepper and drizzle over a little more vinaigrette; pour the remainder of the vinaigrette into a small pitcher that can be brought to the table. Finish the salad with a flurry of parsley, if you like.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
SERVING
The salad should be served as soon as it's arranged. It's truly a one-dish meal and needs nothing more than bread. A sliced baguette would be perfect, but you might consider a savory fougasse (
[>]
); it's from the same part of the country as the salad.
STORING
The potatoes and green beans can be cooked earlier in the day; just be sure to dry them well. Keep the potatoes at room temperature and chill the beans. The eggs can be hard-boiled as much as a day ahead and kept refrigerated.
BONNE IDÉE
Fried Garlic Petals.
The salade Niçoise at Le Comptoir in Paris includes a scattering of fried garlic, a small touch that makes the dish a standout. (Le Comptoir's salad also goes against form and, instead of soft lettuces, uses crisp sucrine, a kind of baby romaine with the crunch of iceberg.) To make the petals, slice a large garlic clove (or two) lengthwise paper-thin, avoiding the germ. If you have a mini mandoline (there are some made specifically for garlic) or a Benriner slicer, this is a job for it. Heat a little mild oil, such as grapeseed or canola, in a small saucepan, and when it's hot, start frying the garlic. Drop in a few slices and let them cook until they're golden, then lift them out of the oil with a small slotted spoon and transfer them to a plate lined with a double thickness of paper towels; pat off the excess oil. Repeat with the remaining slices. You can keep the garlic covered in a cool, dry place overnight. Make the garlic the last thing you add to the salade Niçoise.
French salads are like French women— always stylishly dressed. Salads can be topped with mayonnaise or even tossed with heavy cream that's been infused with something delicious— say truffles—and boiled down until it thickens slightly. But the little black dress of salad dressings is the rightfully classic vinaigrette, a mix of vinegar and oil, salt and pepper, and a dab of Dijon mustard . . . or not.
The usual proportions for a vinaigrette are 1 part vinegar to 3 parts oil, but you can play around with the mix to match the kind of salad you're making and your own preference for acidity. My "house dressing" is more vinegary than the standard—1 tablespoon vinegar to 2 tablespoons oil—and often more mustardy too. Mustard gives a vinaigrette a touch of sharpness, and it also serves to help emulsify the dressing. Use mustard, and your vinaigrette will be creamy; without it, it'll be thinner and it might separate—but that's fine.
You've got plenty of leeway with a vinaigrette. Instead of vinegar (red, white, or fruity), you can use fresh lemon juice, which is less acidic. If you use the juice, you might want to use less oil. As for the oil, extra-virgin olive oil is always the first choice, but if you're adding a lot of spices or garlic or making a dressing that's really mustardy, you might want to use something a little less flavorful or not flavorful at all, like grapeseed oil. For the most distinctively flavored vinaigrette, replace a little of the olive oil with a nut oil and pair it with aged sherry vinegar.
I know this borders on the heretical, but if I've got a mix of absolutely gorgeous greens that are especially tasty, maybe a mix that has mustard greens, mizuna, arugula, and other kinds of bold leaves, I'll season them with salt (usually fleur de sel), freshly ground pepper, and terrific olive oil—just olive oil, no vinegar to cut their natural flavor.
And no matter what I use on a salad, I use it sparingly. Whether we're talking fashion or food, dressing with restraint is always in style.
In France fresh asparagus that is grown within the country (often in the Loire Valley) and rushed to market is considered a delicacy, as prized as caviar or truffles and given the same star treatment. In fact, as soon as the stalks start crowding the vendors' stands, they top the menus of restaurants and family dinners too. I take it as a given that when I'm invited to a friend's home for dinner during the season, asparagus is what I'll be having as a first course.
There are two kinds of French asparagus that are rarely seen in our markets: wild and white. The wild spears look like something meant for decoration only. They're fern green and about six inches long. Their stems are as thin as reeds, and their tops look like miniature sheaves of wheat. They can be steamed and used as a garnish, but very often they're quickly sauteed and tucked into an omelet. Their presence in the market is truly fleeting, so just seeing them is a treat.
As for the white asparagus, many consider them the ultimate incarnation of the vegetable, although there is nothing genetically different between them and the green variety: their paleness comes from their never having seen the light of day. To achieve their ivory color, earth is mounded around the stalks so that they aren't exposed to sunlight and therefore can't develop chlorophyll, which would turn them green.
People say that white and green asparagus taste alike. I've never done a blind tasting, but I think the white is milder and the texture is more tender—though I'm willing to concede that I might be swayed by the stereotypes of fragility associated with whiteness.
In general, especially if the asparagus is white, it's likely to turn up as a starter. It may be part of a salad, but in all probability, it will be served in abundance, hot or at room temperature, without much more than a dipping sauce, perhaps hollandaise, mayonnaise, or a vinaigrette, and it may be topped off with a poached or soft-boiled egg. In fact, more and more, the egg has become the fashionable finisher, and with good reason: asparagus and eggs have a profound affinity for each other.
I love the drama of a pile of asparagus in the center of the table and the fun of being able to eat them with your fingers. While the French almost never use their fingers, asparagus is a full-contact food. Even if you were eating asparagus with the president in the Elysée Palace, you'd be doing the right thing by picking up the spears, dipping them into the sauce, and munching them from the tip down.
Asparagus can be boiled, steamed, or roasted, but no matter how you cook them, if you're using any kind of asparagus other than those that are pencil-thin, I think they should be peeled, even if they're young, fresh, and local. It takes just a few minutes, but since the peel can be stringy, peeling makes a huge difference in the eating. Start peeling the asparagus from about an inch or so beneath the tip and go all the way to the base, then snap the asparagus at what seems to be its natural breaking point or cut all the asparagus in your batch to the same size. (You can save the peels and woody bases for a vegetable broth.) If you choose asparagus of a similar thickness and trim them evenly, they should all be properly cooked at the same time. The way to test for doneness, regardless of the cooking method, is to pierce a spear with the point of a paring knife—when the spear is crisp-tender, the asparagus is done.
The cooking times that follow are for thick asparagus; skinny asparagus cook faster and should be checked early and often.
TO COOK ASPARAGUS UPRIGHT:
Tie the asparagus into bundles—8 to 12 stalks to a bundle—and stand them up in a tall pot with about 3 inches of boiling salted water in it. Cover and cook; you'll be boiling the base of the asparagus and steaming their tender tips. Start checking the asparagus after 5 minutes.
TO SKILLET-BOIL ASPARAGUS
(the method I use most often): Fill a wide skillet with salted water, bring to a boil, and cook the asparagus (loose) in the water until they test done—start testing after 4 minutes.
If you're going to serve the asparagus as a starter, I'd suggest either of the watery methods. But if the asparagus are going to be a side dish to something grilled or something meaty, I'd roast them. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment, foil, or a silicone baking mat. Lay the (peeled) asparagus out in a single layer, drizzle with a little olive oil, and, using your hands, lift and turn the spears around until they're evenly coated with oil. Sprinkle with sea salt, preferably fleur de sel. Roast the asparagus for about 15 minutes—check on them at the 10-minute mark—or until they pass the knife test.
While steamed and boiled asparagus are superb with creamy sauces and runny eggs, roasted asparagus take best to oil, balsamic vinegar (in moderation), and a sprinkling of grated cheese.