Raid the Fridge Fridays: Salade Niçoise

You see it in old sitcoms on TV. There is something that American high schools and prisons have in common. There may be more than one thing in common, in fact now I think about it. But the main thing on my mind is the school lunch trays.

You can probably visualise them. They are plastic, maybe in various colours, and they have little compartments for each of your food groups. I think my mum might have a couple of these trays (or I suppose they’re plates actually) which she uses for camping. So, I’m not suggesting that only American high schools and prisons eat food like this. My family also does when we go camping.

These little plastic compartments kill me. Schools that use trays like these are just destroying children’s imaginations. Every ingredient served by the lunch ladies must be kept to its own bunk, hands and arms inside at all times, and evidently mingling isn’t encouraged.

Half the fun of eating is spearing a bit of everything onto your fork to make a messy free-for-all. A tasty mouthful, my mum would call it and they were always particularly delicious when she would build those forkfuls for me and my sister as food prepared by someone else is always infinitely better than whatever I’ve made myself.

This salade niçoise is very American high school. It’s very prison. Everyone sticks to their side of the plate. Can the green beans stretch a little further to touch the new potatoes? Better not let anyone catch them at it. What about that tuna, good god it was so flaky it went everywhere! And the dressing - heck, what about the dressing?!

The easiest answer to this very categorised salad is to mix it all together rather like the tuna salads my sister and I used to eat. They were basically salade niçoise but the mixing of all the ingredients - the philandering of all the lettuce, cucumber, boiled eggs and tuna, and there was at least a cup of mayo squeezed in there too - turned it into the less elegantly named Monster Munch Salad.

Salade niçoise has class. It has poise. Each ingredient, every slice of shallot, every olive, is laid just so - and I would know, I laid them there. And as I did so, I came to wonder whether these archaic lunch trays were actually on to something. Maybe they’re trying to emulate French eating in American high school. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. And the effect is very aesthetically pleasing. Although those olives are very Rebel Without a Cause, gallivanting off to party with the tuna.

After all, the little categories don’t stop you from bundling up a potato, some cucumber, a tomato half onto your fork all at once. Or do what I did, throwing all my manners out the window, using a lettuce leaf like a towel to shovel food into my mouth. Less French, more ravenous beast.

It’s the lip-smacking dressing that helps - it spreads lemony mustardy love over everything so there’s perfect harmony even if you’re a potato sitting at five o’clock on the plate and you haven’t even introduced yourself to the eggs sitting at 11pm. It doesn’t matter, you are already one and the same. You’re all going in the same direction.

Salade Niçoise

A perfectly pretty French salad and one for many ‘tasty mouthfuls’. If you’d like to eat this normally - mixed together in a salad bowl and doled out onto plates like a regular salad - then please do so. If not, arrange the prepped ingredients on a plate in whatever artistic manner you would like. How about prison-chic?

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Course: Salad, Side Dish, Snack, Lunch, Dinner, Main Course

Keyword: salad, lettuce, cucumber, cherry tomato, tuna, new potato

Servings: 2

Author: Adapted from Suzy Ashford’s recipe

Ingredients

• 230g new potatoes, chopped in half or quarters

• 80g green beans, tails removed

• 2 eggs

• 80g cherry tomatoes, halved

• 1 little gem lettuce, leaves separated and washed

• 60g cucumber, peeled and sliced

• 1 tin of tuna

• A small bundle of chives, chopped

• 14 Kalamata olives

• ½ shallot

• 1 clove of garlic

• ½ tsp Dijon mustard

• 1 tsp honey

• Juice of ½ lemon

• 30ml extra virgin olive oil

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

• Place the prepped new potatoes in a saucepan and cover with cold water and sprinkle with some salt. Cover with a lid and set over high heat to bring to the boil. Remove lid when the water starts bubbling and cook for 10-15 minutes.

• In another saucepan, cook the eggs - place in boiling water to cook for 7 minutes.

• Prepare the dressing: cut the shallot half in half again. Finely chop one half (save the other for later) and scoop it all into a jug. Crush the garlic clove and add to the jug along with the Dijon, honey, lemon juice and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.

• Drain the tuna and break it up a bit with a fork if necessary.

• Get out two plates and arrange the prepared salad ingredients - the tomatoes, the lettuce, the cucumber, the tuna.

• Drain the eggs and cool under cold running water. When they are cool enough, peel off the shells and cut into quarters.

• Add the green beans to the pan of potatoes for the last 1-2 minutes of cooking then drain and run under cold water until cool. Divide them between the two plates.

• Slice the remaining half of the shallot. Top the salads with olives, chopped chives and sliced shallot, sprinkle everything with a little salt and pepper, then drizzle over the dressing just before serving.