Julia Child visited my kitchen tonight

by YankeeJim | September 16, 2010 at 02:34 pm

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I felt her in my presence.

Before I got married and completed college, I worked as a chef. In fact, I met my wife when I was a chef and she was a waitress. We both loved good cooking. My mother was a great chef and so was my wife’s mother. The differences in cooking styles were wildly vast. My mother was from the south and her mother was from the Midwest. My mother’s cooking had a country and French flair, and her mother’s cooking had a German and Eastern European influence.

When we got married we bought cookbooks. I favored Graham Kerr and she worshiped Julia Child. We took our cooking seriously and had lots of dinner parties. My specialty was cordon bleu and hers was beef Wellington.

Yet, there was something in between that we both enjoyed immensely as did Julia, Salade Niçoise.

It is a combination of potato salad and tuna salad on lettuce enhanced by eggs and anchovies or sardines. I jazz up the recipe.

“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.”