Recipe #26: another not quite, but closer, salade niçoise

 This is the closest thing I make to a real salade niçoise, and although it’s much more effort than the other, faker versions (see recipes #15 and #20) (and still not authentic), it’s well worth it!

Ingredients:

Directions:

I’m going to make my hard boiled eggs in the Instant Pot because I have one and it makes perfect hard boiled eggs (as well as cool fun-house reflections on the mirrored interior), but you can certainly make them the old fashioned way on the stove top:

Boil up some fresh baby new potatoes and green or yellow beans:

The potatoes take longer than the beans, which are really just quick cooked to al dente or barely cooked, then plunged into cold water to stop them from overcooking, then drained well. The potatoes are cooked until a fork can easily pierce them, then drained well but kept warm.

Chop all the raw vegetables and put into the salad bowl:

Then add the canned tuna with oil, chopped hard boiled eggs, drained beans, drained (and still warm) diced potatoes, and a couple of anchovies:

Squirt some grainy mustard into the bowl with S&P, a few shakes of wine vinegar and some supplemental olive oil (there definitely won’t be enough in the canned fish products—this salad absorbs the dressing like a sponge on account of the still-warm potatoes):

Stir everything together to mix the dressing and incorporate the anchovies, tuna, tuna oil, warm potatoes, and eggs into the dressing so they are both salad and dressing (just like quantum mechanics, non?):

I cannot even tell you how good this is. You just have to make one for yourself.