Rubbishy Cookery

  This is a recipe that uses not one, but two (2!) types of canned fish! Ingredients: Missing from the above photo, but should usually be assumed: salt and pepper. Also missing and a last minute optional addition: Directions: You’ve probably heard that kale needs to be massaged with oil for salads in order to soften the tough leathery leaves. We’re going to be extra frugal and massage our kale (which is coming from the late fall backyard garden crop today, harvested in the dark cold rain) with the fishy olive oil with which our canned tuna is packaged.  Here is a picture of pre-massaged kale: Add that tuna olive oil: Get in there with both hands and massage! Then you’ll have nice tender oily kale: Nice! Meanwhile, in a little dish, squish up a clove of garlic and add some salt to let the garlic mellow and soften for a minute or two: Add an anchovy: Mash them up together: Add some squeezed fresh lemon juice and a few squirts of Worcestershire sauce: Mix it all up and add a good...

  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, an...

 This recipe is such a distant cousin to salade niçoise that if the two dishes wanted to get together and have offspring, they wouldn’t have to worry about recessive genes causing any congenital anomalies.  I’ve just gotten into the habit of referring go any salad with lettuce, canned tuna, and vinaigrette as a fake salade niçoise . I have some more elaborate and slightly less lazy homages to the French salad coming in future posts when I have more ingredients, energy, and mobility. But don’t worry. I am not so ignorant in the world of international cuisine to think this, and my future renditions, are in any way real salade niçoise . But it’s vraiment bon et très facile!  So allons-y! Ingredients: You can use any salad ingredients you have around. This is very basic because it’s all I’ve got today. And yes, that’s grocery store iceberg lettuce. Don’t be a lettuce snob.  Directions: Wash and dry your vegetables and chop into salad-appropriate sizes and toss into a big...

  I honestly thought I had invented this recipe because it fell into the category, to my mind, of “who else but me would eat this?” (See recipe #1 as well) A quick internet search proves me wrong. The World Wide Web of food blogs is positively silly with versions and variations of this exact dish. I’m going to allow it here because (a) I thought I had invented it, which is philosophically equivalent, if not actually equivalent, to my having invented it and (b) it’s my recipe blog and I can break my own rules. Also, my blog has no ads, no affiliate links, no professional photography of myself looking fabulous to distract the reader, and no readers. So let’s get on with it. Ingredients: Note that I am using gluten free bread, which is optional but not necessary unless you, too, have a medical reason to do so. You can obviously also use prepackaged pre-made croutons, making this dish even quicker and easier. Note also that I am using canned tuna in olive oil. This is also completely o...