ARMCHAIR FOOD TRAVELS

A recipe for Salade Niçoise follows the story below.

Photo from Paul Volkmer on unsplash.

The summer is a difficult social media season for me.

My friends post pictures of their bistro meals in Paris, or how the lavender perfumes the air outside their rental in Provence, or of the grilled sardines at this “divine” beachside hole-in-the-wall near Lisbon—and I find myself getting just more and more resentful.

Because I’m not there, of course, or because this summer did not bring those things to me.

So, I go there anyway, or make those experiences my own.

I read.

I read Waverly Root’s “The Food of France,” or his “The Food of Italy”—my two favorite food armchair getaways. Or I read A.J. Liebling’s “Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris”; beautiful writing, aching for good food, a lust for life.

If I miss Italy, I’ll reread Frances Mayes’ “Under a Tuscan Sun,” or if I want to stay closer to home, I’ll sit with something from M.F.K. Fisher, “The Gastronomical Me,” perhaps, or “Serve It Forth.”

Fisher is “closer to home” because she’s American, but, for me, she is closest to home because her exquisite writing on food was what cooking and eating meant to her senses, her body, her self. Reading her is always a deeply satisfying inner journey.

Plus, as a cook, it’s fun to go along when a good writer talks about food, or to learn something new about food and cooking. That’s what the education of travel is anyway; it also can be got through words alone.

I was interested to read Root on the Salade Niçoise, a commonplace to us, almost embarrassingly dreary to order at a restaurant nowadays.

It is fraught with controversy, did you know?

In Nice, France, its birthplace, writes Root in "The Food of France," the Salade Niçoise "is innocent of lettuce ..., must contain tomatoes, cut into wedges (not slices) ... and should contain nothing cooked, with the possible exception of hard-boiled egg, not often permitted in Nice itself."

Outside of Nice (and as close as Paris itself), the Salade Niçoise often sports green beans and potatoes, both cooked, "though a purist would regard either of these, especially the latter, with horror," he writes.

In Nice, other invariables: black olives—the tiny, slightly bitter, brine-cured, unpitted olives called “niçoises”—sweet green pepper, fèves (small beans, lima bean-like), radishes and “pissala,” or ground anchovies.

In other words, a Salade Niçoise is very little like what we consider it to be over here in non-France.

And, here’s the rub. "Where's the tuna?" asks the Yank. In America, it ain't a Salade Niçoise unless a big chunk of tuna fish sits on top.

"The Niçois [the name for both a person from or the people of Nice] often combine anchovies and tuna fish in the same salad," allows former Nice mayor Jacques Medecin in his book "Cuisine Niçoise," "although traditionally this was never done—tuna fish being very expensive and reserved for special occasions, so the cheaper anchovies filled the bill." (Root does not even mention tuna fish.)

So, even in Nice, tuna is OK, though not mandatory. However, would a Niçois approve of the kind of tuna that America likes on its Salade Niçoise? Albacore tuna canned in spring water? A fillet of tuna quick-grilled and sashimi-rare?

Never. No one—no one in Nice, no one in the entire country of France—would add grilled tuna to a Salade Niçoise. And if it's canned tuna, it's canned in olive oil, never water.

The oily, full-flavored taste of tuna canned in olive oil lends so much more gusto than—let's be frank—the veal-with-gills that's an American tuna steak.

So, when putting together a Salade Niçoise—if you want to go, via the plate, to Nice or to France—use a can opener, not a Weber.

Photo from Katrin Gilger on unsplash.

RECIPE: Salade Nicoise
This recipe comes from Susan McLucas' "A Provencal Kitchen” and serves 6.

Ingredients
1 head Bibb lettuce, washed and dried
2 large tomatoes, skinned, seeded, and cut in wedges
1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded, and sliced thin
2 large green peppers, seeded and sliced thin
1 heart of celery, sliced
1 medium-sized sweet white onion, sliced thin
1 cup baby lima beans, fresh (preferably), or frozen baby lima beans, cooked for 5 minutes only and freshened immediately under cold water
1 8-ounce can chunk tuna in oil, drained
6 anchovy fillets, freshened under the faucet and sliced in half lengthwise
16 black olives, pitted
3 hard-boiled eggs, cut in large wedges
2 basil leaves, chopped, or 1 tsp. dried basil leaves, crumbled
1/4 cup chopped parsley
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper

Directions
Arrange lettuce leaves around and in bottom of large, shallow serving dish. Decorate lettuce with tomatoes; then add cucumber, green peppers, celery, and onion, leaving the center to be filled with lima beans.

Place large chunks of tuna on top of lima beans; finish with anchovies, eggs, and olives. Sprinkle basil and parsley over the whole.

Mix oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper; drizzle over the salad. Toss gently and serve immediately.