Salade Nicoise

A few months back I got an e-mail from an old friend (and excellent cook) raving about this recipe. So the recipe has been on my horizon for a while, but I didn't actually make it until this past week-end when that same old friend showed up for a visit. So we hit the Saturday morning farmer's market, came home, and set to work.

This salad needs a bit of lead time (beans and potatoes need blanching and time to cool, eggs need to be hard boiled and cooled) but so very worth it. We served it on a large green platter and it made a lovely presentation. The recipe calls for canned tuna but we went ahead and used fresh grilled tuna which was great. We served the tuna on the side as we had vegetarians sharing the feast.

In addition, we used a mustardy vinaigrette from The Heart of the Artichoke rather than the recipe in this book because we were making it anyway for another dish, it was easy to double, and it was very similar to the Julia recipe but without anchovies.

A Sancerre or any crisp and not-too-sweet white (more on the acid than oaky side) is perfect with this.