Almost Salad Nicoise

Classic Salad Nicoise has tuna, potatoes, green beans, hard cooked egg, black olives and salad greens with a garlic dressing. For dinner one evening this week I made my own version which had many of those elements, but I decided on a citrus-mustard dressing. Sweetie had bought some beautiful tuna steaks and grilled them so that they were still very pink inside, then he sliced them to put on top of the salad.

I cooked red potatoes and green beans and kept them hot while I made the dressing. The salad greens were comprised of romaine, iceberg, red cabbage. There were also some non-traditional carrot slices. When the tuna slices were ready I drained the potatoes and green beans and put them on top of the salad greens in a large bowl. The dressing when on next and it was all tossed together. Because I forgot to cook them ahead of time we didn't have hard cooked egg. Because I really don't care for olives, those were not included either. As you can see, not a classic at all, but still an interesting dinner for a hot evening. Our plates were piled with the dressed greens mixture and the tuna slices placed on top, to one side. I really enjoyed the contrast between the icy salad greens and the warm potatoes, beans, and tuna. An additional salad of fresh tomatoes, sliced, then dressed with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and pepper completed the plate. It was delicious!

We have been having a heat wave with three straight days of 102 degree highs, preceded by a couple of days around 100 degrees and followed today by a high in the 90s. It should be in the 80s tomorrow and I am very grateful. Hot weather has never been my thing.

Citrus Mustard Dressing

grated zest of 1/2 medium orange
grated zest of 1/2 lemon
grated zest of 1/2 lime
juice of 1 lemon
juice of 1/2 lime
2 teaspoons Dijon style mustard
salt and pepper to taste
about 1/4 cup good quality olive oil

Place the grated zests and the citrus juice in a small bowl. Whisk in the mustard, salt and pepper. Continue whisking and very slowly add in the olive oil.

Wild and Nutty

After a week of too many things to do in not enough time, fulfilling in the end, but exhausting, it was a pleasure to go into the kitchen tonight and play with knives and cutting boards and pot and pans. The fact that the dish I prepared really complemented the fresh tuna steak that Sweetie cooked is what really made it satisfying. Wild rice (not actually a true rice, but the seed of a grass native to North America) is nutty in flavor and chewy. Just the thing to go with sauteed fresh vegetables.



You can purchase packets of already cooked wild rice at Trader Joes. All they contain is wild rice and water. They are vacuum packed and shelf stable, too. Tonight the ability to just open the pouch, put it into a microwave safe dish and heat it up in the microwave meant that I had time to sautee onions and mushroom slices in some olive oil, slice a zucchini and a yellow crookneck squash into half moon slices, and cut baby carrots into bite sized chunks.

Once the onions were transluscent (after a few stirs with a wooden spoon now and then), I added some freshly ground pepper, a dash of garlic salt, and about 1/4 teaspoon of thyme. After stirring those into the onion mixture, I tossed in the squash, mixed it up with the onion mixture, and let that cook a minute, stirred, and added the carrot chunks. To that I then added 1/2 cup chicken broth, covered the pan and cooked it on very low heat 3-4 minutes until the veggies were tender but still firm. Removing the cover I tossed in the heated wild rice, stirred it all together and checked for seasoning.

Once the tuna steaks were ready (simply pan fried with lemon pepper and garlic salt...still plenty of pink in the middle, too) we plated it and had a fine Friday night dinner. The green salad that I fixed earlier complemented the tuna and rice mixture very nicely.

There is probably a recipe like this somewhere, but I just sort of made it up as I went along, adding what seemed like the right amount of squash and carrots and mushrooms. A nice opportunity to be creative after a long week.

wild rice
fresh tuna
squash
mushrooms
carrots