The Salad “Punt”

A good chef must be adaptable.  A good chef must be imaginative.  A good chef must know how to cut corners when necessary.  I am all three; ergo, I must be a good chef!  Perhaps this approach to self-aggrandizement is a little too elementary, but I can say without fear of contradiction that I know how to cut corners when it comes to cooking.

This week’s Fridays with Dorie challenge presented an opportunity to demonstrate my corner-cutting skills.  I have been overwhelmed recently with work, tending to my mending Sous Chef, and dealing with the teen-age proclivities of my Havanese puppies.  Time has been short and when I read that this week’s challenge was Salade Niçoise, I immediately contemplated my options.  One was to prepare the damn thing per Dorie’s recipe; another was to take-out one from a local French restaurant, rearrange it on a pretty plate, and call it mine; and another was to “punt” (a football term that Sous Chef says is slang for “not doing it”).

I am not a Salade Niçoise fan because it contains a couple of things I abhor:  hard-boiled eggs and anchovies.  Also, I am not too keen about capers or cold or lukewarm potatoes.  Thus I had no real affinity for the challenge, but I liked the idea of substituting a restaurant’s Salade Niçoise so I would have a nice photograph to share with you.  And, yes, I intended to admit eventually the salad was restaurant bought.  However, what seemed so simple a task turned more difficult than I expected.

There are lots of restaurants in the Coachella Valley, but not many that are truly French (as opposed to those ersatz French restaurants that believe serving escargot in puff pastry and putting berets on the servers make them authentic).  I searched my stack of pilfered menus from my favorite French restaurants—Cuistot, Le Vallauris, Chez Pierre, Palmie, La Brasserie Restaurant & Bar, and Café Des Beaux-Arts—and surprisingly discovered few offered a Salade Niçoise.  So I expanded my search to decidedly non-French but still serious restaurants, and learned this salad was rarely seen in those establishments.  So applying deductive reasoning in the manner of Sherlock Holmes, I conclude most diners seem to share my view that canned tuna is best mixed with mayonnaise or sandwich spread and served on bread, potatoes are best served hot (as you can imagine, I don’t like potato salad either), and hard-boiled eggs are best used for Easter decorations.

To see what the gang at French Friday’s with Dorie did this week with Salad Nicoise visit www.frenchfridayswithdorie.com.