Tuna & Asparagus Salade Niçoise

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Tuna & Asparagus Niçoise Salad

This month marks 15 years for me in the restaurant biz.  I doubt when I donned my apron and punched my time card for the first time my 14-year-old self would have ever imagined what the future would hold: all of the customers that would make me want to scream, all of the co-workers that would make me want to tear my hair out, all of the late nights, all of the dirty fingernails, and all the dang Niçoise salads.

15 years split between working for a Frenchman and some serious Francophiles, I’ve served more Niçoise salads than I dare estimate.  You’d think I’d be sick of the very sight them, but, shockingly, I’m not. There’s something so satisfying about looking at such a beautiful and abundant plate that when I came into a couple of beautiful tuna steaks over the weekend, I immediately knew I would use them to make the Rolls Royce of Niçoise salads.

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A Spring Feast + Grilled Artichokes with Garlic Aioli

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Spring Feast with Grilled ArtichokesLast week started with a half-foot of sloppy, wet snow and ended with 80°, sunshine, barbecues, patios, ice-cream, pansies, and pink wine.  Yes!  Spring!  Finally!

As you might imagine, after making it through 6 months of cold and snow, everyone in Minnesota goes bonkers on the first warm spring weekend.  Puffy down-jackets and boots are traded in for sundresses and sandals.  Patio bars overflow with warm-weather revelers.  Parks are packed with picnickers.  Ice-cream gets scooped like it’s going out of style.  You go from living and working in what was feeling like a really depressing ghost-town to being back in a city with a pulse, with people on the streets, instead of the skyways.  Everyone you encounter has unsnarled their face and regained the bounce in their step.

As for myself?  I celebrated the coming of spring as I celebrate any significant event, with food and drink. Yes, I had ice-cream.  Pink wine made an appearance.  I ate my weight in fish tacos.  Margarita?  Heck yes.  And I grilled to my heart’s content.

All winter, I’d been dreaming of my first grilling episode: grilled artichokes with garlic aioli.  I’m not sure which is better, the charred artichokes or the assertively garlicky, super rich homemade mayonnaise, but together, they’re enough to make life worth living.

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Olive Tapenade + 10 Ways to Use It

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Olive Tapenade

It’s no secret I love olives.  The evidence of my addiction is scattered all over this blog; you’ve seen recipes for salmon tartare with olives and avocado, olive and endive tiella, pork shoulder braised with olives and blood oranges, among others.

Endive, Potato & Olive Tiella

What you haven’t seen are the countless deli containers of olives I’ve munched from while standing in the kitchen, waiting for a risotto to come together or a chicken to roast.  Out of control.  And you haven’t seen the batches of tapenade I’ve made and smeared on sandwiches and pizza, stirred into pasta, and dolloped onto pots of steamed mussels.

Today’s the day though.  Olives will take center-stage and we’ll put together a batch of tapenade.  Soon you, too, will be garnishing your life with black olives and loving every moment of it.

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Chèvre Chaud Salad with Roasted Asparagus

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Chèvre Chaud Salad with Roasted Asparagus 2
When you get home from a vacation, you inevitably think about everything you should have done differently.  You should have stayed in a more charming part of town, found a cheaper hotel, taken more hikes, bought a couple of souvenirs, splurged on better restaurants.  You should have made more of an attempt to learn the local history or speak the language.  You should have branched out, tried new things, eaten more adventurously.  Like maybe, when I went to France for the first time, I should have eaten something other than a warm chèvre salad for lunch every day.

Or maybe not.

Of the many traveling regrets I’ve had, my week of eating chèvre chaud salads is not one of them.  Warm, creamy goat cheese smeared on assaultingly crunchy baguette croutons and a pile of lightly dressed greens; could there be a more perfect lunch or a more satisfying salad?  I think not.

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Braised Leeks with Mustard Vinaigrette

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Leeks Vinaigrette

Ticka, ticka, tick, tick, tick…

…sometimes I get these food ideas that just won’t go away.  At least half the time they’re bad ideas and I know they’re bad, but I just can’t live with myself until I see them through.  Ideas like trying out dirty-looking restaurants, having blue cheese for breakfast, or making a dish that involves hard-boiled eggs even though I loathe hard-boiled eggs.  Matt calls it “pulling a Sarah”.

Well, guess what.  Once in a while, “pulling a Sarah” pays off.  Pays off big.

Remember last week when I made a squash and leek galette?  I took a bunch of pictures of leeks that I thought were really pretty.  And then I could not, not, not stop thinking about leeks vinaigrette.  Leeks vinaigrette are a French classic; braised or boiled leeks dressed up with a mustardy vinaigrette and chopped egg.  I’ve seen leeks prepared like this in a hundred magazines, cookbooks, and blogs made by everyone from Julia Child to Molly Wizenberg, but I’d never made them myself.

Why hadn’t I?  Well, who makes leeks?  Just leeks.  Not me.  For me, leeks normally play a supporting role, not the lead.  And more importantly: hard-boiled eggs.  They remain one of the few foods I really cannot bring myself to like.  But I just couldn’t get the image of braised leeks out of my head and rules have exceptions.  Occasionally, exceptional exceptions.

Leeks vinaigrette are one such exceptional exception.  Even though I’d never had them before, they transported me.  I served them as a first course before roast chicken and potatoes and I may as well have been dining in a Parisian bistro rather than my kitchen table in Minneapolis.

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