The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

Salad Niçoise

It's July, it's holiday time, and I'm thinking "South of France". What better than a Salad Niçoise? By the way, Niçoise, if you've ever wondered, means 'from Nice".

Like other famous dishes, there's lots of different ways out there to make this salad; and as usual, the way that you make it, is better than the way your neighbour makes it.

I reckon that the classic Salad Nicoise has the following ingredients: lettuce, tinned tuna fish, cooked green beans, black olives, tomatoes, baby new potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, anchovies, and just possibly capers. The whole shooting match is then tossed in a garlicky French dressing. I make sure that the beans are crunchy, and slightly undercooked, and the so-called "hard" boiled eggs have a soft yellow yolk.

I'm currently rather keen on a rather nifty new way of serving this dish. Instead of mixing it all together in a salad bowl, try arranging the ingredients separately on a long white serving plate (the sort of plate you would serve a salmon on). You can then either dress the thing with the viniagrette, or as I do, place a dollop of mayonnaise at the end of the dish. An aioli (ie garlic mayonnaise) would work beautifully here.

This method looks stunning visually, and picky guests (lots of them around these days, I'm afraid) have the choice of avoiding the anchovies or the capers, or anything else they don't like the look of. Good idea, what?

Perfect Fried Eggs

 

 

I realise that I haven't written anything on The Greasy Spoon for some time. Apologies- my trusty mac needed urgent repair and, darn it, that took over a week.

Anyway, I'm back now with a post about the perfect fried egg. I saw Gary Rhodes talking about this on televison a few days ago. Gary Rhodes is one of the few television chefs I admire: his technique is, of course, top notch, and I like the way (apart from a dubious appearance on that dancing programme) he hasn't sold out to the celeb culture, in the manner of Blanc, Ramsay et al.

In a hot non-stick pan, melt a knob of unsalted butter. Crack the eggs onto a plate, and then slide them carefully into the hot butter. If you egg is fresh, the egg white will stay firm. If your egg is stale, the white will become watery, and spread out all over the place. Ideally, your eggs will be fresh. Season them with salt and pepper and cook them gently on a low heat, letting the egg white bubble up around the yolk. Baste the eggs with the hot butter.

That's it. I like my egg yolk to be runny- though of course, as ever, it's all a matter of personal taste, isn't it?

Taste the Mystery of the Orient...

 

 

A few weeks ago- purely in the interests of nostalgic experimentation, you understand- I made myself a Vesta curry. Those of you of a certain age should know all about this: the Vesta range offered a tantalising choice, which included "indian" curry, chow mein, and I think, "Spanish" paella. Inside the brightly coloured boxes, which conjured up images of sophisticated exotica, were sachets of dried noodles, dehydrayted bits of this and that, and- oh joy to behold- soy sauce, or some sort of mango chutney, thrown in as an extra goodie.

 

Now, the amazing thing, is that Vesta are still in business and their product, more or less, still looks like it did thirty years ago. And it tastes the same, too. I followed the instructions down to the letter; adding the powder to a saucepan, topping it up with cold water, and then simmering it gently for- I think- fifteen minutes, twenty six and a half seconds.

The result was, as Her Majesty might have said, "surprising": a watery, saline mess, studded with dried-up, bullet-like peas suffering from an identity crisis; the sheer horror of it all (almost as bad as being a participant in an Hieronymus Bosch tableau vivant) still lingering in my befuddled and confused brain to this day.

Have tastes changed that much over the years? I suppose that back in the 1970's, clever admen could evoke the sophistication of places like Spain and India, which, in those far off halycon days, were beyond the reach of ordinary people, more used to taking a boat out on the Broads for their summer holidays. They used the same technique to sell the Mastermind board game (Game of the Year 1972), which had pictured on its box a suave, mysterious, and bearded Man of Taste; his dead-sexy Hong Konganese side-kick (young enough to have been his grand-daughter) standing alluringly behind the smoked glass coffee table. Most disappointingly to my ten year old mind (reared on a television diet of The New Avengers and The Persuaders), the game turned out to be just a small, grey plastic board, with a collection of brightly coloured plastic pegs which soon got gobbled up by my mother's frantic hoovering.

 

I'm glad to say the advertising agencies are still at it today: just remember, that charming little jar of Mrs Bridge's Home-Cooked Farmhouse Surprise, was probably manufactured- and manufactured is the right word here- in some Kafkaesque unit in the Slough Trading Estate. On a similar tack, I've often wondered if 'Free Range Eggs' really do mean free range. That could be a good idea for a future post. So, until then my amigos, adios...