Prep-ahead Plan for Salad Nicoise

I love, love, love salad nicoise with all its little components...marinated olives, hard-boiled eggs, steamed green beans, boiled new potatoes, roasted fish and citrusy-garlicky vinaigrette...but it's kind of a pain to make from Step Zero.  That is, if you have to make each of those individual components just for the salad, that's a lot of steps and a lot of work. 

Despite the hoity reputation of French cuisine, I think most French dishes originated with busy housewives who had more pressing things to do than sit around pitting gourmet olives, shelling hard-boiled eggs and quartering green beans lengthwise each day for dinner.  I'll bet the first Nicoise woman to make this salad had a bunch of stuff leftover from other meals, and put it all together for dinner before it got barmy.


I think the best way to make this is to plan ahead and make extras of the things you'll need for the salad as meal components the day or two before...if you want to serve salad nicoise on Wednesday, boil eggs for snacks and breakfast on Sunday and set aside 3; serve boiled potatoes with dinner on Monday, and fish/steamed green beans on Tuesday and make make twice as much to set aside half for the salad; and on Wednesday make vinaigrette and wash lettuce.  Easy-peasy.

The traditional components of salad nicoise happen to show up at a lot of holiday meals, too...olives from the relish tray, deviled eggs (they're basically hard boiled eggs with a little mayo), green beans and baked or boiled potatoes as side dishes.  Why not throw those leftovers together to make a salad nicoise, holiday-leftover-style?  With Easter coming in just over a month, I'm keeping this idea on the back burner.

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Poppy Seed Chicken variation

Ground turkey was on sale this week, so I made a variant of the Poppy Seed Chicken Casserole with browned ground turkey instead of baked chicken.  I also used crunched up Ritz crackers for the topping since I couldn't bear to make another appliance dirty by making breadcrumbs in the food processor. 

Double batch, frozen in 2 8x8 disposable pans.

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Orange and pepper baked fish with Picnic Green Bean Salad

Tonight is the perfect storm of reasons why I can't make dinner at dinnertime.  No outside play time due to inclement weather, early naptime and anticipated late spousal arrival equals too much juvenile energy without adult backup, and that means that not even the Wonder Pets will guarantee me 10 tantrum- and injury-free minutes to put dinner together at Hungry O'Clock.  So everything on the menu tonight was prepared at 8am this morning and will require almost no attention to complete at 6pm.

The fish can be prepped ahead and made into a freezer kit, while the beans are make-ahead but not freezer-friendly.  Whether you're prepping ahead for same-day or next-day cooking or freezing the fish, don't marinate fish until right before cooking.  The acid in the orange juice will turn it into ceviche (not a bad thing, but not what we're going for here) if left too long. 

The beans are best at room temperature, but I doubt I'll remember to get them out of the fridge with enough time to warm up that far.  You basically want to make sure the vinaigrette has a chance to unsolidify as it will harden up when refrigerated.  This is a great dish to make for a picnic or pitch-in because it benefits from a day of melding with no last-minute cooking/assembling and it doesn't need to be kept at dairy-based food safety temperatures. 

My last thought is on preserved lemons.  I adore lemons, and used to make preserved lemons pretty regularly.  If you make/have them, this is a delicious salad to put them in.  Chop up a piece of the rind and discard the flesh. 



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Easy-easier-easiest sides: Green Beans

Three quick and easy ways to prepare fresh green beans.  Each requires a minimum of extra ingredients and a step-wise time/prepwork requirement.






Easiest:
Simmered Green Beans
Makes 4 servings

1 lb green beans, stem ends trimmed

1 tsp liquid smoke (optional)

Bring a 3 quart pot of water to a boil.  Add liquid smoke and green beans.  Turn heat down to medium and simmer 20-30 minutes, depending on preferred level of crunchiness/tenderness.

Easier: These have been mistaken at my house for french fries (for realz), especially when they go a couple minutes past the timer.

Roasted Green Beans

Makes 4 servings

1 lb. green beans, trimmed

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp lemon pepper

Toss green beans with olive oil and lemon pepper.  Spread on a rimmed cookie sheet and roast at 375F for 20 minutes. 

Easy:

Green Beans Provençal

Makes 4-6 servings

1 lb. green beans, trimmed

1 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 14-oz. can diced tomatoes, undrained

2 tsp dried herbs or 2 tbsp fresh herbs (tarragon, parsley, herbes de provence, basil)

salt and pepper

Saute onion and garlic in oil for 5 minutes, until soft.  Add green beans, tomatoes with juice, herbs and salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-high and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, until green beans are done to your liking. 



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Poppy seed chicken and green bean casserole

A coworker relayed this recipe to us after learning of my husband's love of the fundraiser cookbook perennial Chicken Divan.  This is Chicken Divan-esque, but without the weird mayo-curry powder treatment.  I tweaked it to rely less on prepackaged foods, to get something green into it, and to make it 100% freezer-friendly. 

Ground Turkey variation here

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