nicoise

I didn't grow up eating the mediterranean flavors that I truly love. I even studied Italian ( after English) in High School instead of the more popular German... So ,the language became my introduction to the romance of the sun, the spell of the olive, the love of the dolce vita ! When I met significant as a young student in Paris, he was craving salads, feeling deprived of freshness by the skimpy sides of simple green salads served at the huge students restaurants. One lovely afternoon, at the budding of our relationship, we met at a sunny terrace across form the Luxembourg gardens and totally inapropriately for the hour, he proceeded to order a salade nicoise. I probably had a panachee( half sparkling lemonade, half beer, bizarre but delicious). Since then, as soon as the weather turns toward southern soul, I whip up different versions of the Nicoise which I love too now. Usually with the traditional tuna, but last time I used grilled artichoke hearts and canned wild smoked coho salmon and it was truly amazing. I have to say that these days, the price of fish is becoming so high and the selection so small and usually farmed under suspicious circumstances that I feel much better eating the canned wild than weird animals from god knows where.