Salade Nicoise

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that green beans and new potatoes are available at the same time at the farmer’s market; Salade Niçoise must have come about for that very reason.

To keep picky eaters happy, when serving or packing this for a picnic, we pack each ingredient in its own little container. It makes for a dizzying array of little yogurt containers alongside the bigger potato bowl, but it’s fun for everybody to assemble their own salad. This is a nice light-tasting lunch that still keeps you full for the afternoon, thanks to the added protein and carbohydrate.

If you have kids you won’t eat tuna or eggs, you might want to give them some cheese to round out the meal. If you have lettuce you’re trying to get rid of, you can add it to the salad, or if you’re serving it to company at home, it does look nice to lay everything out on a bed of lettuce leaves.

Salade Niçoise

2 pounds potatoes
1 pound green beans
4 tomatoes
small chunk of red onion
4 oz black olives
2 cans chunk tuna, packed in water
4 eggs, hard boiled
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 clove garlic, pressed
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
salt and pepper to taste

1. Prep the potatoes; if they’re new, wash and cut them in quarters; if not, peel them and cut into largish bite-size chunks. Prep the beans; cut off the tops and cut them into roughly bite-size chunks too. (You’ll sense a bite-size theme here, soon, if you hadn’t already).
2. I can’t stand to use three pots for a lunch, so if you have a pretty good idea of how long you want your potatoes and beans to cook, try what I do: put the potatoes on to boil, then once the beans are prepped, but them on top. They should be mostly out of the water, and steaming rather than boiling. I haven’t tried boiling the eggs along with the potatoes yet, but I think that would work too.
3. Cut up the tomatoes into smallish pieces and the red onion into very small pieces. Peel the eggs and quarter them.
4. Mix the olive oil, vinegar, garlic, mustard (a baby-food jar is good if you’re to picnic). Add salt and pepper to taste, or let everyone season their own salad. Mix enough dressing in with the cooked, drained potatoes to moisten them.

When it’s picnic time, give everyone a bowl and a fork. Open and drain the tuna, and open all your various containers. Pour dressing on the individual bowls once the salads are assembled to everyone’s liking.

This serves 4, and can easily be cut in half or scaled up for the number of people you’re feeding. For each serving, you’ve earned 2 “real” vegetable servings and 2 starchy vegetables, for 400 calories. As written it’s about 8 Weight Watchers points, which is a lot for lunch; cut that down to 6 by measuring yourself just 6 ounces of potato and skipping the hard-boiled egg. If you hate olives, save yourself 1 point by omitting them too.

Roasted Green Beans

I had enough green beans for two meals, so half were cooked this way tonight. I think it’s a better cool-weather meal, but I’m trying to get some tried-and-true recipes out of the way and recorded here before doing some experimenting!

Roasted Green Beans

half a pint basket of green beans, tops trimmed (don’t trim off the bottom ends; they look so cute)
2 tsp olive oil
1 or 2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed

Put the green beans on foil and drizzle the olive oil over them. Press the garlic on and mix everything up well. Roast at 450 (I use my toaster oven) for 10 to 15 minutes; you want them to start looking brown and some of them on the edge of being burnt. Stir them up halfway through. The garlic will turn brown as well, but that tastes just fine.

If you’re barbecuing you can just plop the sheet of foil next to everything else, and it will cook quite happily there.

Serves 2. This is a serving of vegetables with only 57 calories, and 1 Weight Watchers point.