Salad Niçoise on the Front Porch

Spring comes late to Washington State, much later than I’m used to. Long after the sun has been shining in California, Washington is still chilly and raining. That’s okay, spring in Washington is worth the wait.

This is not the first time I’ve lived in Washington State. When I was eighteen I left California to go to college in the small eastern Washington town of Walla Walla. I had never lived in a four seasons climate before; that year spring took me by surprise.

It came in with drumroll. Suddenly, the sky was blue, flowers were bursting into bloom, and after weeks and months of cold weather and bulky sweaters, it was finally pleasant to be outside. I felt like I had been reborn.

And there were lilacs.



I had seen lilac flowers before, the house I grew up in had a lilac bush across the street, but I had never seen so many lilacs. They were in bloom everywhere in Walla Walla—lacy purple flowers everywhere I looked. One of my favorite things each spring was to go for bike rides. Riding through the residential neighborhoods of town I coasted through clouds of sweet lilac scent, one after another. It was like a springtime high.

I haven’t thought much about lilacs, not since college. The places I’ve lived since then—Japan, San Francisco—lilacs are not common. Every time I see a lilac bush I think of Walla Walla, but the sightings have been few and far between.

Until I moved back to Washington State.

It seems that lilacs are not just a Walla Walla thing, here in Seattle they are everywhere. Not as profuse as Walla Walla, perhaps, but each residential block has at least a few bushes bursting into light purple bloom. My own block here has eight lilac bushes in different shades of white, lavender, and magenta—eight! I can’t tell you how happy this makes me . Every day, when I go for a walk, I stop and smell the lilacs. The fragrance is at once young and fresh, yet also sweetly old fashioned. It intoxicates me and leaves me dreaming—of spring and of youth.



The last spring I spent in Walla Walla was sweet with the scent of lilacs, but it was also bittersweet. I had returned from a year of living and studying in Europe, back to this small town surrounded by wheat fields. Coming back to college felt confining after a year of such heady freedom and I wished that I had stayed in Europe, as I wanted to, and had not done the safe thing of coming home to finish my degree. After Europe, Walla Walla felt bereft of culture or sophistication.

What Walla Walla does have, which I was unable to appreciate at the time, is a good dose of American charm. It has lovely tree lined streets and large houses with yards, the best of which have front porches. I was lucky enough to live in one such house my final year. The house had been broken up into apartments and the section I lived in included the house’s original living room, a huge room with a grand fireplace. It also had what may be the world's tiniest kitchen—smaller even than the kitchens in both of the apartments I had in Japan, and that's saying a lot.

This kitchen had been carved out of what had been, in the original house, a closet. It connected the living room to the bedroom and was exactly the width of a small electric stove. That tall and narrow window to the left side on the ground floor in the photo was my kitchen window—it spanned the entire "room." The fridge door barely cleared the counter when opened, if the dish drainer were in use there was no prep space, but it had a tiny window sill where I tried to grow herbs, a small little shelf for my cookbooks. Best of all, it was mine—the very first kitchen of my own.



I bought spices and dishes and proceeded to cook. It was here that I poured over cookbooks, trying to recreate dishes I had eaten in Europe—Greek moussaka, Austrian liptauer spread, and creamy garlic soup. I invited friends over for little dinner parties and weekend brunches—constrained, as I was, by the fact that I only owned three chairs. And on late spring evenings, when the weather was warm and the lilacs in bloom, we sat on the railing of the front porch and ate Salad Niçoise—or as close an approximation as I could make.



SALAD NIÇOISE, AMERICAN STYLE
Adapted from the The Silver Palate Cookbook

This is a somewhat bastardized version of a Salad Niçoise. The only olives to be found in the town of Walla Walla at the time were standard pitted black olives; there was only one store, on the far side of town, that sold white tuna. I used to walk there just to buy it, packing the cans of tuna into the leather bag I had bought in Florence, walking home dreaming wistfully of Europe. This was before Salad Niçoise had made its way onto the lunch menu at restaurants throughout the US, I felt like I was sharing something special with my friends. I’ve since made this dish for a million potlucks and picnics, always to great acclaim. It may not be absolutely traditional, especially in the olive department, but it’s really quite good.

8 small red potatoes, cooked in salted water until tender but not mushy
2 lbs green beans, trimmed, blanched in boiling water until bright green but still crispy
10 Italian plum tomatoes, quartered (I like to use the oval shaped cherry tomatoes)
1 small purple onion, sliced thinly
1/2 cup olives (Nicoise olives are traditional, black canned work in a pinch)
pinch of salt
1 tsp pepper
3/4 cup dressing (recipes follows)
6 hard boiled eggs, quartered
12 oz oil packed, white tuna
2 oz anchovy fillets (can be omitted, for anchovy-phobes)

Assemble all ingredients, except eggs and tuna, in a large bowl or on a serving platter.



Dressing:
1 tbs dijon mustard
4 tbs red wine vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tsp sugar (I've omitted this in the past, but it really doesn't taste as good without)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 cup finely chopped flat leaf parsley (don't omit, it makes a difference).

Whisk the mustard and vinegar until smooth. Add the olive oil in a slow steady stream, whisking steadily until it thickens and emusifies (I stop adding oil as soon as it thickens, as I like my dressing on the sour side). Add sugar, salt, and pepper. Mix to blend. Incorporate chopped parsley.

Gently toss the salad ingredients to mix. Pour almost all of the dressing over, toss to blend. Arrange the eggs around the outside of the dish, the tuna in the center, and drizzle the remaining dressing over the tuna and eggs, making sure to moisten each yolk. Top with additional chopped parsley.

Serve chilled, with french bread for sopping up any extra dressing. Preferably on a front porch, during a late spring or summer evening. If you're within the smell of blooming lilacs, all the better.