Salad for lunch, anyone!

“Say hello to yellow and swing with the blues”… these are not my words. A leading home décor magazine has quoted ‘Pantone’ the global authority on colours, who directs fashion and design industry on colour trends. According to him, the colour of year 2010 is blue. And! Mind you, not any blue but the hue that is a cusp between blue and green, which we all dearly call turquoise.

Experts are supposed to have applauded this choice of colour, as it is known to lend serenity to your surroundings. They say turquoise, creates calm, peace and a sense of well being in your everyday atmosphere……. (Well, I do wonder how calming it would be to the senses, if I lay out turquoise cushions on a purple upholstered background!) 

I don’t know if it happens to anyone else, but colours evoke images of certain foods in my mind and turquoise equates to the blue of Mediterranean seas. The colourful vegetables, healthily grilled meats and fish, different cheeses all swim before my eyes when I see turquoise. Lay out a Nicoise salad in a classic white platter, on a turquoise runner over a white table cloth….Ah! the very thought wants to make me call a few friends over for dinner!

Nicoise salad as the name suggests is a classical salad from the beautiful city of Nice, in the Midi (Mediterranean) France and has all the influences of the regional cuisine. But today if you research for its recipe you would end up with a truck load of them each varying slightly or completely. I follow the simplest of them but of course I have improvised too to suit preferences and make do with what is available. The trick as for any good salad is the freshness of the produce. 

1. Wash one small head of crisp fresh iceberg lettuce 
2. Separate the leaves and tear them into large pieces (dousing the whole head in chilled water for a while helps in separating the leaves easily) 
3. Put the leaves in chilled water and keep in refrigerator. 
4. Cut eight to ten fresh beans into one inch length pieces and boil until just cooked (take care to not overcook ..... a pinch of cooking soda added to the water would retain the green of the beans) 
5. Wash and cut two medium sized red tomatoes and boiled potatoes into quarters. 
6. A tea cup of tuna chunks (canned variety is good to use…preferably in brine rather than oil... a mega house of omega 3!) 
7. Two tablespoons of whole black olives sliced into halves 
8. Crush a teaspoon of finely chopped shallot and half a teaspoon of chilly flakes and add them to one tablespoon of malt vinegar and one tablespoon of olive oil and mix well with a fork;check for salt. 
9. Toss all the above ingredients, together just before serving. 
10. Put the salad on a platter or shallow bowl 
11. Quarters of two hard boiled egg, gently folded in; a sprig of parsley and a few more olives over the salad, and its complete. 

 With its medley of fresh crisp-lettuce leaves, perfectly cooked green beans; the contrasting white and yellow of hard-boiled eggs, ripe red tomatoes, and black olives; all fortified by chunks of tuna fish. It's a perfect luncheon dish. 

For a vegetarian option just substitute the tuna and the egg with crumbled feta/ cottage cheese…add on large chunks of cucumber….and you are ready to go.