A French Salad....Nicoise!

~Dining Outdoors on the Coast~

Nicoise Salad Recipe

INGREDIENTS

Vinaigrette

• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 medium shallot, minced
• 1 Tbsp minced fresh thyme leaves
• 2 Tbsp minced fresh basil leaves
• 2 teaspoons minced fresh oregano leaves
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Salad
• 2 grilled or otherwise cooked tuna steaks* (8 oz each) or 2-3 cans of tuna
• 6 hard boiled eggs, peeled and either halved or quartered
• 10 small new red potatoes (each about 2 inches in diameter, about 1 1/4 pounds total), each potato scrubbed and quartered
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 medium heads Boston lettuce or butter lettuce, leaves washed, dried, and torn into bite-sized pieces
• 3 small ripe tomatoes, cored and cut into eighths
• 1 small red onion, sliced very thin
• 8 ounces green beans, stem ends trimmed and each bean halved crosswise
• 1/4 cup niçoise olives
• 2 Tbsp capers, rinsed and/or several anchovies (optional)

METHOD

*Marinate tuna steaks in a little olive oil for an hour. Heat a large skillet on medium high heat, or place on a hot grill. Cook the steaks 2 to 3 minutes on each side until cooked through.

We are truly blessed with our coastal weather in Mississippi!  We may have a thunderstorm one evening but most days the sun does shine!  It's a beautiful and inspiring place to live and the blue skies and the array of color this time of the year is magnificent!  My husband's job brought us to the wonderful place five years ago and it was sort of a new beginning for us!  Not that we really need a new beginning but most of our life has been about change and making our home "work" wherever his profession has taken us!  It has been a beautiful life together!  Like anyone, I miss with being away from our children on a daily basis but the times we are together are wonderful and crazy and always filled with love and fun!  Our children are fun!  The free spirits that we all have has developed in each of us a love to travel and enjoy the world!  My children began early on family holidays to the beach and to cities full of history and historic towns and homes.  We were never afraid to venture across the country to California, Oregon, Washington, Victoria British Columbia or to the northeast to Boston, New York City,  or New Port, Rhode Island and other interesting places in between!  Chicago is one of my favorite cities!!!  I love the shopping on Michigan Avenue.  Our children have traveled the world and their passports are interesting to say the least!  So......I say to venture into England and France should be nothing for me!  Next week I will be meeting Kara in London and we will be off for sixteen days together!  One of my beautiful sisters is also joining us at the end of the first week and we will travel to Paris and then into Provence!  On our final day in France before returning to London, we plan to travel to Nice and dip our feet into the sea and enjoy dinner before our flight leaves Nice for London at nine in the evening!  We can hardly wait!  My daughter's have long said........."Let's go to France!"  It is a standing date when the girls come, moving the chairs into the yard and pouring something nice and cool in their wine glasses!  It is fun!  They have taught me to enjoy life!  This salad has also become a favorite of our family!  I hope you will enjoy making it!  It really doesn't matter where life takes you if your heart and spirit is yielded to God's guiding!  I am most thankful that no matter where we have made our home that HIS loving spirit has been with us.

"The coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah;  They shall feed their flocks there; In the house of Ashkelon they shall lie down at the evening, For the Lord their God will intervene for them and return their captives Zephaniah 2:7  Today as I read that verse from the Bible, God indeed spoke to my heart and peace flooded my soul that I am where I am supposed to be and that God has fed me here and blessed and intervened on my behalf many, many times and He will indeed do the same for you!  God bless you dear friend as you seek to live out your life for him and be nourished by HIS GOODNESS AND LOVE!