The taste of old-time summers
Salad Nicoise
I grew up in downtown Manhattan, a Lower East Side neighborhood called Two Bridges, located between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. Very inner city and all the good and bad that goes with it. I was lucky because I had the best of two worlds: the LES during the school year and Catskill, N.Y., in the summer.
The best thing about growing up downtown was the access we had to so many different kinds of food; the most amazing, delicious and cheap food was in walking distance:
Chinatown, just across Chatham Square at the time (though now it seems to have sprawled nearly to the East River) for pork buns (we pronounced these “tosh-u-bows,” but if you order it at a dim sum place, it’s a “char siu bao”).
Essex Street for pickles out the barrels.
Street food from carts, especially potato knishes from the cart that seemed to roam around the neighborhood nearly every day.
A short walk to Grand Street for deep-fried calzones.
Houston Street for Jewish deli (Katz’s is still there).
The East Village, where you could get pierogi (around 5th street and Second Avenue).
Here’s a website if you want to read more about Two Bridges: https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/new-york/two-bridges. (It offers an unusual viewpoint.)
But as great as the NYC foods were, I lived for summer. The city was great for food, but otherwise gray and hard. The local playground of P.S. 1 was hardly a park. More of a concrete challenge. Few trees, no grass, some worn-out benches, and good luck if you fell off the monkey bars.
When school was out, my Mom, who worked full time, sent me upstate to my grandparents’ family house in Catskill. What a switch. I loved it. The property had some 20 acres of woods, a huge lawn, lots of flowers my mother tended on her weekends and my grandfather’s vegetable garden. It was heaven for a kid from the Lower East Side. It was green!
My memories are of happy days with no schedule except mealtimes, watching clouds move across the sky, walks on the country road, and helping my grandfather pick his fresh produce from the garden. And that brings me to today’s recipe.
Some vegetables were more plentiful than others. The tomatoes and green beans came easily and when ripe, that was the basis for a dinner, served with a hard-boiled sliced egg, and the vinaigrette made by the tomatoes. I remember my grandfather growing potatoes, too, but for whatever reason, they were usually gummy. He would shake his head and shrug his shoulders. They didn’t typically make it into the green bean salad.
Little did I know then that this was basically Salad Nicoise. It’s not too surprising since my grandfather was from northern Italy, where he met my grandmother who moved there as a child from New York City. (A reverse immigration story I guess.) And Nice was once part of what would become Italy.
In any case, a bit of French influence in their food makes sense. Here’s a website with some info on Salad Nicoise.
And a quote from it:
Salade Niçoise began its life as a household catch-all salad based on what was available from the garden and anchovies packed in olive oil sitting in the pantry. It first appeared on menus in the late 1800s a few decades after Nice became part of France finally for the last time. Over the years, everything under the sun has been added, from salmon, corn, shrimp, avocados, lemons, to even grains.
My grandmother’s version was simple. More from same website:
Jacques Medecin, the disgraced former mayor of Nice who wrote the definitive cookbook on Niçoise cuisine, said: "At its most basic - and genuine - it is made predominately of tomatoes, consists exclusively of raw ingredients (apart from hard-boiled eggs), and has no vinaigrette dressing: the tomatoes are salted three times and moistened with olive oil.”
Now, when I throw a Salad Nicoise together, I always think of them, Benny and Tina, who were married nearly 60 years before they passed. I remember those summers and miss them still.
My mom and uncle retired up to that house after my grandparents passed, and he kept the garden going. Here’s a pix of my two kids long ago with some of the bounty.
This is my version of that salad, and it’s a lot like my grandmother’s.
Always it starts with tomatoes, green beans and the hard-boiled sliced egg.
I use fresh beans when I have them, though Trader Joe’s (frozen) are hard to beat. Just microwave them for a couple of minutes, and you can have dinner ready in 10 minutes.
But garden fresh tomatoes are mandatory, whether yours or farmers’ market. It’s not worth the trouble with anything else. When I have time to plan this meal, I slice the tomatoes early in the day, add some salt and nice olive oil, let this marinate at room temperature, and this becomes your vinaigrette. No need for vinegar or lemon.
I like sliced red onions, sliced hard-boiled eggs, and smoked salmon if I have, but just as likely to throw in some leftover tortellini if that’s what I find in the fridge. Tuna sometimes, but not if I have salmon.
You can add olives, capers, whatever works for you. Traditionally, anchovies go in, but not for me. You can find plenty of more complex recipes online.
Here in New York, we’re just coming into tomato season. So take a night off from cooking and enjoy this simple salad instead. Please let me know if you do!