This is by no means a true Niçoise salad recipe, it’s essentially a salad starter kit recipe that helps you build platters of food that can be considered a salad, inspired by a Pondicherry flavor profile.
Let’s begin.
Like a lot of my recipes we first need a good Podi base, and in this case, a Dijon base.
Dijon recipe:
Ingredients:
1 cup toasted whole black mustard seeds, (you can use brown but black mustard seeds will add more spice and thusly, a bit of South Indian swag)
1 tablespoon charred whole white peppercorns
1 cup yellow mustard (powdered)
½ tablespoon of turmeric
1 tablespoon of salt, (I used Pacha Salt but whatever salt you like works)
¼ bottle of sparkling wine (I used a dry hopped Pet Nat, if you love to drink it and it’s dry then that’s your winner)
½ cup vinegar, (I used a half and half mix of white vinegar and apple cider vinegar)
Toast & char your respective spices separately, and combine in a clean non-reactive container. Add the turmeric, salt, and your wine. Cover and let it ferment overnight at room temperature. The next day add your fermented seeds and spices to a food processor with the powdered yellow mustard and vinegar. Grind for about two or three minutes until your mustard becomes homogeneous with a lot of texture from the mustards seeds and peppercorns. Should be spicy and floral as hell. Store in a clean jar in your fridge and use often.
Podi Chili Oil:
2 tablespoons of whole white peppercorns
1 tablespoon of whole fennel seeds
3 tablespoons of red lentils
1 whole garlic head, separated and peeled
½ red onion, cut in large slices
2-3 sprigs of Curry Leaves
1 cup dried red chilies, I used chile pequin, (which will add a tiny bit of sweetness with spice)
2-3 fresh habaneros, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1.5 tablespoons of salt
2 teaspoons of Hing
1.5 cups of safflower or neutral oil
In a cast iron, dry roast the peppercorns with the lentils on medium low for about 3-4 minutes, add the fennel, chilies, and curry leaves and let them get fragrant, (about 30 seconds), before adding the rest of the ingredients and oil. Lower your heat to its lowest setting. Let everything simmer for about 40 minutes with the garlic and onions and fresh habaneros slowly getting color.
Turn it off after 40 minutes and let everything continue to sit for another twenty minutes in the cast iron, slowly cooling. Once cooled, add everything to a food processor and grind for about 2 or 3 minutes. Store in a clean jar in your fridge, it’s perfect for every savory dish you can think of, and in some very special cases, maybe even an ice cream flavor or iced dessert that needs something dynamic.
Dijon Dressing:
1 cup finely minced herbs of cilantro + parsley
1 sprig toasted curry leaves, crushed
4 tablespoons of Dijon
3-4 limes, juiced
2 teaspoons of honey
2- 3 heavy overflowing tablespoons of chili oil
1 cup olive oil
Salt to taste
In a large ceramic or non-reactive bowl, add your crushed curry leaves with your herbs. Add the lime juice and Dijon and whisk until the lime juice is fully incorporated into the mustard. Add the honey and chili oil, and slowly stream in the olive oil, whisking constantly. The goal is to incorporate as much as the olive oil into the other ingredients. You won’t achieve a complete emulsified dressing, but you want to make sure it still feels like a solid dressing, an entity of itself. Taste and season with salt as you see fit. Try not to drink the bowl.
Assembly, Niçoise Thoughts, Ideas and Tips:
You want to achieve a platter that has fatty bits, fresh greens, crunch of cold crisped radishes/green beans/asparagus/even carrots, heavily salted, boiled and waxy new potatoes, (the secret symbol of a Texas summer), roasted vegetables to add depth, fresh made pickles are a great addition and extra chili oil as garnish.
The first time I made this particular Niçoise, for last Wednesday’s supper club, here was my roster:
Boiled things:
Eggs
New Potatoes, (in heavily salted cold water, boiled until for tender)
Poached thing:
Green Beans, (3 min in a rolling boil, heavily salted water, then an immediate ice bath to maintain crunch)
Roasted things, (in a mix of tamarind paste and olive oil- 1 tablespoon of paste to 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 425 F) :
Tomatoes
Mushrooms for mushroom boudin
Scallions
Quick pickles:
Red onion, dill, and cucumbers in a hot brine of vinegar, distilled water, salt and cracked white peppercorns
On a platter, arrange your different items however you like, making sure to douse each different ingredient in dressing. Leave the eggs and pickles to top the whole salad with then extra and equal parts dollops of dressing and chili oil.
2nd round:
Boiled things:
Eggs, (made perfectly jammy, 7.5 minutes in already very hot water, then peeled and kept in a bath of cold water with a bit of vinegar)
New Potatoes
Poached thing:
Asparagus , ( similar to green bean execution but only a minute of poaching)
Fresh thing:
Tons of spicy arugula leaves
Roasted things:
Tomatoes
Zucchini
(Both in the above mentioned tamarind paste and olive oil mixture)
Added:
Leftover quick pickles
Tuna preserved with olive oil
The trick to this salad is that it has big cheese board energy, it’s a salad of abundance, of locality and a chance to make something beautiful in the summertime.
Coming up:
The Sicc Palette weekly podcast + wine review
Newsletters:
Jaggery/Palm Sugar and it’s resilience as cultural icons in spite of colonization and capitalism
Wild Fermentation and PIZZA WAVE SAUCE
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