What's the dif between a piano and this salad?

You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna niçoise.

(Seriously? I just rolled my own eyes into the back of my head so you don't have to bother.)

This was the dish I had planned all week for, picking up ingredients here and there along the way. My schedule and my toe finally aligned to allow me to go back to Stiles for produce, and I'd had a craving for this particular salad since dinner with a friend in December where I'd had an especially lovely version of niçoise. This salad is necessarily composed of tuna (preferably seared rare steaks) red potatoes, hericots verts (also known as green beans,) hard-boiled eggs, and niçoise olives. And frisée, more often than not, even though it's a pain in the ass to eat.

Having lovingly collected all of the above, plus the added bonuses of red bell pepper, grape tomatoes, red onion, chicory, and celery, I spent a good amount of time on Friday morning chopping, boiling, and blanching, AND composing a lemon-basil vinaigrette dressing. Basically, it was one of the more labor-intensive offerings yet seen on LWL. (Did I mention the jammies? Love them.) Plus I boxed up myriad components separately as to promote the freshest tossing possible come dinner time.

Naturally, Friday evening, all I wanted was a burger. And the salad waited until Saturday.

Hopefully Eva will post the photo she took, since I'm quite pleased I managed to plate her salad in the shape of France. Chicory makes for some great angles.