seasonal salads
bring Provence to your table with a salade nicoise always delicious but especially so during summer months when sun ripe tomatoes are at their most flavoursome - the salad can be so simple, just a combination of tomato, cucumber, potato and French beans, dressed with exra-virgin olive oil, flavoured with salt and freshly ground black pepper - but it can be a delicious treat whenever and whatever the mix of its ingredients, they just need to be fresh and prepared minutes before you want to dress it with extra-virgin olive oil, and garnish with black olives and anchovy fillets ... for variations on this basic traditional theme, add tuna, celery, baby broad beans, chopped fresh herbs, even some marinated artichokes.this is the combination I have been using ever since my first memorable visit to the south of France quite awhile ago now ...
4 tomatoes, seeded and quartered
1/2 spanish onion, sliced
1 sweet green pepper, sliced
8 radishes
2 baby gem lettuce hearts
2 stalks celery, sliced
1 x 185g tin of tuna fish in spring water, drained
8 anchovy fillets
2 hard-boiled eggs, quartered
8 ripe black olives
12 leaves fresh basil, coarsely chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper