Recipe 3: Sorta Salmon Nicoise

I have never had a real salmon nicoise salad before so even with the preface of “sorta” in the title, this salad intrigued me. Individually, I think I like all the ingredients so, in theory, I should like the right? Maybe I should have tried an actual salmon nicoise salad before making this one but here we go anyway! Surprises are always good, right?

The Shopping Experience

Everything was pretty easy to find! I had the Greek yogurt and eggs in my house already as both are staples in my regular diet. I also bought a bag of green beans a few days before because my boyfriend craved his mom’s buttered green beans so I was able to save on the extra shopping and just pinched half of this existing bag for use in this recipe. 

The black olives with pits were the only troublemakers; there’s always one in the bunch, right? I seemed to only be able to find green olives with pits or black ones without pits. I finally lucked out when I noticed Safeway had an antipasti section and I was able to find loose black olives there. I felt a little bit silly in not looking there first in the first place but coulda, woulda, shoulda, right?

A part of me thinks pre-pitted olives would have tasted just as good and would be less fussy, but I haven’t really cooked with olives much so what do I know?

The Cooking Experience

Although the idea of cooking two or three things at once on the same pot (boiling green beans and steaming salmon on top) seemed very stressful, everything was welled timed in a way that allowed me to stay on top of all of the precise cook times.

The recipe doesn’t say so, but I would recommend running some cold water over the green beans once they’re cooked to cool them down. I personally found the warm green beans a little unusual with the colder yogurt-based dressing. If they were cooler, I think the flavours could have come out stronger since uneven temperatures would not distract from the taste. Especially since we are meant to wait for the salmon to be “cool enough to handle” and run cold water over the eggs to “refresh” them, an additional step to cool the beans as well would have made sense.

On the flip side of giving good instructions, I really appreciated that Jamie specifically tells you how long to boil the green beans and eggs to make sure they are the perfect texture and consistency when they come out. Eggs are an ingredient that I think a lot of people find easy to cook until they realize how easy they also are to mess up so guidelines really help ease nervous chefs.

The Eating Experience 

I really liked this one mostly because of the salmon and egg combo. I like both of these things separately and actually never had them together (except in the form of a smoked salmon eggs benedict). The tenderness of the salmon blended well with the similarly soft eggs. I’m also a fan of green beans but I realized that I never take it upon myself to seek them out to eat. I have pretty much only eaten them in the past when my parents used to use them in their own cooking. After this yummy experience, I’m thinking I should do it more often. In this salad, the just-cooked beans added some much-needed crunch to the overall softer salad.

I will say that my boyfriend didn’t seem to like this one as much as I did because he thought the yogurt and red wine vinegar dressing took away from the dish. To each their own, I guess! Even though, I definitely think he’s wrong in this case.

Total estimated cook time: 18 minutes

Total actual cook time: 30 minutes