Salad nicoise

It's early in the morning on the fourth day of my vacation, and I'm finally willing to admit that one doesn't always have to go somewhere to have an enjoyable holiday. Especially when one lives in Paris, when a certain cheese-loving Londoner is here for more days than can be counted on one hand, and when, finally, the sun has come out.

It should have been obvious to me sooner--around lunch on Saturday--when we assembled a nicoise salad that surely bested 98% of those eaten by the thousands slow-baking through August on the Riviera. Good summer tomatoes and green beans obviously helped, as did the perfectly moist and orange-yolked hard boiled eggs. (I have been producing some messy, and quite frankly, inedible specimens of late, a fact which I blame on my slow-to-heat Le Creuset, but may actually be due to simple incompetence.) But the defining element was the fish: one small (possibly too small) tin of olive-oil laden albacore tuna, another of anchovies so milky-white and clean-tasting that they deserve to be called boquerones and sold for lots of money in a stylishly simple tapas bar.

High-quality ingredients are important here; so is the timing. I like to dress the potatoes and beans while warm (in order to absorb the fishy, oily dressing), and to slice the egg on top of the composed salad as soon as it's cool enough to peel. On this occasion, from start to photo-finish, it took about 40 minutes. I think 30 is the minimum.

For two people, I usually start by boiling a handful of halved or quartered new potatoes. A similar quantity of trimmed haricot verts are added to the same pot with about 5 minutes to go. Once the potatoes are started, I drain the oil from the fish(es) into the serving dish. This, along with dijon mustard, a splash of vinegar, salt and vinegar, should make a sufficient quantity of dressing. After this, the tomatoes can be chopped or sliced (mi cuit tomatoes might make an interesting variation in the winter and spring), olives stoned and water brought up to boil for the eggs. By the time the eggs go on, I've hopefully added the fish and tomatoes, along with the olives, to the dish, and cleaned some soft salad leaves. The potatoes and beans are cooled slightly, then mixed through. I toss in the leaves just as the eggs come off the heat, adding the sliced eggs immediately before serving.

Rose or a crisp white seem obvious partners. We would have finished with goats cheese, had we not eaten it all the night before in a decadent midnight picnic.

Österreich ist besser

My Austrian friends, both faithful arbiters of good taste and good tastes, assure me that the food and drink of their country is unfairly overlooked. It’s certainly true that Austria flies beneath the gastronomic radar. A mention of it rarely evokes more than beer, schnitzel, or perhaps tafelspitz, the legendary boiled beef dish once served in 24 variations at Vienna's MeisslSchadn.* (But how many people have actually eaten tafelspitz?) Relatively few of its products are exported, even to other European countries (particularly fresh items like fruit, mushrooms, or game), and only a handful of restaurants in major cities serve either classical or more modern Austrian cuisine. The country is starting to become, like Portugal, or odd corners of Spain,a destination for low-key wine tourism, though it would seem years off from revealing its secrets to the masses.

Recently, over a carafe of Blauer Zweigelt, a lean, spicy red from Donauland, I started to assemble a list of the Austrian products I’ve enjoyed over the years:

-No less than 10 varieties of the highest-quality Darjeeling, each carefully labeled and placed in a protective wooden case. Today, I’m devoted to Mariage Freres like everyone else, but my appreciation for serious tea started here.

-Another protective wooden case, revealed to contain an entire Sachertorte, from the renowned Hotel Sacher, no less. Moist, dense and not too sweet, this was the most sophisticated birthday cake I’ve ever eaten.

-Intensely flavourful apricot jam, another birthday present, tasting more like itself than I could have imagined possible.

-Gruner Vetliner. Juxtaposing big aromas and flavours with a bracing, mineral finish, this is wine that it not only food-friendly but a pleasure to drink.

-The hot chocolate mit schlag at London’s The Wolesley, where both the drinks and the atmosphere are, I have been assured, a reasonable approximation of those enjoyed at the grand cafes on Vienna’s Ringstrasse.

-Elderflower syrup produced by d’Arbo, which makes a glass of sparkling water taste fresher, sweeter and cleaner. Add some vodka for an equally sparkling summer apero.

With a new budget airline flying from Paris to Vienna, and (I hope) an open invitation to stay in Salzburg, I’m hoping to fill in the gaps, starting, perhaps, with the tafelspitz.

* Mark Kurlansky's edited volume, Choice Cuts: A Miscellany of Food Writing, is worth buying solely for Joseph Wechsberg's essay on tafelspitz.

Reine Claude: The Queen of Plums

When I first moved to England, I was amused to discover that many of the vegetables had been rechristened with more mellifluous French names. But while this clever bit of marketing doesn't extend to fruits, the nation's greengage producers would do well to speak to some branding experts.* Not only is Reine Claude a far more elegant moniker, but these dusky, orb-shaped green fruits are wholly deserving of their pedigree.

First, consider the shortcomings of its competitors. Tiny mirabelles make fabulous jam and eau de vie, but eating them out out of hand requires considerable dexterity and, perhaps, a 35-hour work week. Quetsches (known far more prosaicly as prune plums)--the elongated deep-purple varieties associated with Alsace, Germany and Austria--lack the texture and sweetness required for snacking; they come into their own in dense, nutty tortes like these. The Reine Claude has no such deficits: it is perfectly-sized for snacking and has exceptional natural sweetness. (At 18% pure sugar, it exceeds virtually every other fruit.) Most important, however, is its taste--mild but exquisitely honeyed, its melting flesh exuding a refined, complex perfume.

Unlike most everything else associated with this Parisian summer, the Reine Claude has arrived early at my market. And despite the warnings of pretenders to the throne, I've yet to discover any which are less than extremely good. If the rain keeps up, I plan to sequester myself with a few kilos, half for some resourceful compote-making, the rest for dribbly eating while re-reading some equally addictive novels by Dorothy Sayers, the queen of the murder mystery.


* For the sake of total accuracy, I should note that there appears to be some debate as to whether Reine Claudes, named after the wife of King Francis I (1515-1547), are in fact the original greengage, or merely designate the varietal grown exclusively in southwestern France.