Our own Niçoise Salad Bowl

We’re pretty close to Canada out here in far Eastern Maine and the cultures sometimes merge a little. We’re quite familiar with French-speaking visitors and a lot of our packaged goods are in French and English.

Most importantly we get a lot of great food here that is definitely more French than American. Like Poutine, that lovely pile of crispy fries covered with beef gravy and topped with cheese curds. You’d have to live here to understand, but it really hits the spot on one of our cold winter days.

Poutine also serves as a sedative, making you so drowsy and serene you find yourself saying “a-boot” instead of “about.” The extra pounds you immediately gain help shield you against the bitter climate. The irrational love of hockey still remains a mystery to me, but I’m convinced it has something to do with poutine.

Jim Gaffigan

However recently we’ve been actually having summer. While it is mostly a balmy 75 degrees with a nice sea breeze that takes it down to 60 at night, we have had a couple of days of 85 degrees plus so we can commiserate with the rest of the country locked in the depths of summer weather.

We think everyone could agree that no one likes to be in a hot kitchen during the heat of summer. And we’ve got a superb and filling supper meal that only requires 10 minutes of boiling some potatoes. And of course it has some of our sustainably-harvested seafood.

RECIPE

Ingredients:

2 cups Romaine lettuce, roughly chopped

1 (6.7-oz) can Bar Harbor® Wild Smoked Alaskan Salmon Fillets, divided [also try our Herring with Cracked Pepper!]

1/4 cup pitted black olives

1/2 tomato, chopped

1/2 pickling cucumber, sliced thin

2 hard boiled eggs, halved

Yankee Nicoise Salad Dressing, recipe below

Instructions for Salad:

Divide lettuce among 2 serving bowls. Evenly divide the black olives, tomato, cucumber and hard boiled eggs on lettuce.

Top each with a half of a can of salmon fillets (saving 1 teaspoon of the salmon juice for the Niçoise Salad Dressing below).

Drizzle Yankee Niçoise Salad Dressing over the top of each

Yankee Nicoise Salad Dressing:

1/4 cup red-wine vinegar

2 teaspoons Raye’s® Raspberry Wine Mustard

1/2 teaspoon minced garlic in oil

1/4 teaspoon salt

Pinch black pepper

1 teaspoon oil from Salmon

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1 cup extra virgin olive oil

Instructions for Dressing:

Add all ingredients, except oil, in a blender or food processor bowl and start pulsing on high. In a slow stream, add the oil until everything is emulsified. Remove, add to salad and toss.