Ode to the Egg: Part II

As it was coming down in sheets-- one of those early May showers (bring June flowers??? I guess global warming will have us revising that particular rhyme) that thunders lightly in the distance, soaking you in your quick dash home from your evening workout-- I wanted eggs.  The comfort food that has always been around in my house, in the form scrambled at the tail-end of a flu, fried in between white bread with ketchup on days my mom had off from work. But to call this blog an "ode to the egg" would be incomplete, because it is also an ode to steamed spring-fresh green beans, boiled red potatoes, olives, capers, and tuna, between bites of crisp cool lettuce. I'm writing now about the tuna nicoise.

As an aside, this is actually the only dish I like boiled potatoes in. I recoiled from potato as a child, which is pretty much betrayal to my french canadian and irish genetics (though I proselytize with poutine and can drink my weight in guinness to make up for it).

I actually just had to google that to make sure I spelled nicoise right (and as my partner would complain, I evidently need to check my spelling on here a lot more often). I don't know how to pronounce it either. I started ordering it in restaurants in my early days of coming out as a meat-eater. My partner, in her quest to eat all things fancy-brunch, brought me to classic americana-goes-locavore restaurants and I tried various pronunciations. Vish-ee-wah. Vish-wah. No one ever corrected me. I'm relieved I never tried to pronounce the S.

What's fun about ordering tuna nicoise in restaurants is that it always looks different. Because there are so many components, the plating is hard to predict: delicate bites of tuna and capers cupped in lettuce leaves or a pile of potato and green bean mixed with flaked tuna and boiled egg yolk. I think it depends on the politics of the restaurant. Are you with the  99 percent? More union = bigger pile.

And it's just as fun to eat. Boiled potato, caper, tuna. Tuna, lettuce, olive. Lettuce, potato, green bean. You get the picture.

So earlier this week, when I found that this dish could be made a. cheaply and b. with relatively few ww points, I planned for it. The weather made me gravitate to egg. I put on a pot to boil water as I showered. I thought that this dish would be relatively easy and simple. But in a kitchen with only 12 by 6 inches of counter space, it was a  bit of a juggle.

Out of shower. Water boiling over. Frantic rummage in fridge for potatoes and eggs.

Pull out directions. Forgot the part about making the dressing.

Dressing calls for chicken broth.

I only have veggie bouillon and not another pot to boil the water to make it.

I use just water.

I don't have red vinegar.

I remember a woman on my last bus trip to chicago talking about the chinese medicine philosophy of joint health and apple cider vinegar. I use that instead.

My partner's horse radish mayonnaise (how old is that???) falls out of the fridge as I reach for the dijon. Cats run as if that was a beckoning fog horn.

I whisk.

Cats on table. I have learned the art of the one-handed cat-toss.

Cats re-emerge with tuna can.

Shit. How long have the eggs been on?

Shit. I have to cut the stems off the green beans.

Shit. The cheap produce I bought last weekend gave me have-rotted green beans. Cut the rot off too.

Toss in dressing.

Rinse lettuce.

Capers. Olives.

Peel egg.

I'm too exhausted to find a fancy way to plate.

But this plate of textures is exactly perfect.