The Best Niçoise Salad of Your Life

Plus: Alison Roman's Blueberry Tart, Burrata at Rucola, and Dinner at Pitt's.

Hey everyone,

My friend Diana and I were roommates back in 2006. At the time, I was a full-time food writer and could be a bit of a bully in the kitchen. So much so that once Diana bought the ingredients to make a salad (I think it was a goat cheese salad from the Chez Panisse Cookbook) and asked me to leave the apartment so she could make it in peace. Hmph!

Well, I guess all that solo salad work paid off because yesterday Craig and I bopped up to Irvington to visit Diana, her husband Mark, and their kiddos, and Diana presented us with the most glorious Niçoise Salad for lunch:

Truly, this salad was a work of art. It was inspired by the Niçoise Spoon Salad in Susan Spungen’s excellent cookbook Veg Forward. I just texted Diana to ask her for any tips or tricks and she replied:

“Ooh interesting question. Maybe to make sure that the individual elements are all lightly seasoned before you pour the dressing on? Boil everything in very salty water then put a little flaky salt on everything before dressing it.”

And what about that dressing? What’s in it?

“Anchovies, a small clove of grated garlic, half a minced shallot, red wine vinegar and a squeeze of lemon juice, olive oil and some sliced basil.”

We walked off that salad with a trip to the park….

…then came back and Diana cooked us dinner too. I mean talk about showing off!

This time it was grilled salmon (grilled by Mark), tzaziki, and eggplant salad (this one, in fact):

Tzaziki and salmon are a killer combination. I watched Diana make it and hers had preserved lemons and tons of mint. Then for dessert she served us the most glorious blueberry and blackberry tart from Alison Roman’s Sweet Enough:

I just asked her to text me a screenshot of the recipe: we’ll see if she texts back before I send out this newsletter. If you are seeing this message, it means she didn’t! But who can blame her for taking a rest after all of this glorious cooking.

UPDATE: she just sent me the link to the recipe on Alison’s blog! Thanks, D.

It doesn’t get much better than the meals we had at Diana’s. Another great thing that we ate this weekend was this burrata salad at Rucola in our neighborhood:

Look closely and you’ll see tomatoes and peaches and lots of pesto and herbs and pine nuts and then a big beautiful ball of burrata. Well done, Rucola!

I also had this Arctic Char with parsnip puree and roasted fennel which felt a little more wintery, but that’s okay… still tasted great:

Finally, on Friday night we met our friend Daniel for dinner at Pitt’s BK, Jeremy Salamon’s restaurant which we visited when it first opened in January but wanted to visit again because we liked it so much.

This time we tried the bison tartare with bone marrow toast, a fun riff on a classic dish:

And sticking with the meaty theme, the three of us shared this extremely well-executed rib-eye for two which was definitely enough for three:

Don’t worry: we had vegetables too (including a confetti salad). And then we got our fruit by way of dessert aka a pixie pie which is like a key lime pie except with grapefruit instead of lime:

Another A+ meal at Pitt’s. We’ll be back!

Hey, let’s look at some links:

• Crunchwrap Supremacy: How the tortilla-wrapped griddled tostada became bigger than the chain that invented it (Grub Street);

• The 21 Best Croissants in NYC Right Now (NYT Gift Link);

• Tom Colicchio Changes the Menu at Craft (Eater NY).

That’s all for today, folks!

See you paying subscribers back here on Thursday….

Your pal,

Adam