Another thing I’m not sure about? How to pronounce “Niçoise.” For me, it’s one of those words that I read occasionally but have never, to my recollection, actually heard out loud. That “ç” must make it sound really fancy, but yeah. No clue. I need Eminem to use it in a hit song so that I can finally learn how to correctly pronounce the word. Not that that’s, um, ever happened before.

So, this salad! Classic salad Niçoise generally boasts tuna, hard-boiled eggs, Niçoise olives (a small, bold black olive), tomatoes, baby potatoes, and green beans or, if you’re fancy, “haricots verts” (yeah, I’m not sure how to pronounce that one, either). It’s all piled atop a bed of crisp lettuce. A drizzle of Dijon-spiked vinaigrette brings the whole thing together.

But, as I mentioned before, no tuna in this vegetarian salad Niçoise recipe – instead, we’ve got chickpeas! Chickpeas are, incidentally, my favorite sub for tuna – they’ve got protein, they’re healthy, and they’re delicious on their own but also transform into all kinds of various forms of otherworldly goodness.

Once I got the tuna substitution issue out of the way, another pesky problem popped up. I couldn’t find Niçoise olives anywhere! Even at high-end grocery stores with olive bars. No bueno. So I subbed in kalamata olives instead. Is it blasphemy? I’m not sure. But I am sure that it’s very, very delicious.

Olive this Chickpea Salad Niçoise.

You know I had to.

(more…)

The post Chickpea Salad Niçoise appeared first on Kitchen Treaty.