A Quick, Easy, Delicious, Low-Cal Meal With Countless Variations

One of the few things I don't worry about is my weight. It helps that over the years I have collected diet tips; you crave what you eat is one of my favorites. It takes a little patience to work up a craving for lettuce, but with the right accompaniments, salad is one of the best examples. If I eat a salad with vinaigrette dressing every day at 4 o'clock then, after while, every day at 4 o'clock an alarm goes off in my taste buds, and I find myself spinning leaves of romaine and cutting tomatoes. 

I have grown to like salad so much that, despite my afternoon snack of same, I often build a dinner around greens. My favorite low-calorie, quick, easy dinner is salad nicoise (or salade niçoise if you're French). The great thing about this salad is that you can come up with enough variations to make a different meal every night. 

The dish derives its name from its origins in the city of Nice. You can buy tiny nicoise olives for your salad, though I prefer to use those shriveled black Greek olives. As far as I'm  concerned, anything goes and if you don't like olives, just leave them out.

My favorite variation of salad niçoise omits the key ingredient of tuna. This suits me especially well when I don't have room in my schedule to go out and buy fresh fish.

I prepare the ingredients in an order that is efficient timewise.

• First I start to boil an egg and set the timer to 12 minutes.
• Next I stab 2 or 3 washed new potatoes, place them in the microwave and hit the potato button.
• Then I wash some green beans (or haricot verts if I'm feeling especially French), bunch them together as a fast way to chop off the ends and steam or put them in a pan of water to cook al dente.
• While all the above is going on, I put a tomato with it's bottom up on a cutting board and make 6 or 8 pie-type slices, not quite cutting all the way through. Then I turn the tomato on its side and slice; thus, each slice quickly yields 6 or 8 bite-size pieces.
• The microwave bings and I remove the hot potatoes and cut them into bite-size pieces, using a paper towel so as not to burn myself.
• The timer rings and I run cold water over the egg then plunk some ice cubes into the water. You may already know that ice water makes a boiled egg easy to peel.
• Somewhere along the way, the green beans have cooked just enough, so that they are still nice and bright in color, like summer grass after a week of rain. Bunching them as before, I cut the beans, usually into thirds.
• I peel the egg and squish (clean hands are great for this, though obviously you can use a utensil) it into a bowl along with the other ingredients and niçoise olives. Alternatively, you can arrange the ingredients attractively on a plate as in the photograph.
• I then add salt, pepper, red wine vinegar and olive oil and enjoy it with a hunk of rustic bread.

It's fortuitous that I am writing this while Alex, my French stylist, is applying highlights to my hair. Alex tells me that generally the French use neither vinegar nor potatoes (though I've read otherwise). He also says garlic goes great with these ingredients and that the French often use basil, which adds a pleasing fragrance.

When I don't have green beans or am just feeling lazy, I use lettuce instead. I asked Alex what he thought about using chicken instead of tuna. "Why not, eh?" he replied, but I suspected he was just being big-hearted, which he later admitted. However, I think chicken with all these veggies would suit the American palate just fine. 

As you may imagine, there are countless recipes for salad niçoise on the internet. Alex and I decided to check out a French Website, Recoins de France. One colorful photo says it all, showing some ingredients I haven't mentioned, such as cucmber, green pepper, onion and anchovies. Fiddle with various permutations of these ingredients and bon apetit!

What are some of your favorite quick easy delicious low-cal meals? Write a comment and let me know.