Summer Salads

These hot Albuquerque nights make me crave cold salads for dinner.  Cold salads and Coronas.  But in case you are worried that I've gone all healthy on you, never fear: I typically douse my salads in a bath of fattening dressing, enjoy them with a beer and finish them off with a bowl of ice cream.  In an effort to satisfy my health-conscious husband, however, I tried my hand last night at a Salad Nicoise.  Amazingly, it was delicious!  Here's my version (modified from food network's recipe):

Ingredients:
1 large tuna steak
4 baby red potatoes
1 large handful of French-cut green beans (the skinny ones!)
cherry tomatoes
2-4 eggs
nicoise olives
lots of salad greens
bottled salad dressing (any vinaigrette-based one will do. Or, if you are a glutton for punishment, you can make your own)

Directions:
1. Boil salted water.  Cook potatoes for about 15 minutes.  Add eggs and cook for another 5 minutes.  Put a colander over the pot and add the green beans, steaming them for about 5-10 minutes until tender but still crunchy.  Drain the potatoes, eggs and beans in the colander and rinse them with cold water.

2. While the potatoes are boiling, salt & pepper the tuna steak & drizzle with olive oil.  Sear the steak in a skillet for about 2-minute per side over high heat.  Remove the steak from the heat and let rest.

3. Peel the eggs and cut them in half.  Cut the baby red potatoes in quarters.  Arrange a mound of salad greens on a plate.  Add potato halves, hard-boiled egg halves, green beans, cherry tomatoes and nicoise olives (to taste).

4. Finally, slice the tuna steaks and arrange them over the salad.  Drizzle with dressing.  Ta-Da!

(disclaimer: this is not, in fact, what mine looked like. this is what the food network says it should look like, just to keep the self-esteem of their readers low.)