• No issue next week
• Favorite recipes: Salade Lyonnaise
• Let us hear from you!
• Administrivia
I enjoy writing these articles so much that I hate to take a week off. But facing the reality of guiding a trip through the Southern Rhone and Provence next week AND the technical issues involved with E-mailing the newsletter from a portable computer on a hotel desktop in Avignon, I'm afraid prudence dictates that we hold for a week and resume publication on June 20. I'll try to bring back something interesting!
Favorite recipes: Salade LyonnaiseKeeping this week's issue short, let's celebrate France in advance with a simple salad recipe that I put together recently. Featuring tiny fingerling potatoes and pardon-the-ethnic-confusion Italian sausage, it required a bit of advance planning but relatively little actual kitchen time ... most of the last hour before dinner is spent simply waiting for the flavors to blend as the dish cools to room temperature!
If you prefer a vegetarian rendition, this would still be very good if you simply omitted the sausage.
INGREDIENTS: (Serves two)
1 pound fingerling or new potatoes
2 links Italian or other mild sausage, about 8 ounces
2 tablespoons olive oil
Scant tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons dry white wine
2 tablespoons Dijon or spicy brown mustard
Sea salt
Black pepper
2 green onions
Mesclun, romaine, arugula or other salad greens of your choice
1. Put the potatoes (whole, skins on) in a saucepan with water to cover. Add at least 1 tablespoon salt, cover, bring to a full boil, then reduce heat and simmer until they're tender, about 20 minutes.
2. Put the sausage links in a pan with water to cover. Bring to the boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 15 minutes, uncovered.
3. While the potatoes and sausage are cooking, whisk the olive oil, lemon juice, white wine and mustard into a vinaigrette.
4. Drain the potatoes and cut them into 1/2-inch slices. Put them in a large bowl and pour the vinaigrette over them while still hot. Add sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Toss and stir gently, taking care not to break up the potatoes.
5. Drain the sausage, rinse off excess fat, and cut into thin slices. Mix with the potatoes and set aside to cool for an hour or so, stirring occasionally.
6. Chop the scallions, stir into the potatoes and sausage. Check seasoning and serve atop a bed of salad greens. Makes a meal in itself on a hot spring or summer evening.
MATCHING WINE: Although the conventional wisdom holds that tart salad dressings "war" with wine, the substantial presence of potatoes in sausage in this one carry the day, with the vinaigrette acting as more of a condiment than the dominating flavor. It was excellent with Château de Lascaux 1999 "Les Nobles Pierres" Pic Saint-Loup (an excellent Coteaux de Languedoc Syrah) and would go very well indeed with either a red or white Burgundy.
Let us hear from you!If you have suggestions or comments about The 30 Second Wine Advisor's FoodLetter, or if you would like to suggest a topic for a coming edition and recipe, please drop me a note. I really enjoy hearing from you, and I try to give a personal reply to all mail if I possibly can. The Ask A Question form at http://www.wineloverspage.com/ask_a_question.phtml is the easiest way to reach me, but if you prefer, you may also send E-mail to wine@wineloverspage.com.
AdministriviaThis is The 30 Second Wine Advisor's weekly FoodLetter. To subscribe or unsubscribe, change your E-mail address, or for any other administrative matters, click to http://www.wineloverspage.com/wineadvisor/admin.phtml. In all administrative communications, please be sure to include the exact E-mail address that you used when you subscribed, so we can find your record.
For more about food and wine, you're invited to visit us at http://www.WineLoversPage.com, and to join in the interactive online community in our Food Lovers' Discussion Group, http://www.wineloverspage.com/cgi-bin/sb/index.cgi?fn=2.
Thursday, June 6, 2002Copyright 2002 by Robin Garr. All rights reserved.
FoodLetter archives
Subscribe to the 30 Second Wine Advisor
