Marché and Salade Niçoise

It’s ridiculous how quickly I can forget things. One minute, I’m staring into the abyss of my refrigerator, uninspired by Tupperware containers of leftovers and a 12-step-worthy amount of cheese, slamming the door and ordering takeout instead, and the next, I’m at my market. How could I have forgotten how much I love it there?

The glee I get from placing my purchase order at the produce man, six fingers held up secretly to remember I want six things — new potatoes, green beans, beefsteak tomatoes, lettuce, little pickling cucumbers and new season cherries — because otherwise he comes and goes too fast, and I forget something, without fail. Even though I’ve been less-than-faithful this winter, my cheese man still remembers how much I like St-Marcellin.

As I’m standing in the cheese line, the produce man across the way — not mine, another — sighs theatrically and expresses his wish for the swift arrival of apéro. It’s barely 10:30, and I grin at him. He smiles back; we share a joke that hardly anyone remarks.

I’ve been here a long time — so long that I can forget things, like the way I feel when I emerge from a métro station I haven’t seen in awhile, into an old normal, an old day-to-day now forgotten — but I don’t think I’ll ever get over little jokes, the ones that the true locals are too blasé to notice. A well-placed joke — and the comprehension that goes along with it — is more than enough to make me smile. It reminds me that, in spite of all of this: a winter that seemed too long to fathom, a summer that has yet to arrive, the slow realization that this manic sleeplessness that’s been haunting me since October may, in fact, be my new normal… Paris is still home, continuing to quietly exist all around me, waiting for as long as it takes for me to recognize it again.

Salade Niçoise (for two)

5-6 leaves red leaf lettuce
2 cooked potatoes, chilled
1 beefsteak tomato, cut into slices
1 large handful of green beans, blanched in 2 minutes in salted boiling water and chilled in cold water with ice
1 can (6.5 ounces) tuna, canned in water, drained
15 niçois olives
salt and pepper, to taste

2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
salt and pepper, to taste

Arrange the ingredients as you see fit, either in a serving dish or in individual bowls.

My method: place first the lettuce leaves, torn, in individual bowls. Salt them. Slice the potatoes in rounds and the green beans in half to make bite-sized pieces. Arrange the tomato slices, green beans and potatoes in piles, with the tuna in the center. Sprinkle with olives and salt and pepper.

Place all the dressing ingredients in a jar with a lid. Shake to combine and pour over the salad. Serve with fresh bread.