Perfect picnic egg salad

We're always talking about food at our house. What's your favorite sandwich? What are your top 5 beers? If you could open a diner, what would it be called, and what would the menu look like? And, of course, what is your perfect picnic menu?

Perfect picnic fare has a few qualifications. It tastes great cold. It's classic and uncomplicated. It's easy to transport. It can ideally be eaten with your hands, although we make limited exceptions for salads. And it's appropriate to the height of picnic season.

With all that in mind, we think the ideal picnic sandwich crown belongs to egg salad. It's tangy yet creamy, full of finely chopped crispy vegetables and big chunks of rich egg, seasoned liberally with fresh herbs, and stuffed between slices of toasted rye or sourdough: yes.

A good egg salad requires good hard-boiled eggs, so let's start there.

There are lots of different ways to boil eggs. The most common method involves boiling eggs for ten full minutes. This usually results in a hard-boiled egg with a rubbery yolk and a ring of greenish oxidation around the yolk: not good. To make a perfect hard-boiled egg, you need to cook your eggs for less than ten minutes. Eight minutes will produce an egg that looks like this one: solid, creamy-textured white with a yolk that's fully cooked on the outside, but still a bit damp in the middle. In an egg salad, the white will be more tender and delicious, while the yolk will mix more smoothly with the classic mayo & mustard dressing. It's an ideal situation.

Perfect hard-boiled eggs

Put your eggs, cold from the refrigerator, in a pot. Cover with cold water. Put the pot on the stove and bring it to a boil. When the water starts to boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, cover, and start timing.

Take your pot off the heat at the eight minute mark for large eggs. If you're using extra large, you can push it to nine minutes. Immediately drain off the hot water and run your eggs under the cold tap. I like to cool down the whole pan under the faucet, turning to get all the metal in contact with the cold water. Then, either in your cooled pot or a separate bowl, cover your eggs in cold water and add a handful of ice cubes.

Let your eggs chill until they're cool enough to peel. Then whack them all over with the back of a spoon and peel them, starting with the wider end. I like to peel eggs under a thin stream of cold water; this way, the water gets behind the membrane and helps loosen it a bit.

Voila: a perfect hard-boiled egg.

Combine this with a few radishes and some chopped fresh dill, and you have the makings of one of the best salads ever.

Dill and radishes are seriously the power combination for egg salad. Maybe you've always eaten your egg salad with celery as the crunchy veg component. That's all well and good--and you can absolutely add minced celery as well--but radishes, in my opinion, are even better. They're crunchy and spicy and add a beautiful touch of dark pink to the salad.

And dill! Dill is one of the most underused herbs ever, and it goes so perfectly with egg and mustard. It is, of course, totally fine to use parsley if that's what floats your boat, but you should absolutely try dill. It's the best cool counterpoint to spicy radish and rich egg.

Perfect picnic egg salad for two

4 hard-boiled eggs
2-3 radishes
1/4 bunch fresh dill/other herbs of your choice
2 scallions
1-2 tbsp mayonnaise
2 tsp dijon mustard
salt, pepper
rye or sourdough bread

Chop your eggs into pleasing chunks. Finely mince your radishes. Strip the dill fronds from their stems and chop them up. Trim a couple scallions and slice them into thin rounds.

Combine all your eggs and vegetables in a large mixing bowl. Add mayonnaise and mustard and mix, smashing with a fork to blend the egg yolks with the dressing. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Spread your egg salad onto slices of toasted rye or sourdough bread. Other bread is also okay, of course, but the flavor and aroma of both rye and sourdough are hard to beat. It's also pretty delicious to spread your egg salad on cucumber slices if you want more vegetables, or for a big plate of appetizers. It's all good.

Now eat it! We had our egg salad sandwiches open-faced, with a side of cucumber shallot salad. Super delicious and refreshing on a summer afternoon.

We actually ended up eating everything at home, I'm sorry to say. It was just too blindingly sunny outside, and we are cloud-loving midwesterners, even after eight years of living in California. Fortunately, picnic food tastes just as good inside as out.

Next up: that cucumber shallot salad! Hooray!

Pan bagnat: the ultimate picnic sandwich

It's June. You know what that means: it's officially picnic season.

Picnic food is one of my favorite genres. (Does food have genres? Sure, why not?) Who doesn't want to cram a big basket or tote bag with a stack of sandwiches, several containers of salad, a big bag of fresh fruit, and a bottle of wine, iced tea, or lemonade, and swan off to the park for a sunny afternoon? Okay, I admit that we actually set up camp in the fullest possible shade, but still.

So let's make sandwiches! More precisely, let's make one sandwich: a huge, delightful pan bagnat.

Pan bagnat simply means "bathed bread" in Occitan. (And if you've never heard of that--well, I had heard the French term "langue d'Oc" before, but that's it. It's a language spoken in the Occitanian region, which spreads over southern France, Monaco, and some bits of Italy and Spain.) Pan bagnat is essentially a giant sandwich: a whole loaf of bread filled with fresh vegetables and their juices, anointed with olive oil, and pressed under a weight before eating. This gives all the flavors the chance to meld together into something delicious and beautiful. When it's time to eat, just slice off as much as you want and go.

If you are concerned about sogginess--which seems totally normal, considering that this is called "bathed bread," don't be. Our sandwiches were deliciously juicy on the inside, but the juices did not penetrate the crust overnight: perfect.

Needless to say, pan bagnat is one of the best picnic foods ever invented. Let's make one!

The number of servings here really depend on the size of your loaf of bread. We could have served six people pretty comfortably with ours, especially with salads or fruit on the side.

Pan bagnat

A whole flat loaf of bread (Acme bakery herbslab for us)
tomatoes
basil leaves
butter lettuce
green onion
red pepper
havarti (or your choice of cheese)
avocado
olive oil
dijon mustard
salt and pepper

Slice your loaf of bread into two thin halves, using a serrated bread knife. It's easiest to put the bread flat on a board and cut into it from the side while you hold the loaf steady with the palm of your hand--sort of like cutting a cake layer into two.

Open up your loaf and start piling on the fillings. Start by drizzling olive oil over each side and spreading on some dijon mustard. Then just layer on all the vegetables and cheese you desire. We used everything in the ingredient list, but feel free to use whatever else sounds good to you. Season the whole thing with salt and pepper before you close it up.

To make your pan bagnat vegan, just leave out the cheese. Super easy!

Wrap your loaf securely in aluminum foil or plastic wrap. Put it in the refrigerator and weight it down overnight, or for at least four hours. We put a cutting board topped with a cast-iron dutch oven half full of water on top of our pan bagnat, and it worked admirably.

When you're ready to eat--perhaps after transporting your pan bagnat to the picnic grounds at the very bottom of the picnic basket, with your containers of salads and bottles of wine still pressing it together--simply unwrap and cut off slices to eat. You can go for long, thin sandwiches (toothpicks come in handy here) or cut wider slices and then halve them (no toothpicks necessary). It's all good.

Now have your picnic! Eat your sandwich, lounge in the sun, drink some wine, break out the frisbee, wiggle your toes in the grass--it's all good.

What's your favorite picnic food?

Carrot salad

Hooray for salad!

This is the kind of thing I make when I think there's nothing to eat in the house, and yet I want a fast and easy mouthful of bright crisp vegetable flavors.

Carrots and garlic are nearly always hanging around in our kitchen. We have a lemon tree, so I never have any problem finding some lemon juice and zest. And of course olive oil is the pantry staple to end all pantry staples. So this salad is just about always possible--which is great, because it's delicious.

Carrot is the perfect bridge between summer and fall. What other root vegetable is so fresh, bright, and juicy? Sure, we'll be roasting them up with parsnips, onions, and thyme pretty soon--but while the sun is still out, I'm definitely on board with a raw and crunchy salad arrangement.

Carrot salad with garlic and lemon

carrot
garlic
lemon
olive oil
salt
pepper

Scrub your carrots under the tap and shred with a box grater. I used two medium carrots. Put your shredded carrot in a reasonable bowl.

Smash a couple of cloves of garlic with the flat of your knife, peel them, and mince them finely. Add them to the carrot. (If you're not into raw garlic, it's fine to reduce the amount.)

Strip a few wide pieces of zest off half a lemon. Slice them up finely with your knife and add them to the carrot and garlic. Squeeze the juice from the lemon half into the bowl of veg, catching any seeds with your fingers.

Add a glug or two of olive oil, a sprinkling of salt, and a couple good grinds of pepper. Mix well and taste for seasoning.

Let your salad rest for at least a half hour before eating, so the flavors have a chance to mix. Then go to town.

While I will absolutely eat a big scoop or two of this carrot salad on the side of pretty much any sandwich, I really like it best IN the sandwich. If you like lavash or pita with hummus or baba ghanouj, you could do way worse than to add a whole lot of this salad. Bagel with cream cheese? Throw on a spoonful of salad--or better yet, mix it in with your cream cheese and spread that on your bagel. Regular old turkey on rye with mustard and lettuce? Salad. It's really good.

I also like this on the side of a bowl of soup, but I could absolutely see using it as a garnish for things like cream of cauliflower, potato leek, or bright green spinach soup. Or putting it on a piece of toast and having a pseudo-half sandwich with said soup. It's all good.

What's your favorite early fall salad?

Potato green bean vinaigrette, deviled eggs, & fresh summer tomato

Swiftiest of Meals
w/ ref to A. E. Housman.

Swiftiest of meals, the salad now
holds all the veg I will allow;
potatoes, beans, and mayonnaise
softly sate my tongue's malaise.

Now in my kitchen's steamy den
lunchtime will soon come again.
Take from the fridge a loaf of bread,
an egg, a pear, and I am fed.

And since I love to eat my fill
I'll mix the dressing, fire the grill,
and set the table fork by knife
to serve my tastes for all my life.



This summer I seem to have forgotten about potatoes until just recently. Why? Potatoes are great, especially in summer salad form. So are hard-boiled eggs. So are fresh summer tomatoes, although no one has forgotten about those.

This combination would clearly make the most optimal picnic ever. Let's eat it!

Potato green bean salad with oregano vinaigrette

For the salad:
boiling potatoes
green beans

For the dressing:
red wine vinegar
dijon mustard
fresh oregano leaves
garlic or shallot
salt, pepper
olive oil

Start by bringing a large pot of water to a boil. While it's heating, scrub and chop your potatoes into more or less bite-sized chunks. When the water boils, add your potatoes, slap on the pan lid, and let cook for about a half hour, or until tender. (If you're making deviled eggs too, you can totally put the raw eggs on to boil with the potatoes and just fish them out when the time is up. I do this practically every time.)

While your potatoes are cooking, wash and trim your green beans. You want a roughly equal amount of potatoes and beans. Cut them into inch-long pieces and set them aside.

Next, make your dressing. In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix a tablespoon of dijon mustard with a roughly equal amount of red wine vinegar. Add about eight or ten leaves of fresh oregano, finely chopped, and a clove of crushed and chopped garlic. Salt and pepper to taste. Now whisk with a fork while slowly pouring in a stream of olive oil. You'll want maybe 1/4 cup of oil total per tablespoon of vinegar. This makes enough dressing for about two large potatoes' worth of salad.

If you don't have access to fresh oregano, it's fine to substitute chopped parsley, basil, or whatever other soft green herb you like. However, fresh oregano is AWESOME, so I strongly recommend that you try it.

When your potatoes are almost cooked, it's time to cook your green beans. You can either steam them over the potato pot, or just add them to the water and cook them with the potatoes. If you care about things like "shocking your green beans to keep them bright green," I'd recommend steaming. Otherwise, go ahead and throw them in the boiling water. Either way, the beans take about three to four minutes to cook through.

When both your beans and potatoes are cooked, drain them completely (you can always stick the potatoes back in the pan over heat for a second if they seem overly wet) and put them into a bowl of your choice. Immediately pour the dressing over, stirring to mix well.

Voila! A beautiful salad!

Deviled eggs

eggs
mayonnaise
dijon mustard
scallion greens
salt, pepper, paprika

These are totally standard deviled eggs. Sometimes you just want the classics, right?

Start by hard-boiling your eggs. Put your raw eggs in a pot, cover them with water, and put the whole shebang on the stove. Bring the pan to a boil, and reduce the heat to a simmer. Let your eggs simmer for eight minutes. When the time is up, immediately take the eggs out of the hot pan, run them under cold water, and put them in a bowl of ice and cold water to stop the cooking. Let the eggs sit for at least ten minutes, adding more cold water if needed.

When cool, peel your eggs, cut them in half, and remove the yolks to a bowl. If you've timed your eggs perfectly, there should be just a little dimple of dampness at the center of the yolk, and certainly no grey-green oxidized business around its edge.

Mix your yolks with a large spoonful of mayonnaise, a small spoonful of mustard, and chopped scallion greens, salt, pepper, and paprika to taste. The proportions of these are entirely up to you. Want your eggs creamier? Add more mayo. Want them spicier? Add more mustard.

Scoop your yolk mixture gently into your egg halves. Garnish if you like. A sprinkle of paprika is pretty traditional here, but some chopped herbs or maybe a slice of green olive also work.

Hooray! Deviled eggs!

Tomato

1 good summer tomato
knife
salt

Cut up tomato. Sprinkle with salt. Eat.

Perfect! It's tomato!


(Also, if you have leftover potato salad and deviled eggs, guess what you can do for lunch the next day? Cut up your eggs, mix them into your potato salad, and have a completely delicious mess. Yes! I know you guys can't possibly have any leftover tomato.)