KARFA

February menus. I will update the photo guides as well.

KARFA

I have some photos of the new dishes which I have now added to the photo guide. The ones I am missing are the bread and butter pudding and the chicken korma curry if anyone wants to try them.

Thanks, got all the photos now

orbitmic

Was hoping for a more tempting meat option I must say.

PS: I'll pretend pass on the fact that BA manages the extraordinary record of offering a "classic Nicoise salad" which does not happen to include a single element of an actual Nicoise salad (black olives would have qualified but I know that they are using the wrong ones). You sort of wonder what's the point of flying up to 15 flights a day between the UK and Nice in each direction in peak summer if they haven't noticed how the most iconic of local dishes is made...

nancypants

orbitmic

Ah!! Of course, like any life changing philosophical question, the "true" recipe is the object of endless controversies on a number of key existential questions such as do you serve it on a plate or in a bowl, do you just brush the implement with olive oil or do you pour it on the salad, is rubbing said implement with garlic an act of unforgivable revisionism or just a statement of modernity, are spring onions and radishes compatible or should you choose one or the other in order not to overpower the taste, not to mention whether you should mix the whole thing or present all the ingredients separately. Children and elderly ladies alike have been known to engage in verbal and physical beach fights on those difficult questions, but thankfully, there are also things that are really universally accepted as absolute basic principles.

The first of them is: the whole concept of a Nicoise salad is to use raw vegetables only - no cooked vegetable has or should ever make its way into one. There are no exceptions to this rule. Green beans should be enough to get you a few months' jail sentence, potatoes, new or otherwise, should probably result in the amputation of 3 or 4 hands, and should anyone ever feel like asking about rice, quinoa, sweetcorn, or I don't know what, those would probably be the only arguments that would make one reconsider whether we should reinstate death penalty after all.

Raw tomatoes are by any standard the star ingredient. In fact, historians of the Nicoise salad (yes there are such things, very seriously), suggest that after tomatoes were introduced to Europe, the salade nicoise was undoubtedly a very simple combination of ripe tomatoes, olives, and pissala (baby anchovies crushed into a paste) served with salt, olive oil, and pepper if you were rich enough for it. The concept of introducing dried/semi-dried ("sun blushed") etc tomatoes as opposed to fresh ones is a bit like suggesting athletes should run 100 metre sprints in high heels.

Nicoise salade is a poor salad that would normally only be prepared in the spring (and tolerated in summer) when vegetables are ripe and babyish. You'd normally put in (all raw) baby broad beans, baby artichokes, radishes, salad peppers (more akin to the Hungarian or Turkish mild pointed peppers than the Spanish big ones), nascent celery hearts, Spring onion ('cebettes' which are actually different from the spring onions we find in the UK), and nicoises olives ('picholines'which are tiny, very sweet, and only preserved in salt without a need to remove bitterness at first as with all other olive types). No lettuce and certainly no red onions.

Because it's a poor salad and for warm months, the one key protein is either pissala (good luck finding that even in the Nice area except sometimes from a few elderly people at the fish market in the Old Town) or salted anchovies. With the county becoming richer, in the 20th century it became acceptable to ad hard boiled eggs (but certainly not soft boiled) and/or canned tuna. I'm one of the people who think that ultimately seared albacore will join the list, but other 'tuna' are effectively entirely different species so it's not as though one could use Alaskan keta in Scottish smoked salmon.

And of course, asking for vinaigrette with your salade nicoise would immediately out you as a 'Parisian', the only category of foreigners that Nicois are known to despise with a passion. It's really just olive oil, salt and pepper bar the question of garlic rubbing (but no garlic in the salad) I raised earlier. Some people have been known to add a splash of vinegar when trying to do the salad in early March when the tomatoes are still not flavoursome enough, but the risk if you get caught will remind you of that time you were 13 and got caught doing something you were not supposed to be it with a cigarette, a girl, or anything/anyone else that was not quite supposed to be in your company.

One version here: Recette de la véritable salade niçoise - you should read the recipe, then look at the photo and look for two scandalous mistakes... Answer below.

See? While the recipe on the left side is fine, the photo on the right includes shameless lettuce leaves that would shock even the most lenient of inspectors. pfff…Second, the olives are all wrog, they are not nicoise olives but look like Greek olives, completely different, larger, blacker, wrinkled. tss tss...

Apologies for the ot but nancypants asked, and there are things that are hard to resist and far more important than TPs , plane cleanliness and Champagne...

madfish

Well that probably was the most detailed OT response I’ve seen on here @orbitmic

Perhaps all CCR dishes could do with a history lesson? What do you know about korma?

Tobias-UK

orbitmic

Now that I fully approve of! Thanks for the breaking news too! ^

MarkedMan

I spy sliced red onion too

orbitmic

Very good! We should ask PUCCI to give you a Mucci of the Nicois honoraire!

madfish

orbitmic

corporate-wage-slave

And here is a photo

Ldnn1

corporate-wage-slave

Whatever sympathy I may have for that view is somewhat confounded by the awkward fact that the favourite dish on the menu - by far - remains the burger. As it happens this beef dish tastes good and I would have it again.