My original plan was to make a crisp and cool nicoise salad and partner it with a crusty homemade loaf of bread. Borrowed from the Food52 blog, and Jim Lahey's cookbook, this no knead bread was simple to make and just required some advance planning.
I prepared chopped chicken from a store bought leftover rotisserie chicken and added a generous drizzle of vinaigrette for my husband who isn't much of a tuna fan. I saved the tuna for myself. I boiled a few fingerling potatoes until fork tender, chopped them into 1 inch cubes and marinated them while hot in the same vinaigrette.
Next, I gathered my salad ingredients: hard boiled eggs, kalamata olives ( That's all I had in the house, adding Fairway's Nicoise olives to my grocery list this week!), hot cherry peppers, the cold potatoes, the tuna/chicken, marinated artichoke hearts, and baby spinach.
Then I realized I wanted pizza and with our new central air conditioning, I had no reason not to turn on the oven! I used flatbreads (lavash) from Trader Joe's and smeared each with a mixture of herbed goat cheese and half and half. I piled on my salad ingredients and drizzled the pizza with the vinaigrette dressing.
Popped into a 425 oven until the crust was golden brown at the edges, I could barely contain my excitement at trying what I was certain would become a staple summer pizza.
When it finally cooled down enough to sample, I knew it would not be the last time I made nicoise pizza. The next time I'll make sure to add asparagus, nicoise olives, and haricot verts.
