Ree Drummond's Salmon Nicoise Caesar | The Pioneer Woman | Food Network

It is so hot outside. I'm just, I just can't take the heat. So I am going to share some recipes that are all served cold. We're going to chill out today. In the heat of summer, sometimes you just don't want to have a big hot heavy meal. So I'm going to start with salmon nicoise caesar. I'll let that sink in. This is a beautiful salad and the star of the show is a beautiful piece of salmon. So I'm going to get that in the oven first. I just have a gorgeous salmon fillet and I drizzled on olive oil and I sprinkled salt and pepper. So we're going to get this in the oven. Even though this dish is served cold, I've got to start by cooking the salmon. So the oven is on 425 and I'm going to bake it for 10 minutes and then let it cool a bit. All right, the salmon is out of the oven and it's just perfectly cooked. There's not too too much color on the outside but that's perfectly fine. It's just barely cooked on the inside so it'll be nice and tender. So I'm going to cut a lemon in half and squeeze the juice over the lemon. Over the salmon. Squeeze the juice over the salmon. You knew what I meant. And then I'm going to make the dressing for the salad. I'm going to doctor up some caesar dressing. Why not? It's summertime. It's hot outside. I don't want to drag all the ingredients out and make my own caesar dressing. So I've got a good quality caesar and I'll add some to the bowl along with some capers that I kind of gave a rough chop to and then some chopped chives and chopped parsley. I'm going to save some of this for garnishing the salad. Nicoise salad is something that my British friends actually really turned me on to. When they would come to America, they would make these beautiful Nicoise salads and basically they usually have tuna but the ingredients are like hard-boiled eggs, cold green beans, cold potatoes, tomatoes, and it's a little bit deconstructed so you just can pick the elements that you like to put your salad together. And it's just the perfect thing for summertime. It's really cold and refreshing and marvelous. So I'm going to flake the salmon and I'm just using two forks. I try not to orchestrate ahead of time how big the pieces are. I just let the salmon determine its own destiny but I don't want to get it too like broken up and shredded. I like to have some really big pieces so you can see that surface area. Okay beautiful. So the fun part of a Nicoise salad is building it. Oh I forgot back to the dressing. Lemon zest. Stir it in. Okay now that is the doctored up Caesar. Delicious. Okay so here's how you build the salad. Actually you can build it however you like. You can have chopped up romaine lettuce but I kept them in hearts and then I cut the hearts in two so I kind of have them laid out. And then the fun part of this kind of salad is just putting everything on the platter and keeping it kind of in little segments. So I have these boiled potatoes. I just boiled them and then halved them and put them in the fridge so they're nice and cold. Super good for summertime. And then green beans. Just lay them on wherever you like and you can sprinkle too or I just like the real the neatness of being able to see everything. Beautiful bright red tomatoes. These are just grape tomatoes that I cut in half but this is kind of one of those salads where like speaking of being in charge of your own destiny you can pick what goes on your plate. So this is a big one for this type of salad as well. Hard boiled eggs. Yummy. They're amazing in the summer. I have to remember to make hard boiled eggs and keep them in the fridge because the boys and your father love them. And then a pile of olives. You can add nicoise olives or any kind of olive is fine. And now for the salmon. The star of the show. That's right. Put it on the end right there. I'm gonna put it right here. Normally you would have like some kind of really good quality cooked tuna on this type of salad but the salmon is sort of the little curve ball I threw you today. So beautiful and then when it comes to the dressing you can serve it on the side or you can just do gorgeous little kind of swaths of dressing across each romaine heart half. Romaine heart half. Mauricio does this kind of salad appeal to you at all? Yeah. No. Oh that was a big note if I've ever heard one. This looks like heaven to me. I know doesn't it? Alex, Paige and I could completely go to town on this. A little bit of parmesan cheese. Why not? Right down the dressing and then how about this? Yes. A little more lemon and oh parsley. I knew I was missing something. Talk about a stunner of a salad. This would be a beautiful centerpiece to any like summer lunch or you can just make the elements keep them in containers in the fridge and just build your own over a course of a few days. Salmon, nicoise, caesar salad. I don't know. I've got more recipes to make but it's going to be hard to top this.