Caper-Loaded, Herbed-Up Haricots Verts, Potato, and Poached Chicken Salad

Plus two dressings to use on it: a rich anchovy-lemon and a strong red wine vinaigrette.

DO WOMEN STILL STRUGGLE to “have it all”? I never really understood why that was ever considered a universal dilemma for anyone, man or woman, or a remotely desirable goal. Who needs everything? What a burden.

I’ve always made myself rich in this regard by keeping my aspirations extremely modest and manageable. Here are a few: I don’t want to go to jail for forgetting to pay my phone bill, lose friends because I never called them back, or ride the YoYo at Rye Playland, in Rye, NY, ever again. Ever.

And so far so good.

An extremely restrained description of the terrors of the YoYo.

But my white whale—having a refrigerator organized enough to alleviate food waste and my guilt about it—continues to elude me. In my fantasies, nothing that goes into my fridge dies there; every food item, be it fresh, jarred, or leftover, can be recombined with ease to create a beautiful meal or snack. The culinary version of Garanimals.

The reality is quite different, of course, and I don’t even want to talk about it, except to say that the salad I have for you today makes my kitchen life seem a bit less quixotic.

Because it uses mostly stuff that was already in my fridge, from earlier salads or meals that never happened—a half a tin of anchovies (from last week’s dressing), several open jars of capers, my usual overabundance of lemons, ditto various fresh herbs (some of which I had to revive a bit), and quite a lot of haricots verts that I purchased at Trader Joe’s with only a vague idea of what I’d do with them. (I love them blanched and tossed with butter and lemon and lots of salt, but that never happened).

The salad-jewelry counter.

The only thing I didn’t already have was chicken.

And the salad I ended up with felt like kismet, inspired by a recipe sent to me by my friend Cornelia for an alluring salad that uses duck and green beans and also by another salad I wish I could locate again on Instagram that combined chicken and green beans and herbs and made me feel tingly just thinking about its combination of textures and flavors.

After I gave myself permission to also use as many capers as I really wanted to (which is a lot; I love them so much), thanks to this piece in La Cucina Italiana, I realized that the salad I’d devised was sort of a deconstructed salsa verde.

Not enough capers. (Getty Images)

And part of the beauty of this salad is that, like Garanimals, you can easily add and remove elements according to what you have or like or don’t like. So make it without chicken, but include potatoes, or make it without potatoes and include chicken, or use all three. It’s delicious in all its incarnations. (My friend Kevin refers to it as a “soundboard salad, where you can bring the level up on any of the individual instruments or mute them as you please.”)

Regarding the dressings: I’ve given you two that would be perfect here; one has anchovies, the other does not. ( I’ve gotten notes from some readers since the last newsletter came out—with that creamy garlic dressing—asking for substitutes for anchovy. And I understand that they are not for everyone, and that you are also feeding people who are anchovy avoidant. So while it’s hard to really replace anchovies in a salad dressing, I suggest you sub in a tablespoon of grated Parmesan; some people use Worchesristoireoeuroerueorueorue sauce (I’ve told you before, I’m never looking up the spelling of that word again), and fish sauce is good but very different. My recommendation would be: Trust me when I tell you that if you start with just 2 anchovies, nobody will know they’re there unless you tell them. They’re more subtle than most anti-anchovy people realize; they create an extra dimension, soften sharpness, add mystery.)