Few dishes capture the spirit of summer quite like salade Niçoise. Alexandra Stacey’s fresh take on this French favourite celebrates seasonal ingredients and effortless cooking in her beautiful new book, ‘Salads for all Seasons’
IMAGE: OLA SMIT
I feel duty-bound to tell you that this is my own personal version of Salade Niçoise, as a cursory glance at the internet will tell you that there are many (conflicting) ways of preparing this fabulously sunshiny salad from the city of Nice. Originally it was a simple rustic summer dish that only contained three ingredients – ripe tomatoes, salty anchovies, and lots of olive oil – but over the centuries it has gained all kinds of extra adornments.
Salade Niçoise
Ingredients
- 6 Romano (sweet) pepper, cored and deseeded
- 2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra to drizzle
- 750 g (1lb 10oz) small waxy potatoes
- 5 eggs
- 225 g (8oz) extra-fine green beans, trimmed
- 1/2 cucumber
- 4 juicy ripe tomatoes
- 80 g (3oz) mixed salad leaves or good butterhead lettuce leaves
- 1 tbsp mixed chopped herbs (such as chives, dill, and chervil)
- 12 black olives
- 150 g (5 1/2oz) can tuna in olive oil, drained
- 1 tbsp nonpareil capers
- 50 g (1.8oz) good-quality anchovy fillets in olive oil
- pinch of dried herbes de Provence
- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan/400°F/Gas 6).
- Drizzle the peppers with the olive oil, add a pinch of salt and pepper, and roast for 1 hour. Let cool, then peel the skins off and slice the peppers.Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and tip in the potatoes. Cook them over a high heat for 25–35 minutes, depending on their size, until perfectly tender when pierced with a sharp knife. Set them aside to cool down, then slice in half. Alternatively, peel them, slice in half, and steam over a medium heat for 30 minutes.
- Bring a pan of water to the boil and carefully lower in each egg using a tablespoon. Boil for exactly 8 minutes 30 seconds. Remove from the heat, place the pan in the sink, and run cold water over the eggs for 1 minute. Peel and halve the eggs.
- Cook the green beans in salted boiling water for 10–12 minutes until tender.
- Slice the cucumber thinly and place the slices on kitchen paper(paper towels) to remove the excess moisture. Season with salt anda pinch of pepper.
- To prepare the tomatoes, remove the core, slice each tomato in half, deseed, and then slice into quarters. Season with salt and pepper. Line a serving dish with the salad leaves, then add the tomato quarters,red peppers, green beans, egg halves, potatoes, fresh herbs, olives, tuna, capers, and anchovies. Drizzle liberally with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with the herbes de Provence, then toss gently.
Notes
to the recipe (much to the disapproval of the Niçoise purists). Tuna was
also a late addition, as it was deemed much pricier than easily obtainable
anchovies. I have tried many incarnations of salade Niçoise over the years, and this is my favourite in every possible way.
Extracted from Salads for all Seasons by Alexandra Stacey, published by DK, RRP £22, photography by Ola Smit
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