“Salad niçoise”: This is how you bring a piece of France home
If you save yourself from moving with the flow of summer travel, whether it’s to relax at home or take advantage of the quieter off-season, you can at least go on culinary excursions when you’re bored or the weather is bad. For example with Nice salad – a part of the French Riviera. Or is it more a part of Provence? Maybe a little Paris after all? Accurate localization is difficult. After all, France is the country of origin. The correct name for this summer meal is “salad niçoise”.
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Since Nice is part of the Provence region, one might think that the salad comes from Provençal cuisine. But there is no written evidence for this. The only thing that is clear is that on the Côte d’Azur in the 19th century, a salad made of salted tomatoes, olive oil and anchovies was placed among fishermen to use the smallest fish in the catch.
Escoffier’s Kitchen Guide
However, the first recipe for the Nice salad, which has since become known around the world, was found by none other than Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935), who is considered the king of haute cuisine and was the head chef at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. But Escoffier was born in Villeneuve-Loubet, a small town just 15 kilometers from Nice. He must have known the creation of anchovies and tomatoes since childhood.
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In 1903 he published his standard work “Guide culinaire”, which is still popular among top chefs today. It also includes a nice salad. At Escoffier, it consists of potatoes, green beans and tomatoes, topped with a garnish of capers, anchovies and olives. However, over time a different composition has prevailed. Basic ingredients today are often lettuce, tomatoes, olives, anchovies, tuna and hard-boiled eggs. Although tuna is a newer invention and is mostly served in restaurants that have little to do with the original French cuisine.
Almost anything goes with Nice Salad
Sometimes you can also find artichokes, onions, radishes, cucumbers or corn in the salad – but no potatoes. Even in Nice today people turn up their noses at Escoffier’s idea.
The fact that original recipes can be modified in such a way that they end up tasting even better than the original version speaks to the fact that cooking is friendlier to experimentation than baking. One such example is the Nice salad without potatoes. Basically everything is allowed. If it’s supposed to be “niçoise”, it just doesn’t work without fish, olives and tomatoes.
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Do not distort the character of the dish
The traditionalist and purist side also advises against experimenting with dressing variants or overly tasty herbs. Even balsamic vinegar is taboo. Also, the simple character of the dish should not be distorted by expensive or exotic ingredients.
Ingredients for the beautiful salad (4 servings)
- 500 grams of green beans or beans
- 500 grams of halved cherry tomatoes
- Half a cucumber, cut into slices
- four hard-boiled eggs cut into slices
- 50 grams of black olives
- two chopped onions, cut into circles
- eight anchovy fillets in oil
Then we adjust the mass with salt and pepper, paint it with olive oil and decorate it with basil leaves. In general, optics are given a lot of value when serving. A beautiful salad doesn’t just have to be thrown into a bowl.
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