Summertime means fresh green beans and in my fantasy life, big salads for dinner. Salade Nicoise is more than the sum of its parts—boiled eggs, potatoes, blanched green beans, good quality tuna, bib leaf lettuce, tomatoes, olives, and a shallot dressing—gosh it’s good and so very satisfying. My recipe is based on Dorie Greenspan’s, from her book, Around My French Table.
Plate from Biot, a small village on the French Riviera between Antibes and Nice, which I visited in June 2001.
Salade Niçoise
dressing serves 4, easily scalable
Ingredients
- bib leaf lettuce
- good quality oil-packed tuna, tinned or in glass, about 3 ounces per serving Ortiz, Tonnino
- hard boiled eggs, one per serving, recipe below
- anchovy fillets, one per serving optional
- green beans
- new potatoes, 2 or 3 per serving depending on size
- cherry tomatoes, halved
- olives that you like (nicoise, green with pits, oil-cured)
shallot vinaigrette
- 1 shallot, minced
- 2 tablespoons wine vinegar, red or white Banyuls
- ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
- pinch salt
- freshly ground black pepper
- 4–6 tablespoons olive oil
Instructions
-
Boil and chill one egg per serving. Steam for 12 minutes, more detail here.
-
Blanch green beans in boiling salted water until tender, about 4 minutes, then plunge into ice bath to stop the cooking. Dry and chill until plating.
-
Boil and chill scrubbed-clean new potatoes, skin intact; about two per serving. About 15 minutes, depending on size.
Shallot Vinaigrette
-
Add shallot to vinegar and let sit at least 10 minutes to mellow.
-
Whisk in Dijon mustard, salt, black pepper then drizzle in a stream of olive oil while whisking continuously.
Plating
-
For each serving, arrange lettuce, tuna, halved boiled egg topped with anchovy fillet (optional), green beans, potatoes (halved or quartered), tomatoes, olives, then drizzle with shallot vinaigrette just before serving.
