Salade Niçoise
Overview
The original Niçoise from Nice was a peasant salad, raw vegetables, anchovy, hard egg, no cooked tuna or potato. The version eaten everywhere now, with seared tuna and warm potatoes, is the Escoffier interpretation that French restaurants standardised in the early 1900s. This is that version, plated as an arranged composition rather than tossed, the way it appears at La Petite Maison or Café de Paris in Monte Carlo. Each component sits on its own quadrant of the plate, dressed individually, the diner combines them spoon by spoon.
The Ingredients
For the salad
- • 2 tuna steaks, 180g each, sushi-grade
- • 4 eggs
- • 200g Small Potatoes (Crysp), halved
- • 1 head Butterhead Green Lettuce (Crysp)
- • 200g Cherry Tomatoes on the Vine (Crysp)
- • 1 Cucumber (Crysp), sliced
- • 8 Edible Violas (Crysp)
- • 200g green beans, trimmed
- • 8 Niçoise olives
- • 8 anchovy fillets in oil
- • 1 tbsp capers
For the vinaigrette
- • 4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- • 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- • 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- • 1 garlic clove, crushed
- • Salt & black pepper
Instructions
Soft Boil the Eggs
Bring a small pot of water to a rolling boil. Lower the eggs in carefully on a slotted spoon, set a timer for exactly 6 minutes 30 seconds. Drain and plunge into ice water for 5 minutes. Peel under running water. The yolks should be jammy, golden orange in the centre, set at the edges. This is the texture that defines a proper Niçoise.
Cook the Potatoes and Beans
Boil the halved potatoes in well-salted water 12 minutes until knife-tender. In the last 3 minutes, drop the green beans into the same water. Drain everything together, run cold water briefly over the beans only to keep them bright green, leave the potatoes warm.
Build the Vinaigrette
In a jar, combine the Dijon, apple cider vinegar, crushed garlic, salt and pepper. Whisk briefly. Pour in the olive oil while whisking constantly to emulsify. Taste, the vinaigrette should be sharp, mustardy, slightly garlicky. Set aside, half goes on the salad, half on the side.
Sear the Tuna Rare
Pat the tuna steaks dry, season heavily with salt and pepper. Heat a heavy pan over very high heat with 1 tbsp olive oil until the oil shimmers and smokes lightly. Sear the tuna 60 seconds per side only, no more. The exterior should be deeply browned, the centre still bright red and cool. Lift onto a board, rest 2 minutes, then slice against the grain into 1cm thick slices.
Compose the Plate
This is presentation, not tossing. Tear butterhead lettuce leaves and arrange them in a loose ring around the edge of a wide flat plate. In separate quadrants on top of the lettuce: warm potatoes drizzled with vinaigrette, green beans, halved cherry tomatoes, sliced cucumber. Halve the eggs, place 4 halves equally spaced. Place the sliced tuna in the centre, fanned. Drape anchovy fillets across, scatter olives and capers.
Crown with Flowers
Lay edible violas across the salad in a deliberate scatter, three on the tuna, two on the eggs, the rest among the lettuce. Drizzle half the vinaigrette across the entire plate in a fine zigzag. Serve immediately with the remaining vinaigrette in a small jug, a thick slice of toasted sourdough, and a chilled glass of fresh lemonade or sparkling water with a lemon wedge.
The Tradition
Niçoise sits at the centre of a 100-year argument about what should and should not be in it. The purists in Nice insist on no cooked vegetables at all, raw tomato, raw pepper, anchovy, hard-boiled egg, olive oil. Escoffier added the seared tuna and warm potatoes, and that version became the international standard. Today both coexist, the rustic original at small Niçoise bistros, the composed luxury version at Provençal restaurants from Cannes to Dubai. Either way, the rules are: never lettuce-tossed, never warm tuna throughout, never a vinaigrette poured all at once. The diner builds the bite, the chef just lays out the parts.
💡 Pro Tip: Use sushi-grade tuna only. Niçoise tuna is meant to be rare, almost raw at the centre, which means the fish must be pristine. If your fishmonger cannot guarantee sushi-grade, swap for confit tuna in olive oil from a good tin (Ortiz or Conservas Ortiz) and skip the searing step. The composed plate forgives a tinned shortcut, but it does not forgive overcooked fresh tuna.