Perfect Salade Niçoise Montpeliano Restaurant

Tuna or anchovies? Green beans or olives? Here's our definitive guide to an authentic French classic

• Nigel Slater
• The Observer, Sunday 2 September 2001
• Article history

Call me old-fashioned, but surely the whole point of a classic recipe is that the punter knows, within an olive or two, what they are going to get. But order a salade niçoise anywhere along the Riviera and you will get a different lunch every time. One cook might include a handful of long, emerald-green haricot vert, another a few broad beans. A thoughtful chef might add a couple of sliced, marinated artichoke hearts (yes, please) and a fistful of those diminutive purple-black olives from Les Baux. On the one hand you may be the lucky owner of crisp Cos lettuce draped with meaty little anchovies; on the other you could find yourself doing battle with the whims of a chef anxious to make his mark, and end up with a dish whose history has been distorted for the sake of a whiz-kid's ego.

Of course none of them will quite match up to the perfect salade niçoise you had on holiday a few summers back, your table set under a white parasol just a couple of steps from the beach. You were tanned, your shoulders sparkled with sand and you had the quietly smug smile of someone who has had sex three times in the last 24 hours. Sadly, there is no seasoning quite so tasty as nostalgia.

To get a dish right - perfect - you need to understand where it has come from: the sort of ingredients involved and where they grow; the flavours inherent in the area; the mood and style of the people who regularly make and eat that dish. You have, if you like, to understand its soul.

Salade niçoise should have the salty robustness of the French coast. It should shout the loud flavours of the area, the sort of thing you tuck into with the sun in the your eyes and salt on your lips. To be true to its origins there should be garlic in the dressing. Heyraud, author of La Cuisine à Nice , wrote in 1903 that the true salad of that name should contain quartered artichoke hearts, raw peppers and tomatoes, black olives and anchovy fillets. The dressing should be olive oil (what else in that part of the world?), vinegar, salt, pepper, mustard and chopped 'fines herbes' - by which he meant parsley, chives, chervil and tarragon. Not even a lettuce leaf here, and certainly no sign of any tuna.

The more you travel, the more you eat, the more you realise there are no real rules to this one, but there are constants. The omission of one of these ingredients is to miss the point. To be true to its name this salad must be true to its geography - it must reek of olives, garlic, anchovy and tomatoes. Crisp lettuce also turns up every time. The rest - the beans, the artichokes, the hard-boiled eggs, the onion, broad beans, new potatoes and chopped onion - will depend on the whim of those in the kitchen. I don't go along with the peppers, partly because they confuse the issue, and partly because I can't eat them raw.

My perfect niçoise is unlikely to include tuna for the simple reason that it tends to dominate everything else in your mouth. Some gutsy little anchovies, boned and rinsed of much of their salt, would be much more welcome. Not that you can guarantee the inclusion of tuna on its home territory: whenever I say 'hold the tuna' I am invariably told that I wasn't going to get any anyway.

Beans of some sort are a given. I put in some broad beans the other day, boiled and popped from their skins. French beans, verging on the overcooked, are something I would add more for textural contrast than flavour. They feel right. Basil, though not strictly part of the traditional recipe, is something high on my extras list, partly because it seems right in anything that involves tomatoes and olives. Potatoes, at least in my book, don't come into it.

The anchovies
There are two very distinct types of anchovy fillets - those preserved in oil, and the red and meaty ones that are kept in coarse salt. The oil-preserved ones have a less interesting flavour but need nothing more than rinsing and patting dry before use.

The lettuce
Let's be strict here - salade niçoise is no place for a designer lettuce. This is Cos or Little Gem territory. You need crunch. The Gem leaves are small enough to leave whole; the rabbit-eared Cos will need a bit of tearing. I sometimes cut the Little Gems into quarters rather than prizing the leaves apart.

The tomatoes
Ideally, use those rough and knobbly French Marmande, if not, really ripe plum tomatoes. They should be the juiciest you can find. Some people skin theirs, some don't. I do, but much depends on the tomato itself and how thick its skin is. Take care not to 'cook' it when you drop it into boiling water to loosen its skin. Quartering the tomatoes rather than slicing them will save the salade from becoming 'wet'. I have eaten so many salades where the tomatoes weren't quite ripe. A shame, because when they are perfect, sweet with a snap of acidity, they, rather than anchovies, become the star of the dish.

The olives
No olives, no salade niçoise. I like the oval, matt, purple olives from Provence or, taking the ingredients out of their territory, southern Italy. Most times you get those fat, sticky fruit as black as molten tar. Very often they have been marinated with thyme and garlic. They'll do. What is all wrong are green olives, stuffed olives and, worst of all, no olives at all.

The beans
Long French beans are what I expect in this salad. They are better when properly cooked (ie, softly bending and dark green) rather than fashionably blanched. Broad beans, boiled and skinned, make a sound addition, though in my experience they tend to turn up only in home-cooked versions.

The dressing
Garlic needs to figure somewhere in this, otherwise it ain't niçoise. Red wine vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, a tiny seasoning of salt - you already have olives and anchovies - and some black pepper, and, perhaps, just a dab of mustard are all you need.

The extras
Feelings run high about 'extras'. Someone, somewhere will argue that at least one of these is essential and I am a heathen to suggest otherwise.
Artichoke hearts - the bottled sort, marinated in olive oil. I regard this as a high point in the proceedings. I suppose it is simply that I associate the mauve and sage-coloured spiky globes with the area. They turn up in the more expensive versions.

Boiled eggs. Escoffier didn't and neither do I, but most of us regard them as de rigueur . The eggs should be only barely set.
Capers. They add bite and piquancy, making this the loud-flavoured salad it should be.

Basil and parsley are both interesting additions, but are by no means essential. Radishes, peppers, white haricots and, I think, new potatoes have taken a wrong turning on the way to Cannes. They should have turned left at Dijon.

Salade niçoise
Serves 2 as a substantial main course
a large handful of thin French beans
2 free-range eggs
4 tomatoes
6 preserved artichoke hearts
8 salted anchovies
a small Cos lettuce or 2 Little Gems
12 black olives
a few sprigs of flat-leaf parsley
The dressing
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
a little Dijon mustard if you wish
100ml extra virgin olive oil
2 small, young cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
crusty bread to serve
Top and tail the beans and cook them briefly in salted boiling water. They should be dark green and cooked enough so that they bend. Boil the eggs for 4-5 minutes until they are just hard-boiled. Soak them under cold running water so they stop cooking and dark circles don't form around the yolks. Peel.
Cut a tiny cross in the skin at the round end of the tomatoes and dunk them into boiling water. After 30 seconds or so remove them and peel away the skins. Cut the tomatoes in quarters. Drain the artichokes of their oil and cut each one into four.
Rinse the anchovies. If you are using salted ones, pull away the bones and check for stray whiskers.

Wash the lettuce, tearing up the leaves if they are large, and put them in a deep serving dish or shallow bowl. Arrange the tomatoes, quartered eggs, anchovies, artichokes, olives and beans on leaves.
Chop the parsley, not too finely, and add to the salad. Make the dressing by whisking the vinegar and mustard together with the garlic and some salt and pepper, then drizzling in the oil. Pour over the salad and serve.

Try a beautiful and tasty Salade Nicoise at Montpeliano Restaurant. Our salads are made with fresh ingredients. For further informations please contact our restaurant manager Derek Lungo

Montpeliano Restaurant
13 Montpelier street
Knightsbridge, London
SW7 1ET, UK
T.+44(0)2075890032
www.montpelianorestaurant.com
info@montpelianorestaurant.com