Famous all over the world, the “Salade niçoise” has been copied (badly) so much that it has become, in the colloquial language, a synonym of “anything”, a catch-all, an incoherent mishmash.
At the beginning, 16th century, it was a “poor man’s dish”, easy and cheap. At the base, only 3 ingredients make the “Nice” salad: tomatoes, anchovies, olive oil. In the 19th century, it became more colorful and expanded with various seasonal vegetables: white onions (cebettes) or radishes (but never both!), peppers, fresh basil (obligatory!), beans and/or artichokes, black olives (from Nice, of course 😉
The recipe
You rub the plate with a clove of garlic, a little olive oil and salt and… that’s it! You see how simple it is! Nothing but local ingredients. Green, red, white, yellow… a firework in the plate! And for the palate, what a feast! It crunches, it crunches, it’s sweet and sour, salty, sweet, bitter, it’s soft… In the end, a good salad niçoise is happiness at the table.
La recette
On frotte l’assiette avec une gousse d’ail, un peu d’huile d’olive et du sel et… c’est tout ! Vous voyez que c’est simple ! Rien que des ingrédients locaux. Du vert, du rouge, du blanc, du jaune… un feu d’artifice dans l’assiette! Et pour le palais, quelle fête! Ça craque, ça croque, c’est sucré et acide, salé, doux, amer, c’est moelleux… Au final, une bonne salade niçoise, c’est le bonheur à table.
