How To Make A Great Salad Nicoise

A Salad Nicoise is more commonly referred to as a Nicoise Salad with the Nicoise being pronounced as "ni-suaz".  This particular salad originates from the Nice region of France and consists of a number of different ingredients the details of which we provide below.  However there are some restaurants which although offer a Salad Nicoise it is not what would be considered to be the classic version.  Often they will include rice, potatoes, past, cheese or cooked vegetables into their recipe.

The real beauty of this particular salad over many others you may have tried is in the way that it is presented.  It is not only full of color and texture but flavor as well because of the ingredients that are used. Below we now provide you with details of the ingredients along with the steps that you will need to take in order to produce a great tasting and looking Nicoise Salad. 

The ingredients you will need in order to make a Salad Nicoise to serve four people are as follows:-
1.  10 large and ripe tomatoes
2.  1 clove of garlic
3.  1 large cucumber
4.  1 green and one red pepper
5.  6 spring onions
6.  12 anchovy fillets which are in olive oil
7.  125g of black olives
8.  4 eggs that have been hard boiled
9.  90ml of olive oil (extra virgin is best)
10. 1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar
11. Juice of one lemon
12.  Assorted salad leaves (cos, rocket etc) plus a small amount of fresh Basil
Now let us go through the steps you will need to take in order to make your Salad Nicoise.

Step 1 – take the tomatoes, cut this into six pieces each, place them in a dish, and sprinkle a little salt over them.  Allow them to stand for around ½ hour as this allows any juices to drain out of them.  Whilst preparing the tomatoes you can put the eggs on to cook.  It is best if you allow around 5 minutes once the water is boiling to ensure that the eggs are hard boiled.

Step 2 – You need to take the cucumber and cut it along the length and then scoop out as many of the seeds as you can with a spoon.  Now you next need to cut the cucumber, which has not been peeled into slices, but you should not make them to thin.  After slicing up the cucumber, you next need to then finely slice both the peppers along with the spring onions.

Step 3 – Take the garlic clove remove the outer layer and then cut this in half and rub them around the inside of your salad bowl.  If you are able to use a wooden bowl for placing the salad in.

Step 4 – As soon as you are ready to serve the salad, take your salad leave and lay these over the base of the bowl.  The tomatoes that you left to drain can now be used and laid on top of the leaves along with the hard boiled eggs, which have been cut, into quarters.  Then onto this, you need to place the peppers, spring onions and cucumber, as well as the anchovy fillets, which should have been drained.  Then over the top, you scatter the olives.

Step 5 – Finally, to finish off your Salad Nicoise you need to make the dressing.  To do this you take the olive oil, the red wine vinegar, lemon juice and mix these together.  Also season the dressing with some salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Then just gently drizzle this over the salad before you finally scatter of the top the basil leaves, which have been roughly torn up.