Hot & Cold Winter Salad Niçoise (and a photo-bombing basset)

My uncle, master potter David Walters, gave me this beautiful hand-thrown celadon platter last year, and I immediately made it the official family fruit bowl, perching it in a convenient spot at the end of a kitchen counter for all to admire.

Hot & Cold Salad Niçoise, and a very naughty boy.

Apricots, peaches, litchis, nectarines, plums, grapes, figs, pomegranates, quinces, kumquats and naartjies have filled it to overflowing as the seasons have passed, but I never thought until last weekend of using it for its intended purpose: a platter for presenting a bright and plentiful salad.

I feature many of these versatile crowd-pleasers on this blog because I'm a huge fan of complex salads with all the bells and whistles, but I've never posted a recipe for one of my favourite family dishes: Salad Niçoise.

This salmagundi of glistening Mediterranean ingredients is one of the world's greatest salads, in my opinion, and I could happily eat it every day.

It's the epitome of summer food, but in this recipe - because it is winter here in the Cape - I've adapted it so that it contains four piping-hot ingredients: steaming little potatoes, perfectly boiled eggs, blanched baby beans and hot blistered vine tomatoes. (I am most intrigued by cold and hot salads - my version of Gado-Gado, for instance.)

I have left anchovies out of my salad, as everyone in my family loathes them, but I can highly recommend that you drape a few of these over the tops of the eggs.

Do take the time to parboil the beans properly, because this will ensure that they do not fade to a muddy olive-green. (See caption below).

I took this picture of my salad the day after I made it, to show you how correctly
 blanched green beans will retain their lovely colour for many hours. For this pic,
I changed only the leaves (which wilted overnight in their dressing) and I
 added a freshly boiled half-egg (because my teens had gobbled the lot).

I like this dressed with a generous spritz of fresh lemon juice, and just enough olive oil lightly to coat the leaves, but you can serve it with a classic vinaigrette made with mustard, garlic, salt, and the like. If you want something really extravagant, take your Niçoise to the table with a big bowl of basil mayonnaise or aïoli.  Both are heavenly dobbled all over the boiled eggs.

Every now and then, I make this with fresh seared tuna, but I don't think this is necessarily an improvement on tinned tuna, which is a superb store-cupboard ingredient with a character that is quite distinct.

And the photo-bombing basset? Our pup, Harley, is just over a year old, and he's a velvety-eared, thieving menace. All he can think about is food. He is obsessed with eating to the point of mild mania. (Not unlike, come to think of it, his adoring owner.)

A very naughty pup.

Harley spends much of his day plotting ways to nick food from plates, cupboards, counter-tops and dustbins. If I stagger through the gate tugging packets of groceries, he launches himself from a good two metres away, glides through the air (ears flaring, Dumbo-style, in order to achieve extra lift) and swipes the bags straight out of my fists.

Not once, but twice, while I was standing on an outside table photographing this salad, he sailed from floor to chair to table, as silent as an owl at midnight, and appeared in my frame at the same instant I clicked the shutter.

A swift clip to the chops (okay, I will admit I used my foot) disabused him of any idea that he could sneak off with a boiled egg.

This is very easy to make, but it does require some careful timing.  I've given you quite detailed instructions, in a numbered timeline, so you can nail that perfect balance of cold and crisp / warm and steamy.

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 Hot and Cold Winter Salad Niçoise

350 g cherry tomatoes
3 Tbsp (45 ml) olive oil, for sprinkling
4 sprigs fresh thyme
salt and milled black pepper
350 g new potatoes
a large cucumber
a small bunch of spring onions
2 tins of tuna in oil
350 g slim green beans
6 extra-large free-range eggs
2 packets of mixed salad leaves: watercress, rocket and baby spinach
½ cup pimento-stuffed green olives, or pitted Calamata olives
6 anchovy fillets [optional, and to taste]
a small bunch of fresh basil

For the dressing: 
the juice of a large lemon
5 Tbsp (75 ml) olive oil, or more, to taste

1. First roast the tomatoes.  Heat the oven to 210 ºC.  Put the tomatoes onto a roasting sheet covered with a piece of kitchen paper. Sprinkle with olive oil and scatter with thyme sprigs.  Season with salt and plenty of milled black pepper. Place the sheet in the heated oven and roast for 20-25 minutes, or until the tomatoes are just collapsing.

2. In the meantime, put the new potatoes into a pan, cover them with cold water and set over a medium-high flame.  Set a timer to 15 minutes.

3. Cut the cucumber in half lengthways and run a spoon down the middle to remove the seeds. Slice into neat 5 mm crescents and set aside.

4. Finely chop the spring onions and set aside.

5. Open both the tins of tuna and drain off any oil.  Set aside.

6.  Fill a bowl with cold water and add a few generous handfuls of ice cubes. Set to one side.

7. Heat a pot of salted water in a large pot.  Top and tail the beans, throw them into the rapidly boiling water and cook for 6-7 minutes, or until they are just tender crisp.  Fish them out with a pair of tongs (leave the water on the boil) and plunge them into your bowl of iced water.

8. Slip the eggs gently into the simmering water and set a timer for 9 minutes.  To prevent the eggs from cracking, put a teaspoon into the water, or wrap each one in tin foil.

9. Check that that baby spuds are tender by poking them with the tip of a sharp knife. Drain them, then return them to the pot in which you boiled them. Cover and keep warm.

10. Remove the roast tomatoes from the oven.

11. Arrange the salad greens, cucumber and olives on your platter, and scatter with chopped spring onions.  Now tip the tuna tins over to invert their contents, as shown in the picture.

12. Just before you serve the salad, arrange all the warm and cold ingredients over the leaves, tucking in sprigs of basil here and there.

13. Squeeze the lemon over the salad and sprinkle with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, and take the salad straight to the table, with a warm baguette.

Serves 6 - 8. 

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Seared Tuna with a Niçoise-Style Green-Olive, Caper & Tomato Salsa

I'm in the mood for turning recipes inside out and upside down this year, so I've dressed this platter of seared tuna strips with a twanging sauce containing most of the ingredients you'd expect to find in a Salad Niçoise: olives, tomatoes, anchovies, garlic, lemon juice, capers, chopped boiled eggs and excellent olive oil. Granted, fresh tuna is very expensive, but this dish is so intensely flavoured that a little goes a long way, especially if you serve it as a starter, with some sliced fresh bread for dipping.

Porcelain platter by David Walters

I wouldn't dream of pairing such a punchy salsa with top-notch sashimi-grade tuna (as if - please allow me a hollow laugh here - I could afford such a thing) but this peppy dressing is great for perking up slices cut from a slab of commonplace fresh tuna.

You may notice a conspicuous lack of chopped boiled eggs in the picture above.  This is because my younger basset hound, a thieving little miss, stole my just-boiled wedges of egg off the table while I was getting ready to take the photograph. At first, I couldn't understand where my eggs had gone, and it was only when I saw her guilty expression and the tell-tale crumbs of yolk clinging to her whiskers that the penny dropped. I considered boiling another batch of eggs, but I was pressed for time, and the tuna slices were in danger of drying out, so I snapped the dish and then gave the little brat a desultory scolding.  (Any tongue-whipping delivered to a basset hound has to be half-hearted, because they pay no attention at all.)

No one in my family would taste this, let alone eat it, because it contained two tiny fillets of anchovy. If you're also a loather of anchovies, you may leave them out, but consider yourself struck off my Christmas-card list forever.

(Oh, do please give them a try. Pounded to a paste and well blended with the other ingredients, they add a lovely savoury note to the sauce, and don't taste at all fishy.)

Seared Tuna with a Caper, Green Olive and Tomato Salsa
350 g fresh tuna (ask your fishmonger for a nice thick steak)

salt and milled black pepper

1 T (15 ml) sunflower oil, or similar light vegetable oil
2 extra-large free-range eggs
2 ripe tomatoes
8 green olives, pitted
1 T (15 ml) brined capers, drained
4 sprigs fresh parsley, plus extra for garnish
2 slim anchovy fillets
1 clove of garlic, peeled
 the juice of a small lemon
4 T (60 ml) extra-virgin olive oil


First sear the tuna. Pat the fish dry using kitchen paper and season lightly with salt and milled black pepper.  Heat a frying pan over a very high flame for two or so minutes, then add the vegetable oil. Wait for 15 seconds, or until the oil begins to shimmer and the pan is blazing hot (but not yet smoking).  Lay the steak in the hot oil and sear it for 45-60 seconds on one side, or until the band of opaque, cooked fish on the underside of the steak is about 3 mm thick. Flip the steak over with a pair of tongs or a fork and sear its underside for another minute or so. Now turn the steak so it's standing vertically and very quickly sear the thinner edges, on all sides, for 30 seconds. The tuna should be raw and still cold on the inside when you're done searing it. Put the steak on a plate, let it cool for 10 minutes, then cover with clingfilm and set aside.

Fill a saucepan with water and bring it to a gentle boil. Slide the eggs into the simmering water and set a timer for 9 minutes. Cut a shallow cross through the skins of the tomatoes and add them to the water in which the eggs are boiling. Leave the tomatoes in the boiling water for 2 minutes, then lift them out of the water and set them to cool on your kitchen counter. When the timer goes off, fill the pan with cold water and set it in the sink under a dribbling tap for 5 minutes, or until the eggs are cold.

Now make the salsa. Finely chop the green olives and capers and set them to one side. Pound the garlic and anchovies to a smooth paste using a mortar and pestle or the blade of a heavy knife. Scrape the paste into a mixing bowl and stir in the lemon juice, olive oil, parsley and the reserved chopped olives and capers.  Strip the skin off the blanched tomatoes (it should come away easily), halve them, and use a teaspoon to scoop their seeds - these are packed with umami - into the mixing bowl. Cut the fleshy bits out of the centres of the tomatoes and discard. Cut the remaining tomato flesh into small, neat cubes and add these to the mixing bowl. Stir the salsa gently and season to taste with black pepper (you shouldn't need to add any salt, as the anchovies are quite salty).

Using a very sharp knife, cut the cooled tuna into strips, and arrange these on a platter. Spoon the salsa over the tuna and garnish with a few little sprigs of flat-leaf parsley. Peel the eggs, chop them fairly finely, and scatter them over the tuna (that is, if your dog hasn't scoffed them). Serve immediately (or keep tightly covered with clingfilm, adding the parsley garnish at the last minute) in the fridge for up to 3 hours.

Serves 4, as a starter. Print Friendly