Salade Niçoise.

Just perfect: Salade niçoise | Mail Online: Felicity Cloake's new book.
Salade Niçoise is a salad that originated in the French city of Nice.
It is traditionally made of tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, Niçoise olives, anchovies, and dressed with olive oil.
Delia Smith called it "one of the best combinations of salad ingredients ever invented.
Serves 2
2 eggs
500g broad bean pods or 50g (1¾oz) French beans
4 ripe tomatoes
¼ of a cucumber
2 spring onions, finely chopped
½ a red pepper, thinly sliced
50g small black olives, pitted
1tbsp capers
4 anchovies, cut into slivers
A few basil leaves, roughly torn
For the dressing
1 small clove of garlic
A pinch of coarse salt
2 anchovies, finely chopped
A small handful of basil leaves, torn
4tbsp extra virgin olive oil
½tbsp red wine vinegar
Freshly ground black pepper

Put the eggs into a saucepan large enough to hold them in one layer, cover with cold water and bring slowly to the boil.
Turn down the heat and simmer for 7½ minutes, then drain and cool in a bowl of iced water.
Meanwhile, pod and then peel the broad beans (if you are using French beans instead, top and tail them, then cook in salted boiling water until they are just tender and drop immediately into iced water to cool).
Drop the tomatoes into a pan of boiling water, leave for 15 seconds, then peel, slice and deseed them.
Peel the cucumber in stripes, cut in half lengthwise then scrape out the seeds and slice into half-moons.
To make the dressing, pound the garlic to a paste in a pestle and mortar along with a pinch of coarse salt.
Add the chopped anchovies and then the basil, and pound it all to a paste, slowly dribbling in the olive oil and the vinegar along the way.
Season generously with freshly ground black pepper
To assemble the salad, toss the beans, tomatoes, cucumber, finely chopped spring onion and sliced red pepper with two-thirds of the dressing and decant it on to a serving plate.
Carefully peel the eggs, slice them into quarters and arrange them on top of the salad, along with the pitted black olives, capers, anchovy strips and the remaining basil leaves.
Drizzle the rest of the dressing over the salad and serve immediately.

Nigel Slater's classic salade Niçoise recipe | Life and style | The Observer:
The big late-summer salad.
There are those who would add tuna to this tomato, bean and lettuce salad, but I think it complicates matters.
However, there are certain additions that are pretty much essential if your salad is to be worthy of its name.
Anchovies, olives and basil are there to give the salad its sense of place.
Tomatoes likewise.
The type of lettuce is debatable, but it is no place for a designer variety.
This is Cos or Little Gem territory.
The tomatoes should be the knobbly French Marmande, some really ripe plum tomatoes if not.
Long French beans are what I expect here.
The recipe
Serves 6-8

a handful of thin French beans
4 tomatoes
8 anchovies
a small Cos lettuce or 2 Little Gems
12 black olives
a little parsley
a few sprigs of basil

For the dressing:
2 tbsp red-wine vinegar
2 small young cloves of garlic – crushed
100ml extra-virgin olive oil
a little Dijon mustard (optional)
salt and pepper

Top and tail the beans and cook them briefly in salted boiling water. Drain and chill in cold water. Cut a tiny cross in the skin at the round end of the tomatoes and dunk them in boiling water. After 30 seconds remove them and peel off the skins. Cut the tomatoes into quarters.
Rinse the anchovies. If you are using salted ones, then 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. Arrange the tomatoes, anchovies, olives and beans among the leaves. Chop the parsley, but not too finely, and add it with the basil to the salad.

Make the dressing by whisking the vinegar and mustard together with the peeled and crushed garlic and a seasoning of salt and pepper, then whisking in the oil. Toss gently with the ingredients and serve.

The trick
If you decide to skin your tomatoes, take care not to "cook" the tomato when you drop it into boiling water. Quartering them rather than slicing them will prevent the salad becoming "wet". No olives, no salade Niçoise. I like the oval, matt purple olives from Provence. What is all wrong are green olives, stuffed olives and, worst of all, no olives at all. Garlic needs to figure somewhere in this, otherwise it ain't Niçoise.

The extras
Feelings run high about "extras". Someone, somewhere, will argue that at least one of these is essential for the authentic salade. Artichoke hearts. Boiled eggs. Capers. But radishes, peppers, white haricots and, I think, new potatoes have taken a wrong turning on the way to Cannes. They should have turned left in Dijon.

- Nicoise | Define Nicoise at Dictionary.com:

- How to make the perfect salade niçoise | Life and style | The Guardian:

Perfect salade niçoise | Life and style | The Observer:

New potato niçoise salad recipe - Telegraph:
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