Salade niçoise (Composed Tuna and Egg Salad)

Variations

• The Nice position — and this argument is half the dish: in Nice a niçoise contains no cooked vegetables at all. No potato, no green beans, no rice. The reasoning is that it began as poor people's food made from whatever raw vegetables were in the garden, with olive oil and salted fish. The same purists hold that it takes either tuna or anchovy, not both, and some that it takes no vinegar, only olive oil.
• Escoffier's version: the Parisian cookbooks of the early 20th century put potatoes and green beans in, and that is effectively the niçoise the world eats. This page follows it partway — beans in, potatoes optional — which is what the photograph shows.
• Salade niçoise and pan bagnat: the same ingredients packed into a round loaf and pressed until the oil soaks through is pan bagnat, the sandwich of Nice. Same components, different form.
• The opposite of caesar salad: there the whole point is tossing, so every leaf carries dressing; here the whole point is not tossing. Two ways of making a salad, one dish each.
• Against greek salad and shopska salad: three Mediterranean raw-vegetable salads in which the vegetables, not the leaves, are the subject. Only the niçoise puts protein — tuna and egg — at the centre.
• Against caprese: caprese is also a placed salad, but with three ingredients the arrangement is simple; a niçoise has seven or more elements to find room for.
• Against coleslaw and carottes râpées: those two exist to break vegetables down with salt or dressing, so they improve with standing. A niçoise does the reverse — it is ruined by it.

Tips

• Do not toss it. This is the one rule that makes the dish what it is. Mixed in a bowl, the tuna breaks up into the egg yolk and the whole thing turns the colour of paste. Season each element and give each one its own place.
• Use a wide, shallow dish. A composed salad needs room. In a deep bowl things stack on each other and you have effectively tossed it after all.
• Dry the lettuce completely. Vinaigrette slides off a wet leaf and pools in the bottom of the dish. Without a spinner, wrap the leaves in a cloth and pat them.
• Salt the tomatoes ahead and let them drain. Added straight, they keep releasing liquid on the plate and thin the dressing. Ten minutes is enough, and the liquid can go into the vinaigrette.
• Nine minutes for the eggs. A fully hard yolk is chalky and falls apart when quartered. At nine minutes the centre is still moist, so the wedges hold and they taste far better.
• Dress the potatoes hot. The starch at the surface of a cold potato has set and takes up nothing. Halve them while they are still steaming and turn them in the vinaigrette then.
• Soak the red onion. Ten minutes in cold water takes the harshness out. Raw and unsoaked, onion is all you taste.
• Dissolve the salt in the vinegar first. Salt does not dissolve in oil, so the other order leaves you crunching crystals (emulsions).
• Oil-packed tuna, not brine. Water-packed tuna has left its flavour in the water. A spoonful of the tin's oil in the vinaigrette carries it through.
• Assemble at the last minute. Made ahead, the lettuce pickles in the vinegar and collapses, and everything you carefully placed slides together. Prepare the components early and only the placing at the end.