Nicoise Salad

The Nicoise salad is a classic dish originally from Nice, France. Traditionally, this salad is comprised of salad greens, tomatoes, green beans, potatoes, boiled eggs, Nicoise olives (obviously), and, what the dish is best known for, seared tuna.

Now, I don’t want to give you a recipe for a generic Nicoise salad, there’s already way too many of those all over the internet. As a chef, I like to come up with dishes that have new, interesting, and well thought out elements that pay homage to the original while still doing something unique.

---

Sun-dried Tomato Sauce Gribiche

Sauce gribiche is a mayonnaise-style cold egg sauce in French cuisine, made by emulsifying hard-boiled egg yolks and mustard. The gribiche will act as a stand in for regular hard boiled eggs.

Ingredients:

• 4 large eggs

• 1 jar sun dried tomatoes (in oil)

• 1 cup olive oil

• 1 TBSP dijon mustard

• 2 TBSP red wine vinegar

• 3 TBSP lemon juice

• 1 garlic clove, minced

Instructions:

1. Boil three of the eggs until the yolk is cooked all the way through and peel off the shells

2. In a food processor, place the three cooked eggs, one egg yolk, garlic, and the dijon mustard

3. Turn the food processor on to high and begin drizzling in your olive oil. Drizzle in some of the oil from the jar of sun dried tomatoes for a little razzle dazzle

4. Once fully emulsified, add the red wine vinegar, lemon juice, and about 10 sun dried tomatoes and continue processing until the tomatoes are no longer in big chunks

5. Season to taste with salt and pepper

---

Nicoise Dressing

Ingredients:

• ¼ cup red wine vinegar

• ¾ cup olive oil

• 2 TBSP dijon mustard

• 2 TBSP grade A Honey

• ½ small shallot, minced

Instructions:

1. In a mixing bowl, whisk together red wine vinegar, shallot, honey, and dijon mustard

2. Slowly begin drizzling in the olive oil, whisking the entire time to ensure emulsification

3. Season to taste

---

Confit Fingerling Potatoes

Ingredients:

• 1 lb fingerling potatoes

• 1 pint rendered duck fat (if you can’t find duck fat you can use lard instead)

Instructions:

1. Wash your fingerling potatoes to get off any dirt

2. In a small sauce pan add the solid duck fat and the whole fingerling potatoes and place it over the lowest possible setting on your stove

3. Once the duck fat has fully melted, make sure the potatoes are completely submerged in the fat. If they aren’t top it off with a little bit of canola oil until the potatoes are completely covered.

4. Add a heavy pinch of salt into the duck fat

5. Cook the potatoes in the warm duck fat, checking periodically for doneness

6. Once potatoes are cooked all the way through, remove pot from the stove and allow to cool down.

7. At this point, you can remove the potatoes from the fat OR you can place the cooled sauce pan in the fridge and let the fat solidify around the potatoes. The longer the potatoes stay submerged in the fat, the more flavor they’ll acquire.

8. If you’ve chosen to solidify the fat and potatoes, when ready to remove the potatoes for your salad, place the sauce pan once again over the stove and melt the fat over low heat once again and then fish out the fingerling potatoes.

---

Assembly

Ingredients:

• Mixed greens

• Green beans

• Cherry tomatoes, halved

• Nicoise olives, chopped

• 1 loin of tuna, a pound should suffice

Instructions:

1. Blanch your green beans by putting them in boiling water until slightly tender and drop them into an ice bath to stop the cooking process

2. Season tuna loin with salt and pepper.

3. Place a pan over medium-high heat and sear the sides with until you reach a desired doneness (Typically, tuna on a nicoise salad is served rare)

4. Gently smash the confit potatoes (this works best when they are cold)

5. In a separate pan, add a heaping spoonful of the saved fat from the confit potatoes and cook them on each side until golden brown

6. In a mixing bowl, toss your salad greens, cherry tomatoes, green beans, and chopped olives with the previously made salad dressing.

7. Enjoy!