I respect Thierry and met him a few times in my career. This is a nice salad, especially right now when our gardens are overflowing with potatoes, beans, tomatoes, and other great ingredients. However, this is not a salade Nicoise. I wish folks would realize that there is nothing wrong with giving something a new name. Cultural dishes evolve through the history of its people. To remove a dish from a region and then change the fundamental reasons for its genesis is to change the dish.

Jacques Medecin wrote “At its most basic — and genuine — it is made predominately of tomatoes, consists exclusively of raw ingredients (apart from hard-boiled eggs), and has no vinaigrette dressing: The tomatoes are salted three times and moistened with olive oil. However, nowadays even the Niçois often combine anchovies and tunny fish in the same salad, though traditionally this was never done — tunny used to be very expensive and was reserved for special occasions, so the cheaper anchovies filled the bill.”

Renee Graglia, ambassador of cuisine Nissarde and former president of the Cercle de la Capelina d’Or, a group devoted to defending traditional Niçoise cuisine once said, “Our cooking was simple food for poor people. At first, Salade Niçoise was made only with tomatoes, anchovies, and olive oil.” The Cercle de la Capelina d’Or’s salade Niçoise includes tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, salted anchovies, tuna, spring onions, small black Nice olives, and basil. You are allowed to add young, tender broad beans out of the pod, young, raw artichokes, and thin green peppers. Salade Niçoise should be made in a wood bowl rubbed with garlic and you can only season the salad with olive oil and salt — though it is permissible if no one is looking to add a bit of pepper and a few drops of vinegar.

Henri Heyraud, chef, teacher, and author of La Cuisine a Nice, written in 1903, included tomatoes, anchovies, artichokes, olive oil, red peppers, and black olives. Auguste Escoffier, perhaps France’s most famous chef to have ever lived, is credited with popularizing the addition of boiled potatoes and green beans to salade Niçoise. Graglia derided Escoffier: “He wasn’t even a Niçois.” True, the heretic Escoffier was born in Villeneuve-Loubet, a town that is a full 20 minutes away.

And so the Nicoise debate continues...

Francois