How To Go About Making A Salad Nicoise

A Nicoise (pronounced Ni-Suaz) Salad originally comes for the Nice region of France and sometimes is more often referred to as the Salad Nicoise. Although a truly authentic version of this salad contains mainly raw ingredients (except for the eggs and anchovy fillets), there are some restaurants now who like to include other ingredients into their recipes. Some restaurants are now beginning to add pasta or potatoes or cheese, rice or cooked vegetables into theirs.

The real beauty of this particular salad over many others you may have tried is in the way that it is presented. It is not only full of color and texture but flavor as well because of the ingredients that are used. Below we now provide you with details of the ingredients along with the steps that you will need to take in order to produce a great tasting and looking Nicoise Salad.

In order to make this salad you need to get together the following ingredients which are sufficient to make enough for 4 people to enjoy. 1. Ten large ripe tomatoes 2. One clove of garlic 3. One large cucumber 4. One each of the following:- Green and Red Peppers 5. Six spring onions 6. Twelve anchovy fillets which come in a tin of olive oil 7. 125 grams black olives 8. Four eggs that need to be cooked by being boiled 9. 90 milliliters of extra virgin olive oil 10. One tablespoon of red wine vinegar 11. The juice of one lemon. The above three ingredients will be used to make the dressing for the salad. 12. A number of different salad leaves along with a good handful of fresh basil. Once you have the ingredients you can now get on with making the salad using the steps we provide below.

Step 1 - First get the ten tomatoes and cut these each into six pieces. Place on a dish and sprinkle with a little salt and allow them to stand for about 30 minutes in order that the juice in them can drain out. As you start to prepare the tomatoes you can put the eggs onto boil. In order to produce really good hard boiled eggs it is best if you allow them to stay in the water for around 5 minutes.

Step 2 - Now take the cucumber and cut this in half along the entire length of it. Once cut in half you now need to scoop out as many of the seeds inside then you can slice up the cucumber. However you should not either peel the cucumber of slice it too thinly. Then after preparing the cucumber you can move on to preparing the peppers and the spring onions. Both of the peppers and spring onions should be very thinly sliced.

Step 3 - Now you need to take the garlic clove and remove the out skin and then cut it in half. Take the two halves of the garlic clove and rub them around the inside of the bowl or bowls into which the salad is going to be placed. Preferably use bowls which are made from wood as they are better able to hold the flavor and scent of the garlic.

Step 4 - As soon as you are ready to serve the salad, take your salad leave and lay these over the base of the bowl. The tomatoes that you left to drain can now be used and laid on top of the leaves along with the hard boiled eggs, which have been cut, into quarters. Then onto this, you need to place the peppers, spring onions and cucumber, as well as the anchovy fillets, which should have been drained. Then over the top, you scatter the olives.

Step 5 - The final thing you need to do before you can serve the Salad Nicoise to family or guests is make the dressing. In order to do this you take the lemon juice, olive oil and red wine vinegar and place in a bowl or jar before adding a small amount of freshly ground black pepper and salt to season. Once all the ingredients are together mix until well combined and then very slowly drizzle it over the salad. Finally take the fresh basil leaves and tear them up into pieces and sprinkle over the top of the salad. It really is that simple to make a great tasting Nicoise Salad.