How To Make A Great Salad Nicoise

The Salad Nicoise is more commonly called a Nicoise Salad and is pronounced "Ni-suaz". This particular salad originally comes from a region in the South of France called Nice and involves a number of different raw ingredients the details of which will provided for you later on in this article. Most authentic Salad Nicoise's use only raw ingredients there are some restaurants who make this salad and will include rice, pasta, potatoes, cheese and cooked vegetables in theirs.

But the real beauty of this salad is that not only is relatively easy to prepare and make but the way in which the ingredients are presented. Not only does it contain lots of color and texture but it is full of flavors which combine well together. Below we list the ingredients as well as provide step by step instructions so that you can have a go at making this particular salad for yourself.

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 - take the tomatoes, cut this into six pieces each, place them in a dish, and sprinkle a little salt over them. Allow them to stand for around hour as this allows any juices to drain out of them. Whilst preparing the tomatoes you can put the eggs on to cook. It is best if you allow around 5 minutes once the water is boiling to ensure that the eggs are hard boiled.

Step 2 - You need to now take the cucumber and cut it in half down its complete length. After cutting in half take a spoon and scoop out as many of the seeds inside. Once you have removed as many of the seeds you need to then slice each half of the cucumber which has not been peeled up. Make sure that each slice you cut is not to thin or thick. After you have finished preparing the cucumber you can now slice up the peppers and the spring onions. It is best if you can slice these two ingredients for the salad as thinly as possible.

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 step you need to take in order to make a great tasting Salad Nicoise is to prepare the dressing. So into a jug or jar place the olive oil, red wine vinegar and lemon juice and blend well together and also season it with a little freshly ground black pepper and salt. Once combined you just very gently drizzle this dressing over the top of the salad and before taking to the table to serve roughly tear up some of the basil leaves and scatter these over the top of it. Now take it to the table and enjoy.