Mediterranean salad (Salade Nicoise) | The French Chef Season 7 | Julia Child

Julia Child makes the Mediterranean salad that’s a meal in itself. Lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, beans, eggs, tuna fish, capers, anchovies — all spiced with the authentic flavor of the Riviera, and filmed in Nice.

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-These are the makings of salade Niçoise, meaning the way they make it in Nice on the Mediterranean. This is the great big open market in Nice. It’s an absolutely marvelous place, and it stretches for about a mile and a half along the outside of the old city called La Vieille Ville,

And it’s just beyond La place Gambetta. And everybody comes here from all over the area, marvelous people, and they start at 6:00 in the morning, and they go full tilt until 12:30, and by 1:00, everything is washed up, cleaned up, and it’s turned into a parking lot.

You’d never know it had been a market. You can get everything here that you could possibly use for the makings of a great salad. We’re making salade Niçoise today on “The French Chef.” ♪♪ ♪♪ -“The French Chef” is made possible by a grant from the Polaroid Corporation. -Welcome to “The French Chef.”

I’m Julia Child. We’re going to make salade Niçoise. I think this is one of the most famous of the composed salads just because it happens to be an awfully good composition or combination that everyone likes. It has potatoes, French potato salad, and it has tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs

And anchovies and tuna fish and capers and olives and string beans and lettuce, and the marvelous thing about it is that you can make it all ahead in sections. And you can use it as a first course, but I think it just makes a marvelous lunch

Because you have everything you could possibly need, and it’s nourishing and beautiful and very good to eat. And the first thing we have to have because it is a salad is a dressing, a French dressing, and that doesn’t mean something red that comes in a bottle but something that’s made by hand.

And because it’s a salade Niçoise, I’m going to put a big piece of garlic in it using a new Swiss garlic press. You can, of course, leave out the garlic, but I think that’s too bad to do. Ugh! And I like this press because it’s very easy to clean out. You see?

And just scrape it all out when you’re done. And then this is a patent system, sort of my own invention, but I think it’s a very good one of making a very fine puree of the garlic with a little bit of salt. I put about 1/4 teaspoon of salt in there

And then a little bit of wine vinegar and a little bit of lemon juice just to wash it all around, and then it’s going to go into a larger affair and turn into a dressing if I can get it all in here nicely. That’s a slightly bigger thing.

Sometimes, I make this in a screw-top jar, which works out very nicely, and now, we want to have a little bit of dry mustard, about 1/2 teaspoon. I want to make about 1/2 cup. I’m not exactly sure. It’ll depend on how things turn out… and a little pepper, fresh pepper,

And we have a little bit of lemon juice, and I’ll put in a little bit more and a little more vinegar but not too much because you can always add a little vinegar at the end, and then beat this all up, and I’m going to start in with

About 1/2 cup of the very, very best olive oil, beating all the while, and the proportions of a… This is called a vinaigrette, and the proportions, I think, very often, you see them as one vinegar or lemon juice to three of oil,

But I think that just makes much too strong a taste of vinegar because if you have too much vinegar, then that spoils the wine, and you don’t want that to happen. That’s very nice. Of course, the garlic is awfully good with it, and I’m going to put in a little bit of basil.

If you have fresh basil, that would be nice, too, but the very important thing in any French dressing that you have the best oil and the best vinegar, and then you can make a very simple dressing just like this. And then the next thing in this salad is going to be

French potato salad, which is called pommes à l’huile, or potatoes with an oil dressing, and that means that it does… They’re not covered with mayonnaise. You can put mayonnaise on afterwards, but pommes à l’huile is just potatoes with a very good vinaigrette, and I think the eternal problem with making a potato salad

Is to get potatoes that will hold together after you’ve cooked them and keep their shape. And I’ve been doing some research on potatoes, and I find that they’re a very difficult if not even a very neurotic vegetable. You never know how they’re going to turn out,

And even the people who grow them don’t know how because they’ll be one way in one piece of property and another in another, and you just have to trust that your market knows what they’ve bought and that they have bought a boiling potato, and this one is a boiling potato,

So it said, or all-purpose, and I have found in this problem that using a steamer is… And steaming them in their jackets like this seems to work out quite well because they do seem to hold their shape fairly well when they’re steamed, and that’s how it looks, and it has holes in it,

And you can use a colander or a sieve or whatever you like, but you just set the steamer over boiling water and put a cover on it, and I’ve found with these sort of medium-sized potatoes, they took about 20 minutes. Then you poke a knife into them when they’re done,

And I think it’s… You can buy a vegetable steamer. Just ask for one. And it certainly was a great fun shopping for salade Niçoise in Nice itself, and the thing to do is to go in the very early morning when everything is at its very freshest, including the potatoes!

This is very early morning. Bonjour. [ Speaking French ] Salade Niçoise. [ Conversing in French ] -Oui, madame. Oui, madame. -Tres bien. -Merci. Merci bien, madame. -Merci beaucoup. -Merci beaucoup. -Au revoir. -Bonne continuation. -“Bonne continuation,” that means, “Have a good time the rest of the day.” I bought red potatoes, red-skinned potatoes,

But these ones, these all-purpose ones seem to slice up very nicely. The important thing in making the pommes à l’huile is to slice them while they’re still warm and to season them while they’re still warm too, and then the dressing goes into them. So here they go into the bowl,

And they have kept their shape reasonably well. I’m going to treat them very gently. In France, they often speak of potatoes with chair jaune, which means, “with yellow flesh,” and that… They’re supposed to hold together, but I’m not sure that they do any better,

And these are going to have a little bit of onion or shallot flavoring. I’m going to put in some shallot, or you could put scallions in. Just chop them up. I don’t think you could have potato salad without a little scallions or shallot in,

And then they should have a little bit of salt and pepper because having steamed them, they didn’t have any seasoning at all, and there’s your little bit of pepper, and then… This is atypical of this. You should have a little tiny bit of white wine or chicken stock, about 2 or 3 tablespoons.

And then a little bit of water because you want to dilute the wine a little bit, and the reason for this is that you want the potatoes to absorb a little bit of liquid so that they won’t absorb so much oil, and then you very gently turn them around

And let them sit for a while until they will absorb this little bit of liquid, and while they’re doing that, we’ve got to have some lettuce, so I shall go over to where the lettuce lives. And this would have a nice big fresh green head of Boston lettuce,

Which in Boston, of course, they call native lettuce, and wash it off in a big sink, in a big sink full of cold water. And then you can shake it up and down like that in a colander to dry it. You’ve got to get off the excess water, or you can use…

This is a French salad basket. They used to have the kind that you’d just have to swing around like that, which was an awful nuisance, and this one has a twirligig, and it goes round and round like that, and it gets the… And it works extremely well.

I’ve already done it, so it wouldn’t splatter all over me. The best thing to do is to do it in the sink, and then it doesn’t splatter all over you. But we have an even better salad thing, I think, which is this Swiss model, which has a basket and a ratchet attachment,

And it has a string, and you put your lettuce in it, and then you pull the string, and it goes back and forth, and, you see, it’s going one way, and then it goes the other way, and the great thing about this is that it… All the water stays inside here,

And these are made by little old Swiss ladies in tennis shoes, and if you want to find it, you’d just have to go to Switzerland and look for those little old ladies. I have not seen one, unfortunately, yet imported into this country. And then after you’ve gotten the excess water

Off the lettuce, it should be dry. It should be wrapped in a towel. My sister-in-law always puts hers in a pillowcase! I don’t know if it’s a double or single pillowcase, but you want to wrap it up and not press it because the towel will absorb the excess moisture,

And then I think it’s a very good idea to wash the lettuce and wrap it into the towel and put it into the refrigerator quite a bit of time ahead of when you’re going to use it, like, about an hour, and then you’re really sure that all the water is off.

Now, salade Niçoise is really, oh, you could say it’s kind of an antipasto salad. Antipasto means, “before the pasta,” and it comes from Italian, and Nice was part of Italy until 1860. And then Italy withdrew, and Nice was left to her own, and antipasto really comes naturally to Nice

Because of the Italian past, and it means eggs and capers and anchovies and things like that, and at this wonderful big market in Nice, you can get absolutely everything you need, including the local salted anchovies, which have a really good flavor. [ Conversing in French ] These are salted anchovies, aren’t they?

-Oui. -Yes. How long will they keep in salt? -Two weeks. -Two weeks, huh? Oh, bien. -Well, how much you want? -Five. -Five? -Five. -Five fish. -Five fish. Hello. [ Speaking French ] Tres bien. Merci. There. There are our five anchovies, and these are just the same type that we got in Nice.

I got a whole bunch of them. Keep them in a bowl, and they keep much longer than 2 weeks than the amount he said they’ll keep, practically 2 years as long as they’re covered in salt and kept in the refrigerator. And then when you buy them,

You take them, and you wash off the salt, and then you soak them in a bowl of water, oh, for… It depends on really how long they’ve been salted. You’ll have to try one out to see how they taste. These, the salt soaked for about 40 minutes,

And then you take them out with double forks, and I think I’d better put on my glasses, and you want to fillet them, and there’s just a bone that goes right through, and there’s a fillet on each side of the bone. See? That comes out very nicely.

You can do these with your hands, which you’d get awfully fishy, so I think it’s much better doing it with forks, and this is slightly picky work as many of these things are, but I think they really have… I love the taste of them, and then you can give them your own flavor.

You can put on oregano and other things. Then you just lay them in the little dish, and they’re rather fragile. You shouldn’t take them… You shouldn’t do them too much ahead of time because the salt, of course, acts as a preservative, and as soon as they’re out of their salt,

They’re out of their preservative. I’ll do one… start another one, anyways, so you can see. You scrape it along the backside and just to separate it. There. And then after you have done your five anchovies, you want to put a little dressing on them, so I shall put a little on here,

And this will give them a very nice flavor. And don’t do that much more than about an hour before you’re going to serve them. And now, by this time, the potatoes will have been absorbed most of the liquid, and anything that they haven’t absorbed, you can pour off,

Or you can leave in however you feel. I’ll pour a little bit off, and then they’re ready to have the dressing on, and they’re still fairly warm. And that just has a little dressing on there, and then that gets very gently turned up, and these, you can do ahead.

You can put them in the refrigerator if you want because you can… And they’re perfectly good the next day. They have a very, very nice taste, and then for the other ingredients, you have string beans, and this, of course, you can do ahead. You could do blanched string beans the French way

And refresh them in cold water, and then they’re all ready to use for salade Niçoise the next day because they have kept their lovely green color, and that’s… And then we have hard-boiled eggs and tuna and olives and capers and tomatoes, and we’re really ready to assemble the salad.

As you see, you can have all of these parts ready. Now, where’s my tuna? There’s my capers, and there are the olives, so I’m really all ready, so I’m going to start assembling on a large platter. I rather like doing this on a platter because I think it’s such a pretty arrangement,

And I like to see how it looks. And here is the lettuce, which is dried properly, and I think a very important trick in the salade Niçoise is to season… What did I do with my salad dressing? There it is…is to season each item separately. Some people make it,

And they make a perfectly beautiful arrangement, and then they pour the dressing over, and then they have to toss it, but I don’t think that makes a pretty arrangement because I think… I mean, then you toss it, and then you lose the lovely design, so I think assemble it at the last minute

Because you can get everything ready, and I’ve got the lettuce arranged, so it will come around at the edge of the dish, and I think it’s always important to use colorful arranging tools. Purple and orange, I think, add to the excitement, and these, you’ll have to arrange rather carefully,

And if you’ve found that a little bit… This lacks a little bit of dressing, you can sprinkle a little bit more on. And then the next thing that… And that just stays there, and then you get ready for what your next thing is going to have. We’re going to have… We have tomatoes,

And we have the potato salad, and I’m going to put the potato salad in the middle. You have to make out a little plan. I have a plan here, which looks so awful, I won’t show it to you, but I’m going to put the tomatoes in groups around the outside.

I shall make six spaces here. If you don’t make some kind of a plan, you can end up without the kind of design you had hoped you might have. So I’m arranging six groups of tomatoes, and then they will have to be also separately dressed,

A little, tiny bit of salt on each bit… …and then a little dressing. And then we have the green beans, and these, you do not dress until the last moment. Luckily, I have a little extra dressing left because I knew I wasn’t going to have enough dressing.

I like to make dressing also in a jar because you can shake it up. Now we’ll do the beans. If you do them… If you season the beans too soon, they can lose their nice fresh color, so I wouldn’t… I don’t think those should be seasoned any more than about 5 minutes

Before you’re going to serve them. Those are going to be in four piles. Some…When we were in Nice, we had some salade Niçoises without potatoes, and we had some without beans, and sometimes it varies very much, but I think the classic combination always has the beans and the potatoes.

I love potatoes, so I always like to have them. Now, we have hard-boiled eggs, HB eggs, halved, which I’m going to put where they will fit in around here. This salad is going to serve about… will serve four to six people, so it just depends on how many hard-boiled eggs you like

And will fit, and also in that same great market, we found two other parts of the salade Niçoise — capers and olives. Where do these olives come from? -Olives Venice. -Olives Venice? Lovely little olives. -A specialty in Nice. -This is a special, speciality of Nice. And they have a special taste?

-Yes, very special. -I would like 100 grams of these olives. -Yes, right. -Yeah? [ Speaking French ] The olives I bought, they were very small, but the capers were very big. Oh, a big bucket of capers. Great big… Great big capers in vinegar. Bien. [ Speaking French ]

No. They don’t have them in salt, just a vinaigre. Oh, even bigger ones than that. These are the great big capers that they have there in Nice, but these came salted. I got them at our Italian market, and what you do with these, it’s the same general thing

As what you do with the anchovies. You wash all the salt off, and then you soak them. I soak them just in…cold water. And then you season them with a little vinegar and white wine, and they’re absolutely delicious, and we also have olives, and I have…

These are the little, tiny olives from Nice, and I want to put those all around. I think if you have an Italian market anywhere near you, you’d find a lot of these things. And the Italian olives are quite a bit like the Nice ones,

But the lovely thing about buying the ones there in Nice is that they’re… It’s just a natural pack, and there’s no chemical preservatives in them, and then you have to have tuna fish, which goes right… I’m going to put that right on top, there. This is just a very typical…

As you can see, that makes just a fine hearty salad there, and then top it with a little bit of parsley. And so there you’ve got the anchovies, which are over the eggs and the capers, and then you have the tuna in the middle, and you have the potatoes,

And you’ve really got a great salad, and I’ll put a little more parsley on, like that, and then we’re really ready to serve it. And I think that as with any salad like this, you should serve it, really, just about as soon as it’s made, within about, well, 5 or 10 minutes

Because otherwise, the lettuce would wilt, and this is too beautiful to wilt. There. I’m going to serve you some, so you’ll see how it looks. There’s a nice big piece of lettuce and two eggs, and you can see the real reason for dressing it all because I think it would be a shame

To bring it into the dining room and then toss it all up and mess everything up when you’ve spent so much time making it look pretty. And with this, all you’d need to serve would be some French bread, and that’s all you need for lunch!

You’ll just have everything… You have it made, as they say. And there, that’s how that looks, and everybody just adores this. Now, with this, you could serve a nice muscadet or a Pouilly, or you could serve a Rose de Provence. That would be the wine they would probably serve most

In lunch, I mean, in Nice. I think this is a perfect luncheon dish. You’ve got your eggs and your potatoes and your tuna and your anchovies, and it’s light but filling, and you really couldn’t do better in Nice itself. So that’s all for today on “The French Chef.” This is Julia Child.

Bon appétit! ♪♪ ♪♪ -“The French Chef” has been made possible by a grant from the Polaroid Corporation. ♪♪ Julia Child is coauthor of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volumes I and II.” ♪♪