Salade Niçoise — Composed Niçoise Salad

Ingredients

• 4 ripe tomatoes, Coeur de Boeuf variety preferred, quartered
• 4 small artichoke hearts, sliced paper-thin
• 150 g fava beans, shelled, when in season
• 8 radishes, quartered
• 1 green bell pepper, sliced into fine rings
• 4 spring onions, sliced
• 2 celery hearts, cut on the bias
• 4 eggs, hard-boiled 8 minutes at a rolling simmer, shocked in ice water, quartered
• 200 g oil-packed tuna, ventresca grade, packed in olive oil
• 8 anchovy fillets, salt-packed, rinsed; soaked in whole milk 15 minutes, then drained
• 80 g Niçoise olives, Cailletier cultivar, whole and unpitted
• 1 small handful fresh basil, torn by hand
• For the vinaigrette
• 90 ml extra-virgin olive oil, Provençal preferred
• 30 ml red wine vinegar
• 1 pinch fleur de sel
• 1 pinch black pepper, freshly ground
• For the plate
• 1 clove garlic, halved, for rubbing the serving plate
• 250 ml whole milk, for soaking anchovies

Method

1. 1
   Salt the quartered tomato segments lightly and leave them cut-side up for 10 minutes. Surface moisture will bead and retreat; the flesh will appear slightly contracted and more concentrated in colour. Meanwhile, soak the rinsed anchovy fillets in whole milk for 15 minutes, then drain and pat dry.
2. 2
   Prepare the vinaigrette: combine the fleur de sel and red wine vinegar in a small bowl and stir until the salt dissolves. Whisk in the extra-virgin olive oil in a thin stream to form a loose emulsion. The dressing should appear briefly opaque and smell sharply of vinegar balanced by ripe oil.
3. 3
   Rub the wide, flat serving plate firmly with the cut face of the garlic clove. A faint, warm garlic scent should rise from the surface — the plate is ready.
4. 4
   Dress each raw vegetable component — tomatoes, paper-thin artichoke hearts, fava beans, radishes, bell pepper rings, spring onions, and celery — separately with a measured spoonful of vinaigrette. Each element must glisten individually and carry its own distinct seasoning before it touches the plate. This is where the dish lives or dies: components dressed together, or tossed in common, will bleed into one another and the composed structure collapses entirely.
5. 5
   Arrange the dressed vegetables in deliberate, distinct zones across the flat plate — never overlapping groups, never mounded into a bowl. The composition should read as a map of separate flavour territories.
6. 6
   Place the ventresca tuna, broken into generous flakes, and the drained anchovy fillets across the vegetables. Lay the quartered hard-boiled eggs — yolks set to a jammy, deep-gold centre — last, at the perimeter. Scatter the whole, unpitted Niçoise olives across the plate.
7. 7
   Finish with torn basil leaves placed by hand. Hold the finished plate at cool ambient temperature, 14–16 °C, for a few minutes before service. The olive oil must flow freely when the plate is tilted slightly, and the tomato should release a faint, sweet volatile aroma at close range — not the flat, cold silence of refrigeration.