French Salade niçoise - Tuna Salad with Green Beans and Egg

France's best-known salad, and in Nice a full lunch. Everything is arranged side by side rather than tossed, so each ingredient stays recognisable - and so the vinaigrette does not pool at the bottom of the bowl.

• 35 minutes
• 4 servings
• Main course

• pescatarian
• gluten-free
• nut-free
• lactose-free
• supports the nerves
• high in protein
• vitamin-k-reich

Ingredients

• 400 g Potatoes (waxy, boiled in their skins and sliced while lukewarm)
• 400 g Tomatoes (ripe, in wedges)
• 300 g Green beans (trimmed, blanched 4 minutes and plunged into ice water)
• 220 g Eggs (four, soft-boiled and quartered)
• 200 g Tuna (canned) (in olive oil, well drained; the sodium figure here is an estimate, as our database has no value stored for this ingredient yet)
• 150 g Lettuce (the inner, firm leaves)
• 80 g Red onion (in wafer-thin rings)
• 50 g Black olives (pitted - classically the small black olives of Nice)
• 40 g Olive oil (extra virgin)
• 20 g Red wine vinegar
• 8 g Basil (torn)
• 2 g Salt (sparingly - olives and tuna already bring salt)

Instructions

1. Boil the potatoes in their skins for 20 minutes, cool briefly, peel and slice them while still lukewarm.
2. Blanch the green beans in fiercely boiling water for exactly four minutes and drop them straight into iced water - that keeps them bright green and crisp.
3. Boil the eggs for seven minutes, cool them and cut into quarters. The yolk should still be creamy in the middle.
4. Whisk olive oil, red wine vinegar and salt into a vinaigrette and toss the still-warm potatoes in it - warm they absorb the dressing, cold they no longer do.
5. Lay the lettuce leaves on a platter and arrange potatoes, beans, tomatoes, tuna, eggs, onion rings and olives on it in groups.
6. Drizzle over the remaining vinaigrette and scatter the torn basil. Mix only at the table.

Blanchieren und Abschrecken sind ein Arbeitsgang

The iced water does more than stop the cooking. It also fixes the chlorophyll before the acids released from inside the cells can turn it into grey-green pheophytin. That is why beans left sitting in warm water look olive within ten minutes.

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