{Salade Niçoise} Nice-Style Salad with Smashed Potatoes and Fried Capers Recipe

I know, it seems cliche but the first time I ever had Nice's eponymous salad -- Salade Niçoise -- was in the port of Nice. I was in high school on my first trip to France and was just swooning over everything from the architecture to the accents and, of course, the food. Adding tuna and egg to my salad seemed adult to me so I went for it. 

What Is Tuna Niçoise Salad?

When I was in culinary school, we had to make salade composeé on the regular. Translating to "composed salad" these are salads where every ingredient is arranged with intention on each individual plate. It's clearly a concept that came out of brigade kitchens where you had tons of hands to pull together a meal.

The best known of these composed salads is likely the Salade Niçoise (pronounced Sah-lahd Knee-swa-zeh). Translating to a Nice-style salad, the dish is so named becaust it's said to hail from the Southern French seaside town of Nice and is usually made by combining tomatoes, anchovies or tuna, French-style green beans, olives, and boiled eggs.

At its best it's a summery salad that's filling enough to be a complete meal but it's often made as an afterthought with subpar ingredients. Truth is, that very first Niçoise salad I had was underwhelming but it doesn't have to be that way.

A More Modern Nicoise Salad

On my latest trip to Provence, I was blown away by how excellent the quality of ingredients was, including standbys like this classic salad from Nice. The best version of Tuna Niçoise that I had when I traveled to France was loaded with fresh basil (I can never have too much basil) and fried capers and those two simple twists were total game changers. Taking a page from the very smart folks at Serious Eats, I also smashed and fried the potatoes and the result is a welcome update on this super classic salad that's just as chic as it is delicious.

Tips To Make Tuna Niçoise Salad

Like we say time and again around here, the quality of the ingredients will make or break this recipe. Here are tips to make it as flavorful and as effortlessly as possible: 

• Tuna Packed In Olive Oil: The tuna is really the star of this salad so you want it to be amazing. I suggest getting something phenomenal -- say, like Ortiz Tuna Belly in Olive Oil -- to make the most of it. 
• French Olives: Yes, pretty much any delicious olives will be great in this salad but I like going traditional and using the small black Niçoise olives. Grown on the "Le Cailletier" tree, these olives are meaty, a touch intense, and almost have a flavor like a big red wine. 
• Soft-Boiled Eggs: I'm not going to tell you how to boil your eggs but, personally, I'm partial to serving this salad with jammy soft-boiled eggs.
• Super Fresh Tomatoes: This is one of those recipes where you want uber-flavorful, middle of summer tomatoes. If you can't get those, go ahead and toss the tomatoes with salt and let them sit while you make the rest of the ingredients so you can bring out their best flavor. 
• Salt-Packed Capers: Okay, you get it -- top quality ingredients are the name of the game here. But, of all the ingredients, I insist you try this salad with salt-packed capers at least once. This is not really traditional as capers are often preserved in vinegar in the south of France but I'm not a fan because the caper flavor gets overtaken by the vinegar. Instead, look for salt-packed capers like these from Southern Italy and then soak them in water for 15 minutes (they rinse them off and dry them really well before frying them) and you'll be rewarded with capers that, well, actually taste flowery and herbaceous like capers should taste!
• Make It Ahead! That was a lot of tips but the top one of all is that you can actually make most of this salad ahead of time. Go ahead and mix the dressing, blanch the beans, boil the eggs and potatoes all up to 2 days ahead of time. Then all you have to do is fry the potatoes and capers before serving!