Salade Nicoise

Ingredients

• 6 ripe tomatoes, cut into wedges
• 1 small cucumber, peeled and thinly sliced
• 4 small purple artichokes, or 100g young broad beans, podded
• 1 green pepper, deseeded and thinly sliced
• 4 spring onions, sliced
• 4 eggs
• 200g best-quality tuna in olive oil, drained, or 12 anchovy fillets
• 100g small black Nicoise olives
• 1 garlic clove, halved
• A large handful of basil leaves
• 6 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• Fine sea salt and black pepper

Before you cook

• Cut the tomatoes into wedges, salt them lightly, and leave them in a colander for ten minutes.
• Peel the cucumber, slice it thinly, and salt it in a separate colander.
• Trim the artichokes down to their pale hearts and slice them very thinly, or pod the broad beans and slip off their skins.
• Rub the inside of a wide shallow serving dish with the cut garlic clove.

Steps

1. Lower the eggs into a pan of boiling water and cook them for nine minutes.
2. Drain the eggs and sit them in cold water until they are cool enough to handle.
3. Peel the eggs and cut them into quarters.
4. Pat the salted tomatoes and cucumber dry and arrange them across the base of the garlic-rubbed dish.
5. Salt the tomatoes a second time and trickle over two tablespoons of the olive oil.
6. Scatter over the sliced artichokes or broad beans, the green pepper and the spring onions.
7. Break the tuna into large flakes over the top, or lay the anchovy fillets across in a lattice.
8. Tuck the egg quarters in among the vegetables.
9. Scatter the olives across the whole dish.
10. Season with black pepper and a final light sprinkle of salt over the tomatoes.
11. Pour over the rest of the olive oil and tear the basil leaves across the surface.
12. Take the dish to the table without tossing it and let people help themselves.