Cookbook review in progress: Rosa Jackson's 'Niçoise''

So far: three recipes thrill, one fails. Plus nice things from Nice to make for Bastille Day.

Happy almost-Bastille-Day, francophile cook!

I don’t know why it has taken me three months after the publication of Niçoise — Rosa Jackson’s book about the cooking of Nice — to get my hands on a copy and start cooking. Maybe the onset of official summer was needed to kick my butt in gear to dive into the book, subtitled ‘Market Inspired Cooking from France’s Sunniest City.’

Somehow in the past I’d never thought that seriously about the cooking of Nice. I’ve never visited the city — only passed through in a train, when I was 16. My exposure to its cuisine was limited to Cuisine Niçoise, a cookbook by the city’s longtime mayor Jacques Medecin, which I used to own but threw it away in 1991 when Thierry saw it on my shelf and told me Medecin was a fascist. (I wrote about it last year in a post focused on salade niçoise.)

Now suddenly, with the French seaside sounding so lovely, the Paris Summer Olympics on the horizon and le Quatorze Juillet (Bastille Day!) coming up this Sunday, a review fe…