Salade Niçoise, Beautifully Bastardized

Recipe by: Leslie Brenner

The nice people of Nice, France cannot stand the way the rest of the world bastardizes their signature salad. But what has come to be known stateside (and in England, and elsewhere) as Salade Niçoise is pretty damn good. So why not go with it? Even if it’s wrong, it took off for a reason.

If you were to Google “authentic salade niçoise,” you’d turn up many references to authoritative versions. The most oft-cited is from a book called Cuisine Niçoise by Jacques Médecin. I used to own a copy, but when I first met my husband Thierry in 1991 and he spotted it on my shelf, he told me that Médecin — who was the longtime mayor of Nice — was a fascist. So I threw the book away.

Wish I hadn’t! After a good deal of searching, I managed to find Médecin’s entire description of the dish quoted in a French cookbook in my possession, Le Grand Livre de la Cuisine Française by Jean-François Piège:

“What crimes hav…