Niçard salad — France

This composed salad brings together raw and cooked vegetables, hard-boiled eggs, olives and either anchovies or tuna, arranged rather than tossed, and dressed simply with olive oil, salt and pepper. The dish is reported from Nice, on the French Mediterranean coast, and forms one of the standard starters of Provençal and Mediterranean cooking; it is also eaten as a light meal on its own in warm weather. Countless variants exist around the world, adapting the base recipe to whatever is on hand. To prepare it, ripe tomatoes are cut into wedges, radishes are sliced thin, and spring onion adds bite; hard-boiled eggs are quartered and set on top along with black olives and either salted anchovy fillets or good tinned tuna. Everything is arranged on a plate rather than mixed together, then finished with a generous drizzle of olive oil, a little wine vinegar, salt and pepper, and sometimes a few basil leaves. What marks this Nice preparation apart from other composed salads that borrow its name is the choice to arrange rather than toss the ingredients, keeping each element distinct on the plate, and the reliance on raw vegetables rather than cooked green beans or potatoes, which remains a point of frequent disagreement between cooks even within the region.