Salade niçoise

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 160gtinned tuna — in oil, drained
• 2eggs
• 200gpotatoes — small and waxy
• 150ggreen beans
• 3ripe tomatoes
• 30gblack olives
• 4anchovy fillets
• 1½ tbspolive oil
• 1 tbspwhite vinegar
• 1 tspdijon mustard
• 1shallot
• 1 small handfulbasil
• to tastesalt and pepper

Method

6 steps

1. boil · 16m

   Potatoes into cold salted water and simmered until a knife slides in, with the beans dropped into the same pan for the last four minutes so they still squeak.

2. boil · 9m

   Eggs lowered into water already boiling for seven minutes, then straight into cold. Seven gives a set white with the yolk still soft in the middle — for a yolk that soft, use eggs that are properly fresh.

3. chop · 6m

   Tomatoes into wedges and salted in a bowl on their own. The juice they give up in ten minutes goes into the dressing rather than the bottom of the plate.

4. fold · 3m

   Vinegar, mustard, finely chopped shallot and those tomato juices whisked with the oil until it thickens and stops separating.

5. fold · 4m

   Potatoes sliced while still warm and turned in half the dressing. Warm potato drinks it in; cold potato only wears it.

6. finish · 6m

   Arranged in groups rather than tossed: potatoes, beans, tomatoes, tuna in big flakes, eggs halved, olives and anchovies over. The rest of the dressing and the basil go on at the table — dressed in the kitchen it has wilted into a heap by the time it arrives.