The colors and light of Nice, France's fifth largest city, have attracted artists such as Matisse, Chagall, Picasso, Chekhov, and Paganini. After it became part of France in 1860, it was a destination for Russian and British aristocrats, most notably Queen Victoria. But its cuisine is often overshadowed by Parisian sophistication.
Rosa Jackson operates Les Petits Farcis, a cooking school in Nice, and wrote the cookbook Niçoise: Market-Inspired Cooking from France's Sunniest City.
"Niçoise: Market-Inspired Cooking from France's Sunniest City" celebrates the wild plants and rustic cooking of the artists’ retreat. Photo courtesy of W.W. Norton & Company.
Evan Kleiman: Many of us are familiar with some of the food of Nice and we may not even know that's where it's from, things like salade niçoise and ratatouille. What is the region's history and how does its position in France influence its cuisine? Give us Nicoise Food 101.
Rosa Jackson: The most important thing to know about Nice is that for several centuries, it was not French. It was ruled by the kingdom of Savoy, which was Piedmont and Sardinia. They had their own language, which was Niçard, and some of the names of dishes in Nice actually come from that language. That's why they might sound a little unfamiliar, words like pissaladière, which is the caramelized onion flatbread. Even ratatouille, which is a word that most people know, actually comes from the language of Nice. The word "mescla," which most people know and refers to salad greens, is actually a word from the Niçoise language.
Nice has a cuisine that might look Italian on the surface because of its relationship to Italy but these dishes have also been adapted to the regions, so they're not exactly what you would eat in Italy. At the same time, they're not exactly French. I usually think of it as a Mediterranean cuisine. It falls under all of the Mediterranean cuisines and has relationships to all of them but it's most closely related to Italy.
Rosa Jackson refers to Niçoise cuisine as a cousin to Italian cooking. Photo by Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen.
It's why I've always loved Niçoise cuisine being sort of imbued in the cuisine of Italy. I see it as kind of a cousin.
That's right. It's not a sibling, more of a cousin.
Is the food of Nice an herbal cuisine? Does it rely very much on pantry condiments? Or is the food fairly transparent?
It's a cuisine that relies a lot on wild plants. We use a lot of thyme, bay leaf, and rosemary, which all grow wild in this area. Often, people will see these bouquets of herbs in my kitchen and say, "Oh, these look dry compared to what I have in my garden." And I say, "These are almost dry when they're picked because the climate is so dry here that the thyme that grows wild is never going to look like the fresh thyme that you have in your garden that you're watering." People always used what was growing in the wild. There are a lot of wild plants, like nettles and dandelions, that people might eat at this time of year.
Also, there aren't as many spices used in Niçoise cuisine as in some other parts of the Mediterranean. You'll find some saffron used. Cumin is not really part of the cuisine here. It's really more salt and pepper, quite simple flavors. Garlic, of course. But again, garlic isn't going to be in everything and it's not necessarily going to be in large amounts. It's really the ingredients. The freshness of the ingredients is going to shine through.
I can only imagine what Nice must be like during summer months when tourists descend.
It is a bit crazy.
Are tomatoes and eggplants everywhere during the summer?
They really are. The start of tomato season is really celebrated in Nice and it doesn't happen till around the middle of June. So in mid-June, you'll find the first field tomatoes from around Nice. People here really love that moment when they appear. Then we eat tomatoes every day for the next two or three months and in every form — cooked, in salads. I don't think a day goes by when I don't eat tomatoes during that season. That's why I don't feel the need to eat tomatoes once the season is finished. I might use some tomato coulis, which is the preserved tomato that we make at the end of the season, but my meals do not have much tomato in them between October and April.
Your cooking school is called Les Petits Farcis, which means little stuffed vegetables or little stuffed things. I would imagine that naming your school that means the people of Nice take their stuffed vegetables pretty seriously.
They do. In fact, this past weekend, there was a competition which takes place every year in a wine bar in Nice, called Cas de la Tour. They call it the World Championship of Petits Farcis. There are always about 20 entries, and it's judged by a panel of Michelin-starred chefs and winemakers, so it's taken very seriously. Each year, a winner is declared. Hundreds of people show up for this event.
It's a really humble dish that was originally created to use leftovers, and it was a way of stretching out small amounts of leftover meat but now it's a dish in its own right, and each family has their version of it. As the name suggests, the vegetables should be small. Small, colorful vegetables, that's very important.
For you as an eater, what do you love? The tomatoes? The zucchini? What is your favorite one?
That's a tough one. It's interesting because the filling is the same for each one, and when you fill a different vegetable with it, it's going to taste different. I think the small onion might be my favorite. Sometimes, I do peppers. I don't always do peppers because I like to use the skinny, long peppers. I think in California, they'd be the Anaheim peppers that are best for the petits farcis, and you cut them into little boats. I think the peppers are really nice with the filling. Tomatoes are good. This is the one dish where I don't use heirloom tomatoes. I choose the regular tomatoes but in a small size because they're the easiest ones to hollow out.
And they hold up better.
They hold up better. They don't collapse.
Let's talk about pan bagnat. Describe what it is and the strong feelings that emerge about the correct way to make them.
Pan bagnat literally translates as "bathed bread" or "soaked bread." It was a way of making salade Niçoise portable. It has the same ingredients as salade Niçoise but in a bun. The bun is drizzled with olive oil and red wine vinegar, and the juices of the vegetables, especially the tomato, soak into the bread along with the olive oil. When you eat it, if it's well made, it's dripping with olive oil and tomato juice, and it's been soaked for a while.
The idea was to wrap it up and carry it around. It was a worker's snack. Perhaps they'd been up since five or six in the morning doing manual labor, and pan bagnat would be eaten sometime in the middle of the morning or later in the day. Now, it's mainly a picnic food. It's often eaten on the beach. It's something that people here eat at any time of day, like many of the street foods of Nice.
There are many strong feelings about it. There are feelings about what vegetables can and can't go into it. For instance, cucumber is a controversial one. Most people would say no cucumber in pan bagnat but celery and thinly sliced radishes are good. We may also add raw artichoke and fava beans in season. It's not what people necessarily think of if I said "salade Niçoise in a bun." There are no cooked vegetables, there are no potatoes or green beans. It's not that kind of salade Niçoise. It's the raw one that's eaten in Nice.
What about tuna?
There's always tuna in pan bagnat. There are usually anchovies and also hardboiled egg, olives, and basil.
With all of that stuffed into a bread vehicle, I would imagine you need a particular type of bread. Maybe something super crusty isn't the way to go.
The bun for pan bagnat is usually quite crusty and it's a big, round bun. Sometimes, people will hollow out some of the center to fit more filling in and also to make it a bit less bready. Then you squeeze it together and eat it as best you can, which is kind of funny because in France, people are usually quite dignified about the way they eat things. With hamburgers, I'll often see people eating them with a knife and fork but pan bagnat, I've never seen anyone attack it with a knife and fork.
I love that. We have to talk about ratatouille. Is there a particular time during the summer when it's best to make it?
Yeah, I would say from mid-July to mid-August, if you're going to be very specific. For ratatouille, you need very ripe and sweet tomatoes. For it to be a really good dish, the tomato sauce itself has to be quite sweet. For me, the best time is really from July and you can go through September, but mid-July to mid-August is optimal ratatouille time.
Paint a picture for us of your type of ratatouille. Is it the kind that you might see in a tien, or is it more of a stew?
The word ratatouille literally means "stirred mishmash." It started off as a rustic dish of summer vegetables that were cooked together until they turned to mush. In the Larousse Gastronomique, the encyclopedia of French food, they translate it as "unappetizing stew." Then, it became refined over the years, so people started cooking the vegetables separately, making a tomato sauce separately, and mixing them together. This is the accepted, proper way to make ratatouille, which I put in my book. It's the way that I prefer to make it. The only catch is that it does require two to three pans on the stove and quite a bit of attention.
There's a cheater's way of making ratatouille, and I've been known to do it by just layering vegetables in a pot, letting them caramelize slightly on the bottom, pouring the tomato on top, and letting that deglaze the pan. But I would never dare to publish that in a Niçoise cookbook, because I do have a reputation to uphold here.
I have to say, having made it kind of in every way, because it was my mother's favorite dish, there really is nothing like cooking it all separately then mixing it together with a beautiful tomato sauce.
Yeah, it's the tomato, it's the concentration of the flavors when you make it that way, that makes it really good.
Ratatouille Niçoise
Summer vegetable stew
Serves 4
Living as I do in the home of ratatouille, this is not a recipe that I take lightly. I make it only in the height of summer when tomatoes are at their peak, since they are the key ingredient in this bright-colored vegetable stew. But you can get away with making it out of season (shh, don’t tell the mamies I said this!) if you use good-quality Italian passata, or strained tomatoes, especially if you have preserved them yourself during the summer (see page 337).
The name of the dish comes from the Niçoise word rata, or “mix,” and the French word touiller, meaning “to stir.” According to the Larousse Gastronomique, ratatouille once referred to “an unappetizing stew,” which is exactly what happens when ratatouille is assembled hastily and cooked for too long. It’s unlikely to ever taste bad if you make it with summer vegetables, but experienced Niçoise and Provençal cooks aim for clarity in the dish, preserving the taste, color, and texture of each vegetable. That means cooking the vegetables separately in olive oil and combining them only at the end. It’s a time-consuming dish to make, but one so versatile that the leftovers can feed me for days.
I often poach an egg in ratatouille, shakshuka-style, or spoon it onto toasted sourdough bread and top it with the puree of garlic, fresh basil, and olive oil known here as pistou (see page 343). You can also use this ratatouille as a stuffing for round zucchini or tomatoes, or even in a variation on Stuffed Squid (page 221). The most classic way to serve it is alongside grilled meat (especially lamb), chicken, or fish; I also love it with crisp-skinned sea bream or sea bass.
In the movie Ratatouille, the layered vegetables emerge from the oven as a perfectly formed dome. Any Niçois would recognize the Disney version of this dish as a tian, not a ratatouille, which is more of a joyous mishmash. Feel free to vary the proportions of the vegetables, keeping in mind that the quality of the tomato coulis makes or breaks the dish.
Ingredients
- 1 medium eggplant (about 1 pound/450 g), cut into ½-inch (1 cm) dice
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt (optional)
- 5 tablespoons (75 ml) extra-virgin olive oil
- 3 medium zucchini (about 1 pound/450 g), cut into ½-inch (1 cm) dice
- Sea salt
- 2 bell peppers, 1 red and 1 yellow (about 1 pound/450 g), cored, seeded, and cut into ½-inch (1 cm) dice
- 1 red onion, cut into ½-inch (1 cm) dice
- 1 to 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1½ cups (375 ml) Coulis de Tomates (page 337) or store-bought passata (Italian strained tomatoes)
- ½ teaspoon mild to medium-hot chile powder (optional)
- ½ cup (about 10 g) basil leaves, roughly torn, or more to taste
- Freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
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Optional but recommended step, so that the eggplant absorbs less oil and cooks a little faster: Place the diced eggplant in a colander set over a bowl. Sprinkle with the fine sea salt and toss with your hands, then cover with a plate and a small weight (such as a can of tomatoes) and set aside for 20 to 30 minutes, until the eggplant has given off some liquid. Pat the eggplant dry with paper towels or a dish towel.
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Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a medium frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the zucchini and cook, shaking and flipping it occasionally, until golden and softened (but not mushy), 5 to 7 minutes; sprinkle with salt toward the end of the cooking time (if you salt too early, the zucchini may soften too much). Transfer to a medium saucepan (this will later hold all the ratatouille ingredients) and set aside.
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Heat another 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in the frying pan and add the eggplant. Cover and cook over medium heat for 8 to 10 minutes, occasionally removing the lid and giving the eggplant a toss. When the eggplant is mostly golden, test a few pieces with the tip of a small knife to be sure they are soft. Transfer to the pan with the zucchini.
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Heat another 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat in the same pan (or do this in a separate pan at the same time as you cook the eggplant to speed things up) and add the peppers and a little salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the peppers start to soften, 5 to 7 minutes, then add the onions, the remaining 1 tablespoon oil, and another pinch of salt and continue cooking until the vegetables are soft and caramelized, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook over medium-low heat for another 2 minutes. Transfer the mixture to the saucepan.
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Add the tomato coulis, chile powder, and basil to the vegetables and stir gently with a rubber spatula, so as not to break up the vegetables. Season with salt to taste, and adjust the amount of chile powder and/or basil.
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Place the saucepan over very low heat and let the flavors combine for 5 to 10 minutes. Serve warm (not hot) or at room temperature. (Leftovers can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 3 days and served cold, at room temperature, or reheated.)
Coulis de tomates
Strained tomatoes
Makes 3 to 4 cups (750 ml to 1 l)
Although Italians often use the fleshy Roma or San Marzano tomatoes to make their coulis, which they call passata, these oval tomatoes are not commonly grown around Nice, so I choose whatever is ripest—usually a mix of different heirloom tomatoes. Because they can give off a lot of juice, it’s hard to predict exactly how much coulis they will produce. It also depends on how thick you want your coulis—I like to reduce it until I can see the bottom of the pan when I scrape it with a flat wooden spoon, ensuring that the tomato flavor is concentrated to its essence.
I usually keep the flavor of my tomato coulis neutral: no oil, no onions or garlic, no herbs. This way, I can easily take it in different directions, adding basil for ratatouille, garlic and oregano for pizza sauce, or fennel and orange zest for chicken with Pastis. If you’re making just enough tomato coulis for a particular dish, feel free to flavor it; I add basil stems as the tomatoes cook if I know that the finished sauce will contain the leaves. No matter how ripe the tomatoes, I add a small amount of sugar, as any Niçoise mamie or Italian nonna would, to balance their acidity as they cook.
And what about the skins and seeds? If you’re serious about making tomato coulis, I encourage you to invest in a food mill, or mouli-légumes—a kind of sieve with a handle that separates the pulp from the skins (I use the disk with the larger holes, as I prefer a slightly chunky coulis and see no need to eliminate the seeds). This is a multipurpose tool that will also do a great job of pureeing root vegetables or cooked apples, and it will remove the seeds from fruits like raspberries or blackberries if you’re making a sorbet or fruit coulis. In the absence of a food mill, you could simply cut the tomatoes in half before cooking, then fish out their skins using a fork at the end.
Ingredients
- 4 pounds (1.8 kg) very ripe tomatoes (about 12 medium)
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 2 teaspoons coarse sea salt
Instructions
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Cut the tomatoes into quarters (no need to core them, unless the core is particularly big and hard). Place them in a large nonreactive saucepan and add the sugar and salt.
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Set the pan over medium-high heat and squash the tomatoes using a wooden spatula so that they release some juice. Once there is at least ½ inch (1 cm) of juice in the bottom of the pan, let the tomatoes bubble over medium heat for 45 minutes to 1 hour, scraping the bottom of the pan with the spatula every few minutes to prevent them from sticking. At the end of this time, the coulis should be thick enough that when you scrape the bottom of the pan, the juices only slowly fill in the space. Remove from the heat.
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Strain the tomatoes through a food mill, using the disk with the largest holes, into a bowl, or remove the skins with a fork. Use immediately, or let cool to room temperature and store in the refrigerator or freezer.