The Niçoise salad from the Lou Countéa restaurant, we tasted it by chance. A Sunday. Passing through Gilette, in the Estéron valley. A restaurant on the village square, without fuss, with a scribbled slate of local specialties, including the Niçoise salad.
We were not disappointed with the sensory journey. A mosaic of flavors and colors, divinely cut crunchy vegetables, fruity tomatoes, tender fava beans, unglazed tuna. Perfect taste consistency.
We licked up the plate, yet full, and for cheap: 12.50 euros. It’s a change from some establishments on the coast that charge the specialty nearly 20 euros and still with a ton of green salad to make the volume. So, we decided to devote a report to the seasonal specialty, full of flavors and colors, through this address labeled Cuisine Nissarde since 2019 and only 36km from Nice.
The example of the cordon-bleu mother
Already cutting the vegetables, here is Joël Laugier. The boss of the sign. The conductor, the scriptwriter of the ingredients of the country. “At Gilette for 7 generations”, announces in the preamble the talkative septuagenarian. Maternal grandparents, bakers in the village. Grocer parents. A cordon-bleu mum: “She cooked a lot. She did everything. I stole a few gnocchi from her, but I also learned on the job by watching her make ravioli, balls, kinds of ravioli without dough with just balls of floured remaining stuffing, trulle… “
After a parenthesis as a restaurateur for 20 years in Cagnes-sur-Mer, at La Bergerie, then Le Gril du boucher, Joël, who was also 1is deputy mayor under the mandate of René Morani, from 1982 to 1988, returned to the village square in 2010. He transferred the grocery store a few meters away and created Lou Countéa. The count. “Actually, I was wrong. They say La Countéa, but it doesn’t matter…”
never winter
So, this niçoise salad. What does she represent for Joel? Do clients come to him only for her? “Frankly, I don’t know, because we have different references. We make authentic local cuisine, so people know that here they will find the real Niçoise salad, from March to October. In winter, we no longer offer it.”
Supply? “If you want fresh pickings, good vegetables that don’t take up too much of the fridge, it’s 3 times a week. I leave Gilette at 6:30 a.m. and go around the MIN Saint-Augustin and the producers. For the moment , I take tomatoes from Carpentras, but by June 20, they will be from Nice and the surrounding area. I never buy those from Spain or even Italy. The rest of the ingredients come from farmers in Colomars, Plan -de-Gattières, Saint-Isidore, Cagnes-sur-Mer… I do like my father, who knew all the producers in the area.”
The pan bagnat in the loop of the pure and hard
Anaïs, 37, does not miss a crumb of the interview. She also gets her hands dirty. Inheritance assured. Still with the Cuisine Nissarde stamp in the sights: “We value this label because it expresses our heritage and represents our roots. Since 2019, we have always obtained it.”
Just to make them salivate even more move lec (the fine beaks of the gastronomy of Nice), another label adds to the talented sauce of Laugier father and daughter: “We also have the pan bagnat label, awarded by the association of the Free Commune of pan bagnat.”
So, what do we put in the niçoise salad? “Only vegetables of the moment, raw, apart from hard-boiled eggs and tuna”, warns Joël Laugier. Here is his recipe: “Mesclun. Yes, I use it, because I think it’s a product from here and in a Niçoise salad, it has its place.”
Then come the little purple artichokes, “finely sliced and rubbed with lemons to prevent them from blackening”. He continues the ritual with fava beans from Nice, medium-sized tomatoes, “Saint-Pierre or Crimean black”radishes, green “horn” peppers for the salad, cucumbers (optional), celery, spring onions, sometimes replaced by red onion, “because sweeter”. For the tuna, “Only whole natural tuna in a can and before setting it up, we take it out of the refrigerator so that it is at room temperature”. Obviously, black olives: “The olives from my home, the caillette, because I am also a producer of olive oil and olive paste.” And so, boiled eggs, basil.
For the seasoning: “Olive oil, a little vinegar, a touch of mustard, salt, pepper, garlic, which you can rub on the bottom of the plate.”
Also with the eyes
And following? “We start with the mesclun, we cut the tomatoes into quarters, to better feel the taste and texture. Never in slices. The quarters, we position them around the dish, otherwise, it crushes the mesclun and the rest. Then we put everything else in small pieces plus the crumbled tuna and the halved egg last.”
Anaïs’ version is a bit different in the assembly: “I play with colors, because a Niçoise salad is eaten with the eyes first. So I put the radishes, red and white, last.”
