Must Be Nice to Eat a Nicoise

Over the weekend, we helped a wedding couple with a tasting to see if they want our food for their event next year.  I love to meet new people, especially during this time in their life.  And in the months of September and October, our markets are bristling with the products of summer’s creation.  That’s why the couple picked Nicoise as one of their salads.

Nicoise is one of those salads you don’t make at home.  It’s also one of those salads that have lost true meaning to the origin as many celebrity chefs and people sort of made their own version as time went on. Truly, the only thing original about the nicoise is its name, that it came from a town called Nice in France.  And that it most likely started with tomatoes and anchovies.  

Oddly enough, anchovies and tomatoes are caught and produced at about the same time of year.  Here in the bay area, I had a chance to go down to fisherman’s wharf one Saturday morning and take a class on how to filet anchovies.  I honestly didn’t know what to expect, but was excited and eager, even at six in the morning and the most challenging part was how to get there from Oakland without paying too much for travel.  The wharf is a great place to just get seafood.  I actually wish Berkeley marina would have more of a seafood vibe to it just because it's closer to where I live. I typically rely on Monterey fish to get the local catch, but because of the size of their business, there are some seafood that they just don’t distribute because of how little there is or how delicate their shelf life is.  Anchovies, fortunately, is not one of them, so I have purchased the same anchovies from the wharf at their Berkeley location and made fish sauce with it.  

Fish sauce is a great side benefit to anchovy filets.  And its smell is not as bad as I had thought. It is a great umami addition to cooking.  Unlike the fish sauce sold in stores, anchovy fish sauce looks like gray water. But I couldn’t expect much from pureed salted fish bodies.  But that’s another topic.

Back to a Nicoise salad.  I like the idea of the salad and putting together a salad plate.  Having made enough, I want to consider rebranding this salad.  Like our chocolate chip cookie,  this salad demonstrates the terroir of the land it is produced in.  It’s my belief that Oakland has a right to make its own Nicoise.  Not to be identified outright by the standards of Nice or France, but enlightened by the ideals of its predecessor by focussing on composed ingredients that come forth locally and naturally in the summer season.  California has its own olives. Its own tomatoes. Its own anchovies. Its own potatoes, green beans, lettuce. In fact, based on wikipedia results, pretty much all varieties of a salad Nicoise can be recreated right here in Oakland with grown and caught ingredients just within the bay area.  

I think it's time to bring forth a new salad.  I am going to call it the Oakoise.  A salad made for the summer and fall. With ingredients used to make a Nicoise, but in Oakland.  Have a taste of the salad Oakoise and rejoice at what the land can produce to bring forth something that has existed for roughly two hundred years.  That’s a salad that counters a global supply chain.  That’s a salad that says, you are from out of town, here is one thing we can offer that you can’t get at home.  I would want to eat that salad daily to help my diet and nutritional needs and feel that I am connected to where I live and support those who are helping the abundance of our land find a place on our plates.  

So what does a salad Nicoise look like where you live? Could you come up with a name for it? I think by next summer people should see what is growing around them and just imagine how that would fit on a salad plate in a meaningful way.