Salade Niçoise, but Make It a Sandwich

Here is something I’ve never heard in my life:

“I prefer my pasta deconstructed, with plain noodles next to each individual sauce component so I can assemble the perfect bite exactly as I wish.”

Frankly, I’m not sure I’ve heard a comment like that about any dish. Yet when it comes to Niçoise salad, many remain stuck on the idea that serving all the components separately with the seasonings and dressing on the side is the best way to do it, as if such extreme customization is the logical highest priority.

This is a classic case of confirmation bias—people prefer the salad served this way because that’s how they’re used to seeing it. But, as I’ve written before, there is neither clear historic precedent nor culinary rationale for that approach. It is much better dressed, seasoned, and at least somewhat combined, just like any other good salad would be. Sure, you can artfully arrange the components in the salad bowl, but there is nothing exceptional about a Niçoise that makes it better in an unfinished state.

Why am I starting a piece about pan bagnat, the famous Niçoise tuna and tomato sandwich, with a return to my years-old polemic about the salad? Mostly because I’m a stubborn SOB who can’t let go of an argument. But also because it’s directly relevant here: Pan bagnat is really just a Niçoise salad sandwich. We need to agree about what a Niçoise salad can (and arguably should) be if we want to make a great sandwich out of it.

The first step to achieving that is doing exactly what I argued for in my Niçoise salad recipe—it must be seasoned, dressed, and assembled thoughtfully.

Now, I’ll admit, I took some liberties in my salade Niçoise recipe. I added potatoes and green beans because they’ve become common in many renditions outside of Nice, even if not considered to be “authentic.” I won’t be adding those ingredients here, because I don’t think the sandwich benefits from them.

That’s just as well, because there’s plenty else to add to the sandwich, and some important technical details for how to make it great. Follow these guidelines and you’ll get a superlative pan bagnat that is both light and fresh thanks to the many seasonal vegetables in the filling, and also rich and satisfying with its generous serving of hearty boiled eggs, plenty of briny olives and fragrant olive oil, meaty tuna, and salty anchovies.

Pan Bagnat’s Essential Ingredients and Its Optional Ones

Just as with a Niçoise salad, there are some ingredients one would expect to find in just about any pan bagnat, and some that you can add or leave out depending on your preference and the season. Please don’t take this division between “required” and “optional” too rigidly, it’s not an official list printed and framed by the Société Historique pour la Préservation et la Défense du Pan Bagnat Traditionnel*, but more a rough guideline intended to help you think about what the core ingredients are versus the nice-to-haves.

[*This is not real, though I would not be shocked to learn that such an organization existed.]**

[**Update: There IS a real organization because of course there is! HT to David Lebovitz for that little tidbit.]

Essential Ingredients

• Tomatoes: The key here is to use beautiful summer tomatoes—this is a peak-season sandwich, and won’t be nearly as good if you try to make it in the middle of February, or with mealy supermarket tomatoes that were picked while still embryonic. Don’t worry about the specific tomato variety, many can work as long as they’re flavorful and ripe.
• Eggs: Traditionally hard boiled, but I happen to like a slightly jammier yolk here—roughly a nine-minute boiling time versus 11 minutes for a hard-cooked yolk (but do whichever you prefer).
• Basil: The fresh, herbal aroma of the Mediterranean. Tear the leaves by hand, scatter them throughout.
• Olive Oil: Get some decent extra-virgin olive oil and don’t hold back, glug it on, then glug it on some more. Your hands should become greasy when you hold this sandwich, which is great because it’s good for your skin anyway.
• Tuna: Use silkier oil-packed, not dry water-packed—it’ll matter here in texture and flavor. Even better, get ventresca tuna, which is a buttery, fatty belly cut. It’ll cost more, but the upgrade in texture is undeniable.
• Anchovies: Once again, oil-packed anchovy fillets are best, and quality matters. Better ones, such as from Angostino Recca, are plump and flavorful without being painfully salty (don’t get me wrong, they’re plenty salty, just not at the scrape this off my tongue right now! level). One ongoing debate in the land of Niçoise salads and related dishes like pan bagnat is whether tuna and anchovies belong together or whether it’s more of an either/or situation. Some argue one should only use one and the preference should be given to anchovies, but I love both, I see no reason not to use both—I don’t think they compete with each other—but you can decide for yourself.

• Olives: Small Niçoise olives that are brown to deep plumy black in color are the classic choice, but any similar olive from the Mediterranean can work. For the sake of your teeth, get them pitted or remove the pits first.
• Garlic: The idea here is to run a clove all over the cut sides of the bread so that the sandwich is perfumed with garlic without being rank with garlic, but if you want a bigger garlic hit, feel free to mince it up and add it to the sandwich filling.
• Scallions: Based on my research, scallions or the similar but slightly more bulbous white spring onions seem to be the most common choices, but you could also use a thinly sliced white onion, which is another common ingredient in traditional Niçoise salads.
• Bread Rolls: It’s a sandwich, hence you need bread. If you don’t live in France, you’re probably not going to be able to get the exact type of roll they use there, but any generously sized white sandwich roll with a moderate crust and dense yet tender crumb will work. Be sure to scoop out some of that crumb so you can pack in more of the ample fillings without the whole thing falling apart or becoming preposterously tall.

Optional Ingredients

• Fava Beans: Where I live, favas tend to peak in the spring and disappear from the market by the time good tomatoes show up, but in other places you may find there’s more seasonal overlap (or maybe you just have a source for favas even when they’re not growing locally). If you can get favas, they’re a popular choice. Just remove the beans from the large pods, blanch, peel off the outer skin of each bean, and add to the mix.

• Green Pepper: I went back and forth on whether green peppers should be listed as optional or required—they’re definitely an extremely common component, so much so that they’re borderline essential. The peppers I’ve seen used in France are not the same as a green bell pepper, but bell peppers can work in a pinch. Even better, a Cubanelle pepper, which is narrower than a bell pepper and thus yields smaller rounds once sliced, works well.
• Radish: Preferably French breakfast radishes, sliced very thinly on a mandoline.
• Artichokes: I messed around during my recipe development with artichokes I cooked myself, but ultimately decided it was more delicious and much, much easier to just use a marinated artichoke heart from a jar or a market’s antipasto bar. They’re tender, they’re flavorful thanks to their vinegar and olive oil marinade and—bonus—they’re often flavored with herbs. The great chef Paul Bocuse used thin slices of raw small purple artichoke hearts from Provence in his Niçoise salad recipe, so something like that could work here too if you want to go the raw route.

• Cucumbers: Sometimes found in a Niçoise salad, and surely a welcome addition here.
• Vinegar: Most classic recipes do not include a source of acidity like vinegar, relying solely on the olive oil and salt to dress the vegetables and proteins. Still, we all know how good a touch of acidity is in a vinaigrette and how well it brightens up a fresh salad, so it’s hardly a crazy idea to add a touch here. I’ll leave it up to you if you want to stick more to tradition or go wild with a jolt of extra flavor, but if you do, feel free to just use a splash of wine vinegar or go all in with an actual vinaigrette.
• Knock Yourself Out: Have an idea for something else you think would be good in a pan bagnat? Go for it. This is clearly a sandwich that is adaptable and open to interpretation.

The Key Techniques for Pan Bagnat Success

Some of my tips, like making sure to use very ripe, in-season tomatoes, seeking high-quality oil-packed tuna (ventresca in particular) and anchovies, and scooping out some of the tender crumb from the rolls to pack in more of the fillings are in the ingredients rundown above. There are a few more technical details that will make a big difference in your results, and they include:

• Don’t Mix Everything: As much as I’m in favor of seasoning and dressing salad ingredients and mixing them together so that the’re flavorful and evenly seasoned, some ingredients are best left out until they’re layered directly into the sandwich. More specifically, I recommend not tossing the boiled eggs, the tuna, or the anchovies with the other ingredients. This is to avoid breakup up the tuna and eggs, which would muddy the mixture. As for the anchovies, they’re strongly flavored, so it’s better to control exactly how many go into each sandwich.

• Maximize the Tomato: Pan bagnat translates to “bathed bread,” which describes just how wonderfully oil- and tomato juice–soaked the bread should be. To make sure to really get the tomatoes infused into the bread, I borrowed a technique from Kenji’s old pan con tomate recipe by grating a portion of the tomatoes to make a quick puree and spooning a bit of that onto the cut sides of the rolls. The rest of the tomatoes are then sliced and added as part of the filling.
• Season Thoroughly: There are a lot of components to a sandwich like this, and if you don’t lightly season them all with salt you risk the sandwich tasting bland. That means not only adding salt to the filling ingredients that get tossed together with olive oil, but also the boiled egg quarters, the sliced tomatoes, and the grated tomato puree. The goal isn’t to over-salt, but to ensure no part of the sandwich tastes bland. A bit of fresh black pepper doesn’t hurt either.

• Make Full Use of Your Oils: The oil that comes in a jar of high-quality tuna, anchovies, or marinated artichokes isn’t always the best stuff, but it’s often infused with flavor from the fish or vegetable. I wouldn’t use it entirely in place of good, fresh extra-virgin olive oil, but it’s not the worst idea to drizzle a bit of it onto the sandwiches if you think it has some worthwhile flavor to add to the mix.
• Wrap and Rest: There are many sandwiches that benefit from being wrapped up and allowed to sit for a while before being eaten. Many of those are hot sandwiches like chicken and eggplant parm hoagies, or a good old bacon, egg, and cheese, with the steam of the hot fillings helping to soften the bread and glue the sandwich together. But a pan bagnat is a great example of a cold sandwich that also benefits from a rest, allowing the juices to soak into the bread, the filling to settle and compress (some people even put a weight on top of the wrapped sandwiches to help this along), and give all the flavors a chance to infuse and mingle. Don’t skip it.