FRENCH DINING Cuisine Niçoise HIDDEN FLAVOURS OF NICE


DISCOVERING AND EXPLORING LA CUISINE NIÇOISE IN THE RIVIERA HILL VILLAGE OF BAR-SUR-LOUP


Words: Hillary Davis Photographs: Steven Rothfeld


– from Normandy, Alsace, Provence, the Basque country, Bordeaux and Lyon. I had lived in Paris. I had vacationed every year in France. I had eaten my way through the French Michelin stars. Yet I’d never come across the term ‘cuisine Niçoise’.


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It wasn’t until I moved to my village, dined with neighbours, and took food-shopping excursions to Nice that it became clear I had missed something very big. It was not only a cuisine but also a way of life defi ned by the sea, the garden, the sun and the proximity of this corner of France to Italy. Bar-sur-Loup was where I would eventually learn to cook cuisine Niçoise. This was where I would learn to forage, till a garden, harvest olives, buy fresh every day from the local farmers and in the open-air markets, spend my Sundays cooking and sharing meals with friends, and buy locally made pottery to serve it on and locally made wine to serve with it.


THE ROOTS OF THE CUISINE


Cuisine Niçoise is the style of cooking found in Nice, in the countryside around it, and for the most part in our village. It comes from humble origins, with most of the recipes having been inherited from grandmothers who prepared farmhouse cuisine from produce grown in their kitchen gardens using recipes that were handed down for generations – and often served to three of them sitting at the kitchen table for Sunday dinner. Many of those grandmothers were either Italian or French infl uenced by Italian cuisine, because the entire area along the coast from Cannes towards Monaco had been part of Italy until 1860, when it was ceded to France. So the cuisines of those two countries are entwined and intermingled in the most ideal culinary match of Italian and French traditions. The resulting cuisine Niçoise springs from that marriage – with a strong dash of its own unique dishes not found anywhere else in France. This area of France fi ts snugly close to Genoa, so subtle changes were made to typically Italian dishes on a daily basis, thereby creating the evolution of a new blend of French and Italian cooking. French Niçoise cooks make gnocchi, but they fold in chopped Swiss chard; they make ravioli but stuff it with orange-scented beef stew or fry it. A favourite meal of pizza at a restaurant for lunch might be followed by a stew at home for dinner, made with an inexpensive cut of meat that has been marinated overnight in wine. The meat is enhanced with vegetables from the garden at the back of the house and herbs harvested wild from the side of the road during an afternoon walk.The daube, or French stew, is most likely served with homemade Italian tagliatelle.


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hy had I never heard of socca, or la trouchia, tout-nus or tourte de blettes? By the time I moved to France, to the village of Bar-sur-Loup in the nearby hills behind Nice, I had spent years cooking my way through dozens and dozens of French cookbooks, learning the styles of cooking


Cuisine Niçoise is as unique a way of cooking as that of Lyon or Alsace; however, you can fi nd the cooking of Lyon and Alsace in restaurants throughout France, whereas much of Cuisine Niçoise is found only in the region around Nice. It would be hard to fi nd socca, a traditional Niçoise pancake or crêpe made of chickpea fl our, once you leave Nice. Niçoise cooking is vibrant and healthy, with an emphasis on vegetables


and fi sh. It is honest, simple and frugal, based on what is available from the surrounding land and the sea. It is designed with olive oil rather than butter and cream; it is light rather than bathed in rich sauces. Because there is little room for cattle to roam in this region, there is less beef and more lamb, pork, rabbit, wild game, duck and chicken. And cuisine Niçoise depends on fresh, locally sourced produce, either wild or tamed by farmers. You can’t speak about it without mentioning the local farmer or fi sherman. In the open-air market in Nice and in small family shops in the area, you will fi nd wild asparagus; wild mushrooms; mesclun; zucchini fl owers; Mara des Bois – tiny strawberries; red, green, and black fresh fi gs; fresh green walnuts; lamb from the nearby Alpes-de-Haute Provence; and lean sheep and goat cheeses as well as a vast array of brilliantly coloured fruits and vegetables. As much as imaginable, everything at the market is local. The olive oil that dressed my salads was from the old stone press in Opio, a village down the hill; like my neighbours, I scooped up the olives beneath my trees and drove them down to the olive mill in exchange for a bottle of oil. Bread came from the village baker. Our house wine, Belette rosé, came from the hills behind Nice. Our salad bowl in the summer was fi lled from my garden, and in the winter still fi lled from my garden but with sturdier varieties of greens. Much of the fi sh I bought was line- caught from local waters and the cheese that I coveted was from shepherd farmers who descended from the mountains behind Nice to bring their small quantities of handcrafted cheeses to our markets. Neighbouring beekeepers, as well, stocked us with golden goodness from the hives in their gardens.


Soon after moving to Bar-sur-Loup, I found guardian angels of the culinary sort living in and around my village, who taught me traditional cuisine Niçoise that they had learned from their mothers and friends and grandmothers. I took their tutoring seriously, mastered their authentic Niçoise dishes, then updated them for my taste and streamlined them for my busy life.


At home, cuisine Niçoise is casual, served on mismatched pottery rather than fi ne china. It has the cosy familiarity of a grandmother’s kitchen, where food was prepared in well-loved vintage pots and served on a long wooden table. Although its allure is a nostalgic one, it fi ts very much into our times and lifestyles. Simple and homey, using local ingredients or what you have on hand, cuisine Niçoise is an inexpensive and healthy way of cooking that I am thrilled to share with you – because I learned that this unsung cuisine is indeed worth singing about.


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IMAGES: © 2013 STEVEN ROTHFELD. EXTRACT REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF GIBBS SMITH


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