A futuristic French classic

This dish represents a different way of preparing salade niçoise. Or at least this is the version I would like. To cook it you don’t need the stove because it is made with herbs, vegetables, flowers, raw seaweeds and common lupin beans, cooked and preserved in brine. The two seaweeds used are rich in minerals and iodine.

I Giardini, i campi e il mare

Recipe for 4 people

for the lupin “egg” with turmeric and calendula
300 g lupins in brine, to be removed of their skin
30 ml lemon juice
20 ml extra virgin olive oil
1 sprig of fresh thyme
½ tablespoon powdered turmeric
6 calendula flowers (the petals only)
black pepper

Blend all the ingredients with a hand blender, mould 12 small eggs weighing 10 gr each with your hands, cut them in half and put them to a side.

for the hijiki seaweeds pesto
25 g dried hijiki seaweeds to be soaked in water for 4 hours and rinsed
25 g barley miso
½ garlic clove
10 ml extra virgin olive oil
10 ml lemon juice
1 sprig of parsley

Chop the seaweeds and the garlic with a knife so as to obtain pieces of around 2 mm each, add the miso, the lemon and the chopped parsley. With this pesto, create 12 quenelles of around 7 g each.

for the pepper sauce
100 g small orange peppers
0.4 g of xantano (a thickening polysaccharide obtained through the fermentation of carbohydrates with natural branches of the Xanthomonas campestris bacteria – purified, dried and powdered)
2 ml lemon juice
sea whole cooking salt

Clean the pepper and extract the juice with an extractor or a centrifuge, blend the 60 ml with the xantano, the lemon and the salt. Move to a pipette with a small tip and place in the fridge.

for the basil, mint and nasturtium oil
15 g fresh basil leaves
10 g nasturtium leaves
10 g mint leaves
150 ml Ligurian extra virgin olive oil

Blanch the herbs in salted boiling water for 45 seconds, drain them and put them immediately into water and ice. Squeeze them, chop them roughly and blend them with the olive oil. Move to an hermetic container and leave to decant for 24 hours, then filter.

other ingredients
8 g dried dulse seaweeds divided into 12 stripes
24 yellow cherry tomatoes cut into half
24 red cherry tomatoes cut into half
100 g cucumber cut into long stripes with a potato peeler
100 g broad beans without their skin and seasoned with basil and mint oil* and salt
100 g sweet green peppers cut into stripes (keep 4 cut into half)
60 g fresh red shallot cut into 1 mm slices
50 g deboned black olives
12 plantain leaves
12 tips of wild mint
1 basil sprig
20 crocosmia flowers
4 calendula flowers and 12 leaves
3 nasturtium flowers and 12 leaves
2 wild carnation flowers
Fine whole sea salt
Long Bengali pepper

Composing the dish
Distribute the pepper sauce and the basil oil in the centre of each dish, place the tomatoes, 6 half lupin eggs, 3 quenelles of hijiki seaweeds, the broad beans, the green peppers, 6 stripes of celery in a nest, the olives, the shallot, the dulse seaweeds, the herbs and the flowers. Add salt, pepper and a little oil.