Provencal Classics : Champagne Chef Patrick Healy Shares Richly Flavored Nicoise Recipes

NICE IS A LOT like Southern California,” observes chef Patrick Healy. “It has the same climate, the same lifestyle, the same kind of geography, the same food products.”

One thing that the great capital of the Cote d’Azur does not have, of course--as Healy is in a good position to attest--is California-style cuisine. But the cooking of the region does have certain things in common with the contemporary California culinary style: It depends heavily on fresh, seasonal ingredients; it’s full of bright, vivid flavors--garlic, fresh herbs, good olive oil and vinegar, and it draws readily from the traditional kitchens of both France and Italy. And like its California counterpart, it tastes great.

Healy, former chef at Le St. Germain and Colette and now chef and co-owner--with his French-born wife, Sophie--of Champagne in West Los Angeles, discovered the cuisine of Nice on his first trip to Europe, traveling through the region with his sister in 1979. “It was distinct,” he recalls. “The food was very different from any ‘French food’ I’d ever had in America and even different from food I’d tasted in other parts of Provence. If nothing else, the way Provencal cuisine uses olives, garlic and tomatoes in almost everything really sets it apart. So does the way it adapts so many Italian dishes, such as French versions of gnocchi and ravioli. It’s also richer cooking than you expect to find in such a warm climate--but at the same time, somehow, it still seems light. I think that might have to do with all the olive oil and fresh herbs and with the fact that there’s not a lot of wine used in sauces.”

Healy learned to cook nicoise specialties when he returned to France the next year to work. He ended up not in Nice itself, but in the village of Plasscassier above Cannes, in the sunny, aromatic back-country of the Cote d’Azur--a place he found, he says, because his grandmother was a friend of Julia Child.

“Harriet Healy was at the Cordon Bleu with Julia in the 1950s,” he explains, “and they stayed in touch over the years. Harriet wrote several cookbooks of her own and then, for about 15 years, ran a combination cooking school and antique shop in Palm Beach. When my grandmother wanted to take a sabbatical in France, Julia suggested Plasscassier, and my grandmother ended up renting a house there for a while. And when I said that I wanted to go to France myself to learn to cook, Julia arranged for me to get a job as a temporary assistant to the local butcher and traiteur (a maker of take-out delicacies) , Boussageon--where Julia later shot an episode of her TV show, incidentally, showing the owner making pate en croute. “

Healy met Sophie Urosevitch in Plasscassier. Her family lived in the area, and she used to come in to buy meat. “You know how it is in small towns in France,” he says. “The regular customers drop by the shops at 5 in the afternoon for aperitifs. That’s how I got to know Sophie.” Three years later, in Los Angeles, they were married.

First, though, Healy completed his apprenticeship in the south of France, working for a year at Andre Surmain’s Relais a Mougins, for a few months at the now-defunct but once highly regarded La Mourrachonne in nearby Mouans-Sartoux, and then for another year back in Mougins at Roger Verge’s three-star Moulin de Mougins. And all the time, says Healy, while learning both classic and contemporary French food, he kept eating and loving the food of the region.

Two nicoise specialties are world-famous and are found, in various forms, on restaurant menus all over Southern California--ratatouille, a sort of vegetable ragout of onions, zucchini, eggplant and bell peppers cooked in olive oil with garlic and herbs, and, of course, salade nicoise. A third dish of the region, a salad of assorted baby greens (including arugula, curly endive, wild chicory and chervil) called mesclun , can be found at some Southern California restaurants.

Other nicoise classics, though, remain curiously unknown here, among them pissaladiere --a pizzalike, cheeseless tart topped with onions, black olives, garlic and both whole anchovies and the Provencal anchovy puree called pissala (from which the tart takes its name); farcis nicoises-- assorted vegetables stuffed with meat, bread crumbs and herbs; bagna cauda , literally “hot bath”--a warm dressing of olive oil, garlic and pureed anchovies in which assorted raw vegetables are dredged; socca --a thin, crisp crepe made from chickpea flour and olive oil and traditionally eaten as street food; soupe au pistou --a kind of local minestrone, with a paste of basil, garlic, olive oil and sometimes tomato and/or cheese stirred in; alouettes sans tetes , literally “larks without heads”-- thin slices of veal or beef stuffed with herbs and rolled, tied and braised (so that they do indeed end up looking a bit like the headless carcasses of small birds), and such borrowings from Italy as raviolis, usually filled with Swiss chard, ground meat and cheese, and gnocchis, dumplings of flour, egg and pureed potato.

“I can’t imagine why somebody isn’t serving food like this in Los Angeles,” Healy says. In fact, he adds, he is seriously thinking of opening a casual, inexpensive, Provencal-style bistro here at which dishes of this sort would be served. In the meantime, he sometimes creates nicoise and other Provencal menus for his Sunday- and Monday-night regional French dinners at Champagne. And he offers the following recipes, adapted to the American kitchen, for the home cook. (For more on nicoise cooking, see “The Cuisine of the Sun, Classic French Cooking from Nice and Provence” by Mireille Johnston, Random House.)

“You get all kinds of things that call themselves salade nicoise in America,” Healy says, “and most of them don’t bear any resemblance to the original. But, then, a lot of people make it wrong in France, too.”

SALADE NICOISE

1 pound fresh fava beans (optional)

Salt

3 baby artichokes

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon plus 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil

(a Provencal brand such as Puget of L’Olivier if possible)

2 ripe plum tomatoes, very thinly sliced

1 green bell pepper, seeds and ribs removed, sliced thinly lengthwise

3 hard-boiled eggs, quartered

1 small white onion, about the size of a lime, peeled and sliced thinly lengthwise

1 stalk celery, very thinly sliced

1 small bulb fennel, very thinly sliced

4 red radishes, very thinly sliced

2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

1/3 cup good-quality French red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 pound (2 standard-sized cans) best-quality tuna (preferably imported from Italy, Spain or France), well-drained and broken into large chunks

1 bunch fresh basil, chopped

1 bunch fresh Italian parsley, chopped

12 anchovy filets

If using fava beans, remove from pods and blanch in boiling, salted water for 4 minutes; plunge beans into ice water to cool. Drain and slip of skins. Cool beans in refrigerator.

Peel about half exterior leaves from artichokes; peel back outer green skin from base and stem. Place artichokes in cold water to cover; add lemon juice. Let stand 10 minutes, pour of lemon water into small saucepan, add 1 tablespoon olive oil and pinch each of salt and pepper. Bring liquid to boil, reduce heat to low, add artichokes and cook, covered for about 8 minutes or until knife-tender. Cool artichokes by immersing in cold water for several seconds.

Whisk garlic, vinegar and mustard together in mixing bowl; slowly pour in 1 cup olive oil, mixing well to form an emulsion. salt and pepper to taste.

Place tuna in middle of large round or oval platter, arrange artichokes, tomatoes, cucumber, green pepper, eggs, onions, celery, fennel and radishes around tuna, alternating colors for contrast. Salt and pepper lightly, pour dressing over all ingredients and sprinkle platter with basil and parsley; lay anchovies across top in a crisscross pattern. Makes 4 servings.

“At Boussageon,” recalls Healy, “the owner’s mother-in-law didn’t make the pissaladiere in big rectangles like some places did. She’d make it as a kind of round, free-form pizza, and she’d always spread it generously with pissala. I remember watching her make the pissala with a mortar and pestle, grinding up the anchovies with the cloves and herbs and garlic. I do it that way.”

PISSALADIERE

5 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

3 1/2 pounds onions, very thinly sliced

1/2 bunch fresh thyme leaves

Salt and pepper

5 1/2 cups high-gluten or all-purpose flour

1.8 ounces fresh yeast, crumbled

1 teaspoon sugar

2 cups cold water

1 teaspoon salt

3 cloves

1 teaspoon dried thyme

2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

30 anchovy filets (2 tins), soaked in water for 20 minutes and patted dry

3 white peppercorns

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

30 nicoise olives, pitted

Finley chop three garlic cloves and lightly sweat in heavy saucepan with onions and thyme. Season mixture with salt and pepper, and cook, covered, until soft. Set aside to cool; refrigerate. In food processor or mixer fitted with dough hook, mix flour, yeast and sugar at low speed 2 to 3 minutes. Add water until dough forms ball; knead at low speed 10 minutes. Add salt, and continue to knead 1 more minute.

Lightly flour hands, and remove dough from mixer. Place dough on lightly floured cutting board and let rise until doubled in size. Punch down dough and knead until firm; allow to rise again until doubled in size. Fold in half and refrigerate. When cool, roll out dough to form circle 12 inches across and 1/4 in thick, and place on lightly oiled baking sheet. Refrigerate.

Combine cloves, dried thyme, remaining garlic, 6 anchovy filets and peppercorns in mortar, and crush with pestle, forming paste. Add half the olive oil and mix well.

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Remove dough from refrigerator and cover thoroughly with anchovy mixture, using pastry brush or back of spoon. Spread chilled onion mixture in middle of dough, leaving 1-inch rim. Lay anchovies over onion mixture in crisscross pattern, and sprinkle with olives. Brush rim of dough with remaining olive oil. Bake 25 minutes. Cut into pieces as you would a pizza, and serve warm or at room temperature. Makes 6 servings.

Healy calls farcis nicoises “real nicoise home cooking----about the first thing you’ll taste if you get invited to somebody’s house for dinner in the region.” Many different varieties of vegetables are used; three-star chef Roger Vergie, Healy recalls, stuffed new potatoes and miniature cabbages as an accompaniment to his roasted baby goat. More common are zucchini, eggplant, onions, mushrooms and these tomatoes.

FARCIS NICOISES

6 small vine-ripened tomatoes

1/2 pounds sausage meat, without casings

1/4 pound ground veal

1 small onion, minced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 bunch Italian parsley, minced

1 cup unflavored bread crumbs

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

Wash tomatoes well and cut 1/2 inch off bottoms. Set bottoms aside, then scoop about half the meat out of each tomato from exposed bottom side. (Bottom sides now become, in effect, tops.)

Mix together sausage meat, veal, onion, garlic, parsley and 3/4 cup of bread crumbs, and season with salt and pepper.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, Season insides of tomatoes with salt and pepper, fill each with meat mixture, and sprinkle tops with remaining bread crumbs. Oil roasting pan just big enough to hold tomatoes; place tomatoes in pan side by side, cut side up, and bake 35 minutes, Replace tomato bottoms, to serve as tops, and bake 10 minutes more. Makes 6 servings.

Food stylist: Diane Elander.