Recipes › Tomato (Cherry) › Cherry Tomato and Smoked Mackerel Niçoise
Cherry Tomato and Smoked Mackerel Niçoise
A British twist on the classic Niçoise that swaps tinned tuna for hot-smoked mackerel — a combination that works even better given the tomatoes' acidity cutting through the fish's richness. Cherry tomatoes are the sweet, juicy backbone of this salad, scattered in abundance alongside waxy new potatoes, crisp green beans and jammy soft-boiled eggs. It is an easy, no-fuss weeknight dinner that looks far more impressive than the effort involved.
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Ingredients
- 500 g cherry tomatoes, halved
- 300 g hot-smoked mackerel fillets, skin removed, broken into large flakesor use hot-smoked trout
- 400 g waxy new potatoes, halved if large
- 200 fine green beans, trimmed
- 4 eggs
- 80 g black olives, pitted
- ½ red onion, very finely sliced
- 2 tbsp capers, drained
- 20 g fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
- 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- ½ tsp flaky sea salt
- ½ tsp black pepper, freshly ground
Contains: fish, eggs, mustard, sulphites.
Method
- Cook the potatoes in a large pan of well-salted boiling water for 12–14 minutes until just tender when pierced with a knife. Add the trimmed green beans for the final 3 minutes of cooking. Drain both together, then spread on a tray and leave to steam-dry for a minute.About 15 min
- While the potatoes cook, lower the eggs gently into a separate pan of boiling water. Cook for exactly 7 minutes, then lift out and plunge immediately into a bowl of cold water. Leave for 2 minutes, then peel and halve.About 10 min
- Make the dressing: whisk together the olive oil, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, salt, and black pepper in a small bowl until emulsified.About 2 min
- While the potatoes and beans are still warm, toss them with half the dressing in a large bowl. This is important — warm potatoes absorb dressing far better than cold ones.About 1 min
- Arrange the dressed potatoes and beans on a large serving platter or in a wide shallow bowl. Scatter over the cherry tomatoes, sliced red onion, olives, and capers. Lay the mackerel flakes across the top in large pieces, then arrange the halved eggs around the plate. Drizzle over the remaining dressing.About 3 min
- Finish with the chopped parsley and a final grind of black pepper. Serve immediately at room temperature.
Tips
- The timing on the eggs matters. Seven minutes in boiling water gives you a just-set yolk that is still slightly jammy in the centre — perfect here. Six minutes and the white is too soft; eight and you lose the jammy quality.
- If your cherry tomatoes are especially sweet, add an extra half teaspoon of red wine vinegar to the dressing to balance them against the richness of the mackerel.
- Look for peppered smoked mackerel if you can find it — the black pepper on the skin works brilliantly with the tomatoes.
Ring the changes
- Replace the smoked mackerel with 2 tins of good-quality tuna in olive oil, drained, for the classic version.
- For a more substantial dish, add a 400g tin of white beans, drained and rinsed, to the base alongside the potatoes.
Keeping it
This salad is best assembled and eaten immediately. Leftovers can be stored in the fridge for up to 1 day, though the tomatoes will soften and the eggs discolour. Do not dress the whole platter if you know there will be leftovers — keep the components separate.
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