When you miss the coast of France, you cook a Niçoise salad

Dinner as a Time Machine: How travel has influenced my cooking and given me lasting memories

On memories and flavours and how they transport me to distant shores

There are moments—often in the evenings—while chopping veggies at the kitchen counter or stirring a simmering pot on the stove when I find myself transported to a place I have been before.

It seems to happen without warning— a scent, a taste, even the clinking of glasses or cutlery on a plate heard from neighbouring flats, the way the evening sunlight slants across my cutting board—and suddenly, I’m no longer in my London flat. I’m sitting at a rickety, low table in a Moroccan eating place, sharing tajine with my friends, the air fragrant with cardamon and cloves. Or I’m in a Nanjing Chinese restaurant, chopsticks hovering over a bowl of spicy beef soup, laughing with my teammates. Or I’m watching my mom’s hands, soft and sure, shaping little flatbreads near our kitchen stove.

Cooking, for me, is as much about food as it is about other cultures, time travel, and the memories I want to preserve.

This alchemy of memories and flavours begins with something almost insignificant. The citrusy punch of sumac in my small spice jars, and I’m back in Istanbul’s bazaar, bartering with a vendor whose laugh rattles like cumin seeds in a tin. The sizzle of olive oil hitting a pan, and I’m 24 again, in an Amsterdam student hotel kitchen, laughing with my friend Carlota while trying to flip a heavy Spanish omelet without breaking it and making a mess on the stove.

I was thinking these days how some dishes I developed have become my favourites, and in my quest to trace that back to when it happened, I always get to some memory, some vivid sense of something.

I used to wonder why I craved my mom’s white whipped bean salad on a random Tuesday or why cooking a stir fry made me cough, remembering the times I used to eat dinner with my Chinese colleagues.

But then I understood—our senses are archivists. They store memories as they store flavours. Everything written in fragments of my memory is also impregnated in my senses.

A single bite of something can unwind moments on film: the first time I tasted grilled octopus on a tiny beach in Tenerife, where I could sit with my feet in the sea; the sticky-fingered joy of eating cannoli in Rome with my friend Sultana at 11 p.m.; the quiet comfort of a bowl of soup after a full day of skiing in the Swiss Alps.

What triggers your most precious memories? Let me know in the comments.

Recipes as postcards

Many of my favorite dishes came to life this way—not from cookbooks but from collisions with places and people. A hearty slice of sourdough bread smothered in herb butter? That’s a love letter to a Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse farmhouse where I’d scribble in my notebook while waiting for mussels. A fiery Shaksuka? A souvenir from Israel’s loud bar, where the noise of the people mingled with the food flavours. These dishes are my postcards. Some don’t aim for authenticity; they’re rather impressions, blurred at the edges by time, travelling, and longing.

Take Niçoise salad—a classic, yes, but filtered through my own wanderings. I first had it in Nice, circa 2015, at a small bistro, where the waiter conversed with me in heavily accented French. The original version stood perfect: white tuna, briny olives, and eggs like golden suns.

Yet, over the years, it’s changed. I swapped the raw veggies for oven-baked ones to perfection, like these lovely radishes and potatoes. They are kinder on my digestive system, and my gut approves as well.

For variety, I sometimes substitute oven-charred asparagus for green beans because I once had it that way in Provence, in a courtyard where the owner’s dog had been snoring under my table. There’s no right or wrong with this salad because it is very forgiving, so the recipe I’m sharing is a mix of the original and my own additions or substitutions.

Niçoise salad with oven-baked potatoes and radishes

Serves:2

Prep time: 15 mins

Cooking time: 30 mins

Ingredients

For the salad

• Half of a salad of your choice (cos, romaine, lettuce, etc), which will be used as the base

• 1-2 cans of tuna, drained and broken into chunks

• 2-3 hard-boiled eggs, quartered

• 200 g new potatoes (regular potatoes also work)

• 150 g green beans or asparagus

• 10-12 big green olives, cut in small circles

• 1 tablespoon of capers

• 10 cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered

• 10-12 radishes

• 2-4 springs of dill, finely cut

• Flaky sal (Maldon, Himalayan salt, or regular salt also works)

• Freshly ground black pepper

For the dressing

• 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil

• 2 1/2 tbsp lemon juice

• 1 tsp. Dijon mustard

• 1 small garlic clove, grated(optional)

• Pinch of salt and pepper to season

Method

1. The first step is washing and cutting all your vegetables and boiling the eggs. Cut the olives in small circles, cut the cherry tomatoes in halves, finely dice the dill, and trim the beans (optional, but I usually trim them).

2. Drain the tuna and break it into big chunks.

3. Then, add the potatoes to a pot and cover them with cold water by about 2cm. Add some salt to the pot. Bring to a boil, set your stove on low-medium heat, and simmer uncovered for about 8-10 minutes.

4. Drain the potatoes, and along with the radishes, season with salt, pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil. Bake them in the oven at 160°C (fan) for about 5-10 minutes or until they are done and slightly crispy on the edges. Do not skip this step; it adds a distinct flavor to this salad.

5. In the meantime, blanch the green beans in a pot of boiling water for about 2 - 3 minutes and then in a bowl of ice-cold water for about 1 minute. Drain and pat dry with a paper kitchen towel.

6. Prepare the dressing by adding all the ingredients to a jar and shaking well for about 1 minute.

7. Set the salad base, then assemble the rest of the ingredients: potatoes, green beans, capers, olives, cherry tomatoes, radishes, and dill. Drizzle the dressing over the salad and mix it slowly.

8. Enjoy!

P.S. Let me know in the comments what additions or substitutions you use.