Trouchia

Trouchia, Nice’s Swiss chard omelette

Trouchia is a thick omelette of Swiss chard, eggs, onion and grated hard cheese, cooked slowly in a pan until it is set right through. It is not a runny omelette. François-Régis Gaudry, presenting it on France Inter, compares it to a tortilla with herbs. The name is also spelled trucha (the Cuisine Nissarde label’s spelling) and troucha.

Gaudry also repeats the story that peasants took it to the fields, because it can be eaten hot or cold, which earned it the nickname “omelette of the harvesters”. The Cuisine Nissarde label, awarded by the Nice Côte d’Azur tourist office to restaurants serving real Niçoise dishes, publishes the reference recipe: 1 kg of chard leaves for 6 eggs in a 28 cm pan. Our guide to Niçoise cooking puts it in the wider repertoire.

How cooks in Nice make trouchia

The base is always chard, eggs and cheese. The differences are in how the chard is prepared, how much cheese goes in and which herbs.

Version	Chard	Eggs and cheese	Extras
Cuisine Nissarde label	1 kg of leaves, raw, strips of 1 cm	6 eggs, 100 g Parmesan or Sbrinz	Onion and garlic, 28 cm pan, 20 + 15 min
Julia Sedefdjian (France Inter, 2022)	1 bunch, wilted in the pan first	8 eggs, 20 g Parmesan	Sweet onion, garlic, basil, 21 cm pan, lid
Jeanine Planel, Levens (France 3, 2019)	Blanched 4 min, squeezed in a cloth	6 eggs, 50 g Parmesan	Onion, parsley, bacon cubes
Midi en France (France 3, 2016)	1 kg of leaves, wilted dry, pressed	6 eggs, 100 g Parmesan	Parsley, optional basil, 75 g pine nuts, mesclun

The label’s main method cooks the raw chard inside the omelette, slowly, pressing it down with a spatula. Its variants blanch or wilt the chard first, add 50 g of toasted pine nuts, or add chervil or parsley. Sedefdjian, a chef of Niçois origin cooking in Paris, wilts onion, garlic and chard in the pan before pouring the eggs over them, covers the pan for about 10 minutes and turns it. Gaudry adds that Nice argues over garlic or onion; the label keeps both. Planel, cooking in Levens in the Alpes-Maritimes, adds bacon, and France 3 presents her version as a winter dish.

Ingredients and substitutes

Use chard leaves. The label separates the green from the ribs, and Laurence Duperthuy, who teaches Niçois cooking in La Colle-sur-Loup, specifies small chard with fine ribs. A kilo of leaves looks enormous in the bowl but shrinks by about half. Save the ribs for grilled chard stems with anchovy vinaigrette.

For cheese, the label names Parmesan or Sbrinz, a hard Swiss cheese. The amounts in the sources range from 20 g to 150 g for 6 to 8 eggs, so 100 g is a middle path. Parsley, chervil and basil all appear in Niçois versions, and the label says the dish is already very good without herbs if the chard is of high quality.

Cooking trouchia at home

A trouchia needs a deep, wide pan, a wooden spatula and a plate larger than the pan. The 28 cm pan holds 1 kg of leaves with 6 eggs. Use a smaller pan and fewer eggs for a thicker, smaller omelette.

The delicate moment is the turn. The label says the omelette must not stick while it takes a good colour, so the pan is oiled generously and again before the second side. Test it as Gaudry does, with a knife tip pushed into the middle.

Serving trouchia

The label serves trouchia hot. Gaudry also serves it cut in cubes at the aperitif, and Midi en France accompanies it with a mesclun salad. It keeps its shape when cold, which is why it travels well for a picnic. For another Niçois chard dish, see the sweet tourte de blettes.