Andrew's potato salad is in the top right hand corner.
On July 6th, we celebrated barbecue and picnic season with a hugely successful potato salad contest -- over 200 folks cast votes for their favorites! We had three winners, and now they are sharing their secrets for your potato salad success!
Ingredients:
all the herbs you can get your hands on (choose based on your own herb-love! de-stem them all, and set aside a good handful or two of herbs you'd like to toss in at the end. parsley is perhaps the most suited)
olive oil
6-8 golden potatoes
mayonnaise (or Veganaise!)
lemon juice
white wine vinegar
dijon mustard
garlic
Optional additions, for crunch :
celery
fennel
green beans, blanched/cooled
Cut each of these vegetables diagonally on the grain (less stringy, more attractive!).
Bring some water to a boil. Salt it generously. Drop in the potatoes. Cut the peel off the lemon with a very sharp knife, then into thin strips, then chopped into bite-sized pieces. Place the peel in a small bowl, cover just barely with white wine vinegar, and let sit to macerate.
Put loads of de-stemmed herbs into a food processor (or Vitamix, if you have one, or blender, or bowl/jar with immersion blender).
Glug in about 1/4-1/2 cup of olive oil (depending on how big a potato salad you are making). Blitz, scrape down the sides, drop in a touch of water, blitz again.
Put 1/3-1/2 cup of mayonnaise/Veganaise in a bowl. Scrape out the herby oil into the mayonnaise/Veganaise. Whisk to incorporate. Squeeze or drizzle in lemon juice. Add 1 tsp white wine vinegar and 1/2 teaspoon of dijon mustard.
Make garlic paste with two cloves of garlic: In mortar and pestle, sprinkle with salt and smash into a paste. With a garlic press, press through, salt the garlic on the cutting board, wait a few minutes, then mince to the point of paste. With a microplane, grate the garlic, sprinkle with salt, and chop vigorously into a paste.
Take the garlic paste and mix it into smoothly into your herb and mayonnaise/Veganaise stuff.
If more zing is needed or desired, add dijon mustard to taste.
Roughly chop the herbs you've set aside.
When the potatoes are tender (poke with a fork to see), remove them from the water to cool a bit. Chop the bigger pieces further with a knife. Mash some potatoes partially with a potato masher. It is very important to add the seasoned mayonnaise/Veganaise at this point, while the potatoes are cooling off but still quite warm.
Let this sit for several minutes. Toss in the chopped herbs, the lemon peel pieces, and any additional vegetables for crunch, season with loads of black pepper, toss in loads of flaky salt, let cool further and enjoy at room temperature.
