Everyone loves potato salad. Right? Add a dash of Irish heritage and you move right past love to a near obsession.
That would be me.
True. I haven’t taken the Ancestry.com DNA test. (I’m waiting for that proverbial Irish bargain sale.) Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure my Irish bona fides are strong. My maiden name was Mc Gee.
So, you ask, just what kinds of potatoes does a good Irish girl obsess over?
Answer: Name a potato dish. ANY potato dish. You have to remember that, at the time of the Irish Potato Blight in 1845, the average Irish peasant ate five to ten pounds of potatoes per day. Love of the tuber is in our jeans genes.
To be perfectly honest, I eat mashed potatoes right out of the pan and then scrape the scant leftovers from the sides of the pan for breakfast. I obsess over a good colcannon. I can embarass myself loading up a baked potato. Make potato pancakes or French fries or home-made potato chips and I’m there.
Just in time for LaborDay, here is an adaptation of a potato salad recipe that just ran in Melissa Clark’s column in the NY Times.
It is very good. I should know.
Yields 6 to 8
Save RecipeIngredients
- 2 pounds red potatoes or small white creamers (cut into 1 1/2 inch chunks)
- Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon (plus more juice for serving)
- 2 t. minced fresh rosemary
- 1 t. fine sea salt (or to taste)
- 1 t. coarsely ground black pepper
- Dash or two of hot sauce (or to taste)
- 1/3 C. extra-virgin olive oil (with more to drizzle over the top of the salad)
- 6 T. mayonnaise
- 4 T. sour cream
- 3/4 T. Dijon mustard (or to taste)
- 1/2 C. thinly-sliced scallions (white and green pats)
- 1/4 C. chopped parsley
- 2 T. chopped basil or dill
- Tomato rose for garnish
Instructions
- Cook potatoes in salted water until tender. This will take 15-20 minutes. Drain.
- Whisk lemon zest, lemon juice, rosemary, salt, pepper and hot sauce in a large mixing bowl. When the salt is dissolved, whisk in olive oil, mayonnaise, sour cream and mustard.
- Add chopped potatoes to the dressing while the potatoes are still warm and carefully mix to coat the potatoes. Mixing the potatoes with the dressing while they are warm will enhance the potato's ability to absorb the flavor of the dressing. Once this is done, mash about 1/4 of the potatoes. Stir the mashed potatoes to mix them with the remaining potato chunks. Fold in scallions and parsley. Adjust seasoning with salt, lemon juice, hot sauce and olive oil to your taste. Garnish with chopped basil or chopped dill.
- Serve warm or at room temperature.
This recipe was adapted from a Melissa Clark recipe that appeared in the New York Times. Here is the link: Mashed Potato Salad with Scallions and Herbs.
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