Bright and Sunny Potato Salad...

Well...it's a very windy, wet day here in San Antonio as TS Hermine paid us a visit! We've been dealing with tons of rain, high winds, and generally nasty weather. More rain is in the forecast tonight, so I'm thankful to still have electricity (for now) so I can post in here AND make some dinner tonight!! On a stormy day, I'm happy that I have some sunny-yellow potato salad left in the fridge from yesterday's Labor Day feast to cheer me up. It also means that dinner will be that much easier to pull together tonight!!

I love potato salad, but it's not something I cook very often. My mother-in-law makes a killer potato salad for many of our family functions, so I'm perfectly happy to eat hers! I was happy when y'all selected potato salad in last week's poll and eager to find a good recipe to try. When it comes to potato salad, you're either a mayo-only person or a mayo-mustard mix person. I fall into the second camp, so that narrowed the recipes down as I searched. In the end, I decided to give Tyler Florence's recipe a go.

It caught my eye because of two interesting tweaks on traditional potato salad: it has lemon juice and a bit of dill pickle juice in the dressing. The lemon really brightened the flavor, and the dill pickle juice gave it a nice twang as well. Michael prefers a pronounced mustard taste in his potato salad, so I tweaked the ratio of mayo to mustard to suit our tastes. The original recipe also calls for capers, which I don't really care for. I left those out, but you can add up to 2 tbs. if you like them.

Bright and Sunny Potato Salad

adapted from a recipe by Tyler Florence

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds small Yukon gold potatoes, peeled 
• 2 large eggs
• 3 green onions, sliced
• 1 1/3 cup mayo (I used Hellman's Light)
• 2/3 cup mustard (recipe calls for Dijon, but I only had old-school French's yellow on hand)
• 1/3 cup finely chopped dill pickle + 1/4 cup of juice from the jar
• 1/2 cup finely diced red onion
• 1 tbs. dried dill (or 1/2 bunch fresh dill, chopped)
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• Sea salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Step 1:  Put the peeled potatoes and eggs in a large saucepan and cover with water. Add about 1 tbs. of salt and bring to a simmer. After about 12 minutes, remove the eggs and let cool. Keep cooking the potatoes until a knife goes in without resistance. That takes about five minutes longer. Drain potatoes and set aside to cool.

Step 2:  While the potatoes cool, make the dressing. Put the mayo, mustard, pickles and juice, red onion, green onion, dill and lemon juice in a large mixing bowl. Peel the boiled eggs and chop. Add to the mixing bowl.

Step 3:  Stir dressing ingredients well to combine. 

Step 4:  Break up the cooled potatoes by hand into rough chunks. Add them to the bowl and toss gently to combine with the dressing, being careful not to break the pieces up too much. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving. I find the potato salad tastes better the longer the flavors are allowed to combine...and they're even better the next day!

For our Labor Day meal, I kept it pretty simple to let the potato salad be the star of the show. For the main dish, I simply grilled some Philly Cheesesteak artisan sausages from the Central Market butcher shop. My other side was organic sweet corn on the cob simply served with butter, salt, and a grind or two of black pepper. 

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