10 August 2018

Salade de pommes de terre

Potato salad is something we Americans almost all grew up eating. I guess it's a kind of "comfort food" — something you eat because you like it, of course, but also because it makes you feel better about life. It brings memories of good times. Your mother made it for you. It tastes like home and family.

Potatoes are so good in France that it would be a shame not to turn them into potato salad. When you buy them at the supermarket, how the particular variety of pommes de terre you are buying are best cooked is marked on the bag. Potatoes for frites. Potatoes for sautéing. Potatoes for purée. Potatoes for steaming. Potatoes for salads. The ones I used yesterday are a variety called Gourmandine. There are dozens of varieties — hundreds, even.




To make potato salad, I think the best way to cook the potatoes is to steam them until they are tender. Potato salad often has hard-cooked eggs in it, and you can steam the eggs along with the potatoes (but take them out of the steamer after about 10 minutes and let the potatoes continue cooking). Poke the potatoes with a sharp knife, a fork, or a skewer to see if they are done or not. They shouldn't offer any resistance. Take them out of the steamer and let them cool before you dice them up.

Meanwhile, dice up some fresh, raw celery (céleri-branches), and some French cornichons or other pickles — I used cucumber pickles that we made one year and put up in vinegar in sealed jars to keep in the cellar. Chop up an onion or two. For digestibility, I believe in slightly cooking the chopped onion before putting it into the salad. Just cook it at low temperature for a few minutes in a non-stick pan with a little bit of vegetable oil. It doesn't need to brown, but just soften and become translucent. Other ingredients you can put in potato salad include capers, chopped olives, or bacon (in France, lardons fumés).

Mix together all the dry ingredients for the salad. Make a dressing using a combination of plain yogurt, sour cream (crème fraîche is especially good), and small amounts of mayonnaise, mustard, and vinegar (or pickle juice). For two pounds of diced potatoes, you need 250 to 350 ml of dressing. One thing that makes the salad good is to put just a little bit of vinegar or pickle juice on the potatoes while they are still warm. That gives them extra flavor.

Pour the dressing over the potatoes and other ingredients. Stir gently. Slice two or three hard-boiled eggs or cut them into wedges and put them on top of the salad. Sprinkle on some herbs or some sweet or smoked paprika as decoration. We ate our potato salad with a mushroom cheeseburger that Walt cooked on the barbecue grill.

There's a really good potato salad, widely available in France, called salade piémontaise. It resembles the classic American potato salad but includes chopped fresh tomatoes and cooked ham. I'm going to make that soon.

16 comments:

  1. I make potato salad every so often, but it is only diced potatoes in a combination of olive oil and tarragon vinegar with some pepper. For health reasons I do not use salt, but the salad is still delicious. I mix the potatoes with the vinaigrette when still warm.

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    1. That of course sounds good too. You should do a blog.

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    2. Too much hassle and, besides, I have nothing interesting to tell.

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    3. CHM, you are one of the most interesting people I've ever known. Your background in France, your family, your life in America (Virginia and California), your knowledge, your two languages, your career... Tu te sous-estimes.

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    4. You are much too kind. I really don’t know what to say, I’m at a loss for words!

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    5. I like that kind of simple potato salad also. In fact I like potatoes anyway they are cooked.

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  2. When we vacation in France I always buy the piemontaise salad, I love it! There’s another one, I forget the name, equally good. Of course, home made like yours Ken very best of all my husband always says.

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    1. Even in France, the store-bought salads (carottes râpées, céleri rémoulade, salade piémontaise) are made with dressings that are just too sugary. I put a lot less mayonnaise in potato salad and salad dressings in general than I used to, replacing it mostly with plain yogurt and sometimes a little crème fraîche for richness... especially if the yogurt is non-fat. I need to make the celeriac salad called céleri rémoulade again soon, using yogurt, crème fraîche, and mayo, instead of just crème fraîche and mayo. Just to see what it's like. I like the sharpness of yogurt. Your have to be careful, though, because some of the "yogurts" they sell in the supermarkets are not yogurt at all, but mixtures of milk and cream thickened with whatever.

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  3. I just made potato salad yesterday ! I haven't made it in a while since I am the only one here to eat it .. I used little red potatoes, hard boiled eggs and red onion with a handful of chopped dill, sweet pickles and green olives. Lots of mayo and mustard.
    I confess ... I had potato salad for dinner last night. :)

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    1. We had potato salad for lunch yesterday with a cheeseburger, last night by itself for supper, and again today for lunch with battered and fried cod and shrimp.

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  4. I'm never steamed potatoes or used yogurt like you did. The yogurts in the US aren't anywhere as good as yours in France.

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    1. I'm pretty sure we used to get good yogurt when we lived in California, but I couldn't tell you what brand it is. In France, I just buy the plainest of the plain yogurt — nothing fancy.

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    2. I think, in France, Danone's Velouté would be great, too.

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    3. If you use Velouté to make this kind of salad dressing, you wouldn't need to add cream. Velouté is a Greek-style yaourt brassé that contains a small amount of cream. The yogurts I buy are made with non-fat (0%) or low-fat milk(1%). It costs about half the price of Velouté by the kilogram.

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  5. Your plate of food looks wonderful. My grandmother used to do the pickle juice addition to her potato salad, hers was from sweet pickles. Or occasionally relish.

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    1. Walt and I really like the cornichons aigres-doux that we get here nowadays, especially the ones from Intermarché. They resemble dill pickles. The ingredients on the label of the kind we like best are water, distilled vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds (both black and yellow), coriander seeds, and dill. They are not really sweet. And I of course like the regular French gherkin cornichons too, especially with pâtés and rillettes. Not that long ago, they were about the only pickles you could get here. I think I never acquired a taste for sweet pickles, which were common in N.C. too. You can't get them here.

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