Side Salad

Highly untraditional with real BBQ, but I love French potato salad: cook sliced potatoes until just done (under 10 minutes for 1/4-inch slices). Drain, saving some of the cooking water. While still warm, sprinkle with a vinaigrette of olive oil, white wine vinegar, chopped shallots or very finely chopped onions, lots of chopped herbs (parsley, thyme, chives, tarragon, whatever!), salt and pepper. Fold gently to combine. Serve at room temp.

Or of course there's a good ole' potato salad with cubed potatoes, mayo + mustard + yogurt + a little vinegar to thin it, chopped sour pickles, sweet pickle relish (I like BOTH), chopped celery, chopped onions, parsley, and chives or scallions (I like mine oniony).

I also like to mix cole slaw vegetables (cabbage, carrots, celery, onions, cucumbers) with an Asian-style dressing of soy sauce (just a little), rice wine vinegar, sugar, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, and some hot pepper flakes. Again, not traditional, but very tasty! And both this and the French potato salad balance nicely against the wonderful fattiness of good bbq.

Two of my favorites -

Sunshine carrot salad - grated carrots, mandarin oranges, pineapple chunks, coconut and raisins, held together with vanilla yogurt.

Three-potato salad - equal amounts of redskins or white potato, Yukon golds, and half that of sweet potatoes. Cook all three the usual way, and cube the white and golds; mash the cooked sweet potato with whatever mayo dressing you use, add chopped hardcooked eggs, celery, or whatever else you usually add.

Fingerlings and garlic scapes....boil fingerlings and slice, saute garlic scapes add to potatoes then dress with either dijon viniagrette or aioli type.

Root slaw~ celeriac, parsnips, carrots, red pepper, red onions >shredded add lots of Italian parsley,chopped green onions dress with Creole mustard, mayo, tarragon, garlic, lemon juice and a smidge of honey.

* We have baby fennel, radishes, kohlrabi, carrots, Japanese turnips, beets on the market.....I ate golden baby (size of a nickel) beets with Goatsbeard, goat cheese and tarragon viniager last night. Fennel shaved with rice viniager is good too. The Page/Shinn's had a radish salad that would be pretty. Chiogga and golden beets with a sherry viniagar.

I grind sweet relish into mayo with parsley and green onions for my "everyday" slaw....people go gaga over it....funny the easiest are usually the ones everyone loves. with cabbage and carrots....

FRENCH POTATO SALAD

Suzanne:

What do you do with some of the water that you saved from the potatos? Mix it with the vinaigrette? If so, when?

Hmmm what about a traditional Greek salad? Tomatos-cucumbers-onions-olives-green pepper and feta cheese?

Very good for summer :)

Koko -- actually, I was sort of paraphasing the recipe in Julia Child's The Way to Cook, page 362. She says to toss the warm potato slices with the shallots or scallions, S & P, either some of the cooking water or some chicken stock, vinegar, and herbs -- and then let it steep for 10 minutes. THEN you can add a little oil if you want -- but it's optional. So this can be a no-fat dish, but still very tasty because the warm potatoes will have absorbed the other flavors. Doing it the way Julia says really is MUCH better than my initial (mistaken) paraphrase!

I am dittoing Suzanne's French Potato Salad :lips: