Potato Salad

We’re going to a potluck barbecue tonight, and along with some burgers to throw on the grill, I’m taking a small potato salad to share. I’ve been devouring (metaphorically) the Smitten Kitchen website, reading all the back posts over the past couple of weeks; it’s the site I wish I was writing. Oh well! I’ll just point you to all her veggie recipes and you can see the delicious-looking cakes and cookies yourself if you like; I won’t tempt you here.  She heavily adapted Roseanne Cash’s Potato salad, and I’ve adapted it again, since I hate egg in potato salads.

Potato Salad

1 pound new potatoes
2 dill pickle spears, chopped (about 1/2 cup)
1 stalk celery, chopped (about 1/3 cup)
6 green onions, white & green parts, chopped (about 1/3 cup)
3 tbsp light mayonnaise
2 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tsp apple cider vinegar

1. Quarter and boil the new potatoes until cooked (ideally you cooked double for last night’s dinner). Drain and let cool completely.
2. Add everything else and mix together. Add salt and pepper if it seems to need it.

Eat a quarter of this and you’ve got just 135 calories, or 3 Weight Watchers points.

Red Wine Beef Stew

I adapted this recipe from the original Harrowsmith cookbook. I know it seems like a crazy time of year to make stew, but it was cool and rainy today, and I wondered what it would be like with new potatoes and carrots. Their freshly picked taste still came through, even after lengthy simmering!

If you’re making this in winter with regular potatoes and carrots, of course peel them and chop them. I just cut my new potatoes in half, and washed the carrots with the scrub brush to get the little hairy roots off. If you have tomato sauce languishing in the fridge you can use 1/3 cup of that rather than a tomato.

Red Wine Beef Stew

2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 package stewing beef (1 pound, 454g)
1/3 cup chopped onion (half a small one)
1/3 cup chopped celery (one stalk)
1 clove garlic, chopped up
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 tomato (if fresh, chop up – mine was frozen so I just threw it in)
2/3 cup beef stock (a packet of OXO is fine, I promise)
1/3 cup red wine
about 12 new red-skinned potatoes, washed and cut in half
a bunch of new carrots, washed well and cut in chunks
1 tbsp flour
1/4 cold water

1. Warm up the oil in your big pot and brown the pieces of beef well on all sides. Take them out and put them aside for a minute.
2. Put the onion and celery and saute them until they’re soft, about 10 minutes. Add the beef back in.
3. Add the garlic, some salt and pepper (not too much salt if you’re using prepared stock), thyme, bay leaf, the tomato, beef stock, and wine. Bring to a boil, then turn it down to a low simmer, cover the pot, and leave it alone for at least an hour.
4. Add the potatoes and carrots. Simmer, covered again, for at least another hour. Make sure the beef is tender – cook it a bit longer if you can wait and you’re not sure.
5. Mix the flour and water up until there are no lumps, then pour it into the stew. Cover and simmer one last ten minutes to thicken up the stew.

Serves 4.

Nutritional information per serving; 670 calories, 12g fat, 103g carbohydrate, 37g protein, 15g fibre. 14 Weight Watchers points (ouch!).

If you’re trying to lose weight, don’t just eat half a serving; make the full recipe but with half the amount of oil, beef, and potato. That alone will drop it to 7 points, since it’s those ingredients that bump up the fat and calorie count.

Salade Nicoise

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that green beans and new potatoes are available at the same time at the farmer’s market; Salade Niçoise must have come about for that very reason.

To keep picky eaters happy, when serving or packing this for a picnic, we pack each ingredient in its own little container. It makes for a dizzying array of little yogurt containers alongside the bigger potato bowl, but it’s fun for everybody to assemble their own salad. This is a nice light-tasting lunch that still keeps you full for the afternoon, thanks to the added protein and carbohydrate.

If you have kids you won’t eat tuna or eggs, you might want to give them some cheese to round out the meal. If you have lettuce you’re trying to get rid of, you can add it to the salad, or if you’re serving it to company at home, it does look nice to lay everything out on a bed of lettuce leaves.

Salade Niçoise

2 pounds potatoes
1 pound green beans
4 tomatoes
small chunk of red onion
4 oz black olives
2 cans chunk tuna, packed in water
4 eggs, hard boiled
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 clove garlic, pressed
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
salt and pepper to taste

1. Prep the potatoes; if they’re new, wash and cut them in quarters; if not, peel them and cut into largish bite-size chunks. Prep the beans; cut off the tops and cut them into roughly bite-size chunks too. (You’ll sense a bite-size theme here, soon, if you hadn’t already).
2. I can’t stand to use three pots for a lunch, so if you have a pretty good idea of how long you want your potatoes and beans to cook, try what I do: put the potatoes on to boil, then once the beans are prepped, but them on top. They should be mostly out of the water, and steaming rather than boiling. I haven’t tried boiling the eggs along with the potatoes yet, but I think that would work too.
3. Cut up the tomatoes into smallish pieces and the red onion into very small pieces. Peel the eggs and quarter them.
4. Mix the olive oil, vinegar, garlic, mustard (a baby-food jar is good if you’re to picnic). Add salt and pepper to taste, or let everyone season their own salad. Mix enough dressing in with the cooked, drained potatoes to moisten them.

When it’s picnic time, give everyone a bowl and a fork. Open and drain the tuna, and open all your various containers. Pour dressing on the individual bowls once the salads are assembled to everyone’s liking.

This serves 4, and can easily be cut in half or scaled up for the number of people you’re feeding. For each serving, you’ve earned 2 “real” vegetable servings and 2 starchy vegetables, for 400 calories. As written it’s about 8 Weight Watchers points, which is a lot for lunch; cut that down to 6 by measuring yourself just 6 ounces of potato and skipping the hard-boiled egg. If you hate olives, save yourself 1 point by omitting them too.

Smashed Potatoes

Smashed Potatoes and Roasted Green Beans

You really didn’t need a recipe for this, did you? No, I didn’t think so. Here it is anyway, so nobody forgets the most basic way to enjoy potatoes.

Smashed Potatoes

12 small new potatoes, preferably red-skinned
1 or 2 cloves garlic, peeled but left whole
2 tsp butter
1/4 cup milk (or so)

Wash the potatoes and cut them each into 2 or 3 pieces, so the pieces are all roughly the same size. Throw them in a pot with the garlic and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and cook for 10 to 15 minutes; they’re done when a fork goes into them easily. Drain them, then put them back in the pot over low heat for a minute while you add the butter and milk. Mash roughly. You do know you can get a plastic potato masher to avoid scratching your non-stick pots, right?

Serves 2 for about 110 calories and 3 Weight Watchers points.  To be more accurate, since your potatoes  might be bigger or smaller than mine, measure out the final product (each 1/4 cup is 1 point) and then add a point for the butter.

When using full-size winter potatoes, and serving company, I often add cheese to the mashed potatoes; some sharp old cheddar, goat cheese, or grated parmesan all go well.  I discovered the secret to restaurant mashed potatoes when I took a cooking course once; it’s fat.  In the case of the ones we made, rendered marrow and heavy cream.  I’m not likely to do that at home!