I’m a farmers’ market maven and hit three of San Francisco’s every week throughout the year and four when the Castro Farmers’ Market is not in its winter hiatus. So i know what’s in season and, because i have relationships with a number of vendors going back over twenty years, i know where the best of everything can be found.
So i always have fine ingredients at hand when it’s time to prepare a dish. I just do a quick inventory and make something with what i’ve got. And yes, sometimes i have to make a quick run for an additional ingredient, but quite frequently i can assemble a tasty dish with nothing but what i already have.
Like yesterday when i spotted that pound of two-inch Yukon Golds i’d bought last week and realized that what i wanted to eat for lunch was my crowd-pleasing lower carbohydrate potato salad. And no, that is not an oxymoron.
To drive the carbohydrate count down and still be able to feast on potatoes, all you have to do is make a potato salad that incorporates as much boiled egg as potato – a rich dish high in protein that contains enough potato to satisfy your craving but doesn’t skyrocket your blood sugar, an ideal recipe.
Too, i always use a lot of chopped red onion, which has a much lower glycemic index than those damn delicious potatoes and also makes the salad taste better.
So i cut the potatoes into quarters, and while i was boiling them, boiled and shelled ten eggs.
And then the devil led me into my refrigerator and pointed out that leek i’d spotted last week at the Herrs stand and had found so perfect that i had to buy it and then somehow found no use for as it lay dying in my refrigerator’s vegetable drawer. Cut a thin disk off it for a sample, and yes, it was quite tasty raw and would make a perfect alternative to the red onion. so i sliced the whole thing up and threw it in the salad with the potato quarters and the quartered eggs.
Added the usual suspects – some chopped up sweet pickle and dill pickle, some caper mayonnaise and plain, very thick Greek style yogurt – and i had enough delicious potato salad for a week. Yum.
Scooped out immediately a generous portion for my lunch and started savoring it. Alas, the operant word there is “started”. Something was wrong.
Yes, that thin disk of raw leek i’d sampled was tasty, but i can now strongly recommend against making a potato salad that is one-third raw leek. While a very small amount of it very thinly sliced would be, i still believe, an excellent addition to the usual chopped red onion, it should not be substituted for the onion, and for that matter, even though i like lots of onion in my potato salad, one comprised of one third potato, one third boiled egg, and one third raw leek is way, way too heavy on the leek.
And now that i think about it, as much as i like red onion, i’ve never made a potato salad that was one third onion.
Folks in the health industry say you’re supposed to eat slowly, and i’ll be making ’em happy with that potato salad since picking out 90% of the leek rings slows me down considerably.
Meanwhile, a Deco delight on Market at Laguna.
