Farmers' Market Potato Salad

This colorful blend of seasonal vegetables is a perfect side dish to bring to a BBQ or potluck. Joe was on board immediately after I told him the dressing contained two full tablespoons of Dijon and a little Tabasco, which I hardly ever use.

It's also easy to bump it up to a main dish by adding kidney beans and serving it on a bed of leafy greens, like we did. I wasn't intending to photograph it on the plate, but I loved how it looked so I snatched it out of Joe's hands and took a few shots :-)

Here is my review of our CSA box, week 4:

We got: 1 head oak leaf lettuce, 1 pound Oregon Spring tomatoes, 1 cucumber, 1 red onion, 2 pounds fava beans, 2 pounds French fingerling potatoes, 1 basket cherries, 1 basket strawberries. (Note that it was a heaping basket of cherries, but we couldn't stop eating them even while I took the picture). 

We started out the week by using some of the red onion and finishing up the cabbage leftover from week 3. I found a Rachael Ray recipe for Fiery Roast Turkey Sandwiches that sounded good, so I made a version of that. It's basically just a turkey sandwich but you add a few special touches to make it really flavorful, like pickled red onions that you cook quickly on the stove with sugar and red wine vinegar, a spicy chipotle cream cheese spread, and topped with a pile of shredded cabbage and radishes. I decided to make it a wrap instead of a sandwich, and I prepared a smaller amount of the chipotle cream spread using just a few wedges of laughing cow cheese. It was good! I loved the pickled red onions. They would be yummy addition to hamburgers or veggie burgers too.

We used some of the fava beans in this lovely spring frittata with morels and Parmesan cheese by Cooking Light. It was a good meal, though honestly, the morels could have been shiitakes -or almost any other mushroom- and I wouldn't have known the difference.

The rest of the favas were used in a lemony yogurt-based salad from the CSA newsletter. It was a variation of a recipe in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, adapted to use the ingredients in our box that week. Anyone else have this cookbook? What do you think of it? It seems like one I would like, because this salad was really good. Also, go here if you want to see my breakdown of how to prep fava beans.

Let's see...if I remember correctly...the cucumber was sliced and eaten with hummus, the strawberries were eaten with yogurt, and the cherries were chopped and added to bowls of vanilla ice cream. We still have a couple of potatoes left for next week.

The tomatoes, most of the red onion, and most of the potatoes (some from this week, some from last week) were used for the potato salad, recipe follows.

Farmers' Market Potato Salad
adapted from Cooking Light - June 2010
serves 6 as a side dish

Notes: Stir in a can of red kidney beans (rinsed and drained) at the end to make it more of a main dish, if desired.

1 cup fresh corn kernels (or frozen, if the corn is not yet ready where you live)
2 pounds fingerling potatoes, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon, basil, or a combination
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 tablespoons whole-grain Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce (such as Tabasco)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Cooking spray
3/4 cup vertically sliced red onion
3/4 cup diced zucchini
1 cup cherry or other tomatoes, halved or chopped if large

Preheat the oven to 425 F.

Place the corn and potatoes on a jelly-roll pan and toss with 1 tablespoon of the oil. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender. The corn should be nice and roasted, but not burned. Set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together the tarragon/basil, vinegar, mustard, hot sauce, salt, and pepper. Gradually add the remaining oil while whisking constantly to create an emulsion. Put the contents of the jelly-roll pan into a large bowl, and drizzle the dressing over the top. Toss to coat.

Heat a large skillet over medium heat and coat with cooking spray (or add a little more olive oil if you don't use cooking spray). Add onion and zucchini, cook 4 minutes or until lightly browned. Add this mixture, along with the tomatoes, to a large bowl and toss gently to combine. Taste and season with more salt and pepper if needed.

This dish can be served immediately, or you can make it ahead and refrigerate until ready to serve. It's just as good cold.