Potato salad with Italian flavors

This was the most popular of the potato salads I made for the 4th of July. Making it was as simple as making the basic American standard potato salad as published last week but leaving out the eggs, the parsley and the dressing.

Buy a couple of jars of Italian pickled vegetables. I bought one called “insalatina” which just means little salad and consists of julienne of carrot, celery root etc. I’ve noticed that what’s in it alters with the seasons with more this or that depending on what’s in the marketplace. That one is pickled in brine. The other one was a julienne of eggplant/aubergine pickled under oil, farmwoman style. They could have been anything I liked, really, but if you buy a pickle that comes in big pieces, like giardiniera, you will need to chop it up before adding it to the salad. I also added some sliced black olives mostly because they were leftover from something. They looked great among these colors.

Drain the oil into a bowl and add the solids to the potato salad. To the oil, add mustard and lemon juice, beating it in with a whisk. Start adding salt and/or herbs when it starts to be a vinaigrette that holds together. Taste it to see what it might need. When you like it, pour it over the vegetables and mix it in. Now you can add mayonnaise and stir it in until it becomes a texture you like. It will take less mayonnaise than ordinary salad because of the pickle vinaigrette, and a lot will depend on which pickles you used. Just make sure one of them has oil that you can put in the dressing.

No one really knew what this was, but it went very quickly and someone told me that they liked the one with the carrots best. It’s a super easy way to alter a standard summer dish and have a non-standard experience.