Few dishes are as personal as potato salad. Many of us have happy childhood memories of this iconic dish, often served at picnics or barbecues. Usually those memories involve a bowl of boiled potatoes, along with various add-ins, all held together with a mayonnaise-based dressing.
In my experience, most people are fiercely loyal to the potato salad of their youth. If your mom used pickle relish or yellow mustard in her salad, you likely do the same. If fresh dill played a prominent role then, it likely still does now.
While I also carry a deep, abiding love for my mother's no-frills version, made with potatoes, onions, hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise — lots and lots of mayonnaise — I'm open to taking a fresh look at an old favorite with this week's recipe, Roasted Potato and Green Bean Salad With Roasted Garlic Lemon Aioli.
As the name implies, we aren't boiling the potatoes for this salad. Instead, we are roasting them, intensifying their flavor. In addition to the potatoes, we're adding green beans, also roasted, which gives the dish added interest. Fresh lemon zest is tossed with the hot-from-the-oven vegetables, permeating them with its essential oils.
Garlic cloves are roasted, along with the veggies, before being mashed and mixed together with mayonnaise and lemon juice. Roasting takes away the assertiveness found in raw garlic and replaces it with a subtle sweetness, resulting in a mayonnaise (or aioli) with a balanced, nuanced flavor.
Typically, potato salad is heavily dressed before being served, transforming all the ingredients into one homogenized mixture. For this updated take, the aioli is served on the side, allowing each person to dress their salad with as much or as little mayo as they like.
The veggies, which are cooled slightly after roasting, are combined with cherry tomatoes and a generous scattering of basil and parsley, just before serving.
This light, fresh salad could easily become a complete meal with the addition of shredded cooked chicken, tuna or even a hard-boiled egg or two.
