Potato Salad with Chervil and Shallots

What’s summer without a yummy potato salad to enjoy on a warm night?  Today we share with you another wonderful recipe from our Summer Recipe Series and to kick off our Fall 2014 Culinary Week!  This recipe is also from our Ranch cookbook, “Cooking with the Seasons at Rancho Puerta” by Deborah Szekely, Deborah Schneider and Robert Holmes.  

Enjoy!

According to our chefs, little purple shallots—sweet little onions with a gentle taste of garlic—are a gift from “la tierra natural.” Shallots grow in abundance at Tres Estrellas and are always his preference when cooking or making salad dressings. It’s well worth finding fresh shallots, or you may substitute a sweet red onion, such as a torpedo onion, or Maui, Vidalia, or Texas sweet onions.

Our chefs are also crazy about chervil, a finicky and fragile herb that gives Salvador fits when he tries to grow it in the heat. If you can’t find chervil, substitute flat-leaf Italian parsley or tender celery leaves.

Serves 6

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ pounds small or new potatoes, such as red, purple, fingerling, or Yukon Gold
• ¼ cup shallots, peeled and cut into small dice
• ¼ cup chopped fresh chervil, flat-leaf parsley, or tender celery leaves

Vinaigrette

• 1 tablespoon minced shallots
• ¼ cup red wine vinegar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1⁄8 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons whole-grain mustard
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions:

1. Wash the potatoes. Boil the potatoes until tender (peeling is not necessary). When the potatoes are cooled, cut them in half and combine in a large bowl with the shallots and chervil.
2. In a small bowl, combine the minced shallots, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Whisk in the mustard and then the olive oil. Pour over the potatoes, toss to coat, and serve.