A Smokey Spanish Potato Salad

Charleston Dave · July 2009

A local retailer, Charleston Cooks, offers regular hands-on cooking classes. I decided to Eggify one of their recent recipes, Spanish Potato Salad. Their recipe calls for blanched potatoes, carrots, green beans and peas. Why not instead try smoking the potatoes on the Egg?

Starting with a group of Yukon Gold and red potatoes (recipe calls for fingerlings but I thought sliced potatoes would add surface area and pick up smoke more efficiently):

I sliced the potatoes into scant 1/2” slices, then dressed with EVOO and sea salt:

On the Egg at 350ºF dome until done by appearance and touch, about 20-25 minutes.

I already had some burgers on the Egg (hard to see, down on the cast iron grate, on a spider) and there was ample hickory smoke.

The potato slices were flipped after 10 minutes, and when done looked like this:

I then quartered the slices to bite-sized.

Blanching the green beans, julienned carrots and frozen peas:

Additional salad ingredients include red (Spanish) onion, some colorful bell peppers chopped fine, capers, Spanish olives, and sliced hard-boiled eggs (maybe I should rename this an Egg Egg Salad?).

The simple dressing included fork-mashed anchovy, mayo, olive oil, Dijon and fresh lemon juice. For the anchovy haters, no it does not taste fishy. Think Worcestershire sauce or pasta puttanesca; the anchovy mash adds earthiness without a fish flavor.

Fresh chopped parsley mixed in at the end to finish. Fresh pepper and salt to taste.

I thought this was an improvement on traditional potato salad, as the smoke flavor in the potato slices kicked things up a notch. It was good warm when I made it, and also good cold the next day.

Next time I’ll use a bit less onion, as the Spanish onion has a bite. The recipe called for a whole Spanish onion and I had a large one so used only half, but it was still too much.

The smoking of the potato slices might be easier with a grill basket, to avoid issues with the potato slices falling through the grate. If you have extra grates, you could double them with 90º rotation to create a grid effect.

Worth a repeat!

cookn biker · July 2009

Very nice! Thanks for the walk thru. I will definataly do this. Dave you rock on creativeness.

Woodbutcher · July 2009

I believe I'll have to try that. I like potato salad in most forms and this is really different. Good job Dave.

eenie meenie · July 2009

Dave, that Smokey Potato Salad looks great. I prefer my potato salads warm. From this and all of your past cooks it seems that you should be the one teaching the cooking classes.

Fidel · July 2009

Very interesting cook Dave. I love that shop - I spent about 90 minutes in there just browsing all the gadgets and cookware.

Side note - have you ever eaten at S.N.O.B.? I notice on the web site they are affiliated. I had a friend recommend it to me but we didn't make it in. Almost stopped in for dessert one night, but the rain talked us out of it so we just went to the hotel bar for dessert.

Charleston Dave · July 2009

Tnx, Fidel. Yes, Charleston Cooks is an interesting place to browse. Their teaching kitchen is pretty fab, with TV monitors and all Viking appliances and cookware. Classes run $50-60, last two hours, and at the end you get to eat what you cooked (usually 4-5 courses). Some of the classes are demonstrations only, but others are hands-on. There's usually an interesting blend of tourists and locals; many of the classes sell out as they limit themselves to 15 students with two chefs supervising.

If you like to browse gadgets and cookware, the largest cookware store in the area is Coastal Cupboard in Mt Pleasant. They have a whole rack devoted to paella equipment and supplies, for example. We also have a Williams-Sonoma outlet on King Street downtown.

SNOB (Slightly North of Broad, name is an inside joke for Charlestonians) is a successful restaurant here, with a good lunch crowd and devoted fans. I'm not one of them; I keep hearing about service issues and on a couple of visits I've not found the food to be exceptional by Charleston standards. The exec chef, Frank Lee, is a local institution and I will tell you a story on myself relating to Chef Lee.

Chef Lee was one of three celebrity judges at a sauce competition here a few years ago held at our large farmer's market. The rules were to develop an original sauce of any kind, then submit one properly canned Mason jar of it on a Saturday morning during the market operating hours for same-day judging. The first prize was a package to develop the winning recipe into a commercial product, including recipe commercialization, package design, and marketing/bottling contract. I developed an original hard caramel sauce, with bourbon and infusions of tangerine, several other fruit nectars and herbs. Every other competitor made a barbecue sauce. The other two judges said my tangerine hard caramel sauce tasted better than anything else in the competition. Chef Lee, however, ranked mine at the bottom, saying that it tasted fine but because it was a dessert sauce, "you can't use it for anything." So, I came in second and the winner was a standard BBQ sauce.

I coulda been a contenda! LOL

Seriously, give SNOB a try for dessert and I think you'd have something perfectly acceptable, if not memorable. If you're going to drop serious coin there, get the Maverick Card. Your expenditures are tracked, and every $250 spent at any of their restaurants (SNOB, High Cotton, Old Village Post House, High Hammock [in Greenville]) or at Charleston Cooks gives you a $25 gift certificate.

Charleston Dave · July 2009

Thanks, Molly!

Use whatever flavor of smokewood you like on the potato slabs. I happened to have hickory in the Egg because I had hamburgers on at the same time, but another wood might suit your palate better.

I julienned the carrots with the tool shown in the picture. It works like a swivel-blade peeler but turns out tiny strips.

Charleston Dave · July 2009

Thanks, Rebecca!

This recipe works well warm or cold.

Charleston Dave · July 2009

We think alike, Dale...I can go for Southern-style mustard potato salad, or hot German potato salad with vinegar dressing, or baked potato salad...yum!

If you decide to cook this one for others, you might want to splurge on better olives. Mine were kinda smallish and gray...leftover from a martini party a long time ago.

Thanks for the kind words!

reelgem · July 2009

Dave, another over the top cook from you. Glad to see you here and posting. Hope all is going well with your mom.

Mainegg · July 2009

Nice post Dave. you really put some time in to putting that all together. LOL thanks for the great recipe I will have to give it a try. I like my potato salads warm too. mmmmmmm.... So no use for a dessert sauce huh?? some people. did they specify BBQ sauce only?? that would have been my first question to them. I always enjoy your posts, again, thanks for sharing.

Charleston Dave · July 2009

Thanks, ME.

It's a lengthy ingredient list (15 ingredients) with about half requiring individual prep of some kind. Once the ingredients are ready, however, assembling the salad is just dumping stuff in a big bowl and stirring.

If memory serves, I believe I got all the prep finished while the potatoes were smoking. My knife skills aren't pro-level but in retrospect it's a good recipe to practice various cooking techniques (smoking, blanching, different kinds of cutting and chopping and whatnot).

A Smokey Spanish Potato Salad

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