French Potato Salad Recipe

I was trained in French Cooking, and it happens to be my specialty, though I leave haute cuisine up to the celebrity chefs and their thousand dollar omelet (Yes thousand dollar omelet, Google it, see I told you.) five star restaurants. No I don’t want your cherry tuna sago ice cream with a truffle balsamic glaze, just sod off, perv.

One thing to remember if you are ever in France, watch out for the butcher shops with the horses head over the door or you will be eating Sea biscuit before you know it.

Ok, maybe I make it sound worse than it is. It really is not so bad, and they do get picked on quite a bit. There are a lot of people that have fun at the expense of the French, (Usually the Germans) so I today have decided to take the high road and be as kind as I can.

When the French are not being invaded by Germany or sitting around street cafes forgetting to bathe, infecting the world with street mimes, going on strike at the drop of a beret, and generally just being French. The French can be a wonderful, generous and friendly people, this is because they start drinking wine at 8, both 8 years old and 8am.

It is possibly because of this that the French are known for doing odd things with food. Take frogs legs for example: do they really like frog’s legs? Or do they just do it to confound tourists? They taste like chicken by the way, frogs legs not Frenchmen, the closest thing that I can approximate it to is eating chicken wings, stupid little bones that get in the way of any real flavor. Besides I like frogs, I don’t like chickens. I find it hard to eat animals I like, not impossible of course. I happen to like pheasants, they are so colorful and animated, and super good smoked and baked. Like some people I know (You know who you are, you can’t hide behind the chicken…and who would want to? We just know the chicken is going to cross the road at a most inopportune moment, probably en route to becoming something “black and white and red all over”.).

I had mentioned in an earlier post that the French put wine in their potato salad. This caused a couple of people to look at me funny, though that could very well be because of the vinyl muumuu.

Here is my recipe for a fairly classic French potato salad:

3 Pounds of waxy potatoes (red or Yukon gold) unpeeled and cut in 1 inch cubes.

3 Tablespoons of white wine

1 bunch green onions chopped

¼ Cup olive oil

4-5 Tablespoons red wine vinegar taste for seasoning you may like it a little more tart than I do.

2 Tablespoons of flat leaf parsley

1-2 Teaspoons tarragon

Salt and fresh cracked black pepper

Cook the potatoes in boiling water till they are tender but not mushy about 10-12 minutes. Drain them and while they are still warm add the wine. Let cool to room temperature and add the remaining ingredients. Let flavors combine over a one hour period. Serve at room temperature to get the best flavor sensation out of this salad.

Makes 8-12 servings