French potato salad

Sometimes I want old-school, creamy potato salad that I can pile high on my plate—alongside some coleslaw—to eat with BBQ. And sometimes I want a light, fresh potato salad that has savory pops of flavor.

Today is the latter kind of day.

The bonus is that this type of potato salad also goes incredibly well with traditional BBQ.

The vinegary dressing on these potatoes perfectly compliments rich and fatty BBQ—in some ways even better than the mayo based one.

Sure, it can't compete with the nostalgia of a traditional potato salad. But there's something about the creamy potatoes contrasted with the bite from mini pickles, punchy radishes, and briney capers that just keeps you wanting more.

Yours in trying to convince you to bring a French style potato salad to an American BBQ,
Jacqueline

French style potato salad, adapted from Cooks Illustrated
The original recipe said to serve the salad immediately, while still warm. However, we preferred the potato salad prepared the day before, which gave the ingredients a chance to both meld and pop. So feel free to serve warm or prepare in advance (which is helpful when bringing this dish to a get together).

In step 6 the original recipe says to gently mix your potatoes with the onion, radishes, capers, and cornichons. However, I found the potatoes could be quite brittle and tended to break into pieces when handling them too much. So I preferred the layering method to avoid breaking apart the potatoes. 

Ingredients
2 pounds small red potatoes (about 2-inch diameter), unpeeled, scrubbed, and cut into 1/4-inch-thick slices
2 TBSP table salt
1 medium clove garlic, peeled and threaded on skewer
1 ½ TBSP  champagne vinegar or white wine vinegar
2 tsp Dijon mustard
¼ cup olive oil
½ tsp ground black pepper
2 TBSP minced red onion
2 radishes (medium red, about 1 1/2 ounces), thinly sliced (about 1/3 cup)
¼ cup capers, rinsed and drained
¼ cup cornichons (or the smallest pickles you can find), thinly sliced

Directions

1. Place potatoes, 6 cups cold tap water, and salt in large saucepan. Bring to boil over high heat, then reduce heat to medium. Continue to simmer potatoes, uncovered, until tender but still firm (thin-bladed paring knife can be slipped into and out of center of potato slice with no resistance), about 5 minutes.
   
2. While cooking the potatoes, blanch your garlic. Lower skewered garlic into simmering water and partially blanch, about 30-45 seconds. Immediately run garlic under cold tap water to stop cooking; remove garlic from skewer. Press through garlic press or mince by hand and set aside.
   
3. Drain potatoes, reserving 1/4 cup cooking water. Arrange hot potatoes close together in single layer on rimmed baking sheet. (You may have a few more circles than will fit on the baking sheet. That's fine; either snack on them or just rotate a few pieces in step 5.)
   
4. Whisk garlic, reserved potato cooking water, vinegar, mustard, oil, and pepper in small bowl until combined. (I like to throw these in a larger mason jar and just shake everything together.) Drizzle dressing evenly over warm potatoes. Let stand 10 minutes if you will be serving the potato salad warm or 20-30 minutes if you will be serving the potato salad cold.
   
5. While potatoes are cooling, mix together onion, radishes, capers, and cornichons in a small bowl.
   
6. In your final serving bowl, "layer" the potatoes with the onion/radish/caper/cornichon mixture (as you would with a lasagna, by alternating the layers of potato with the relish mixture).
   
7. Serve immediately or refrigerate overnight. The potato salad can be served cold or at room temperature (my preference).