Pesto potato salad — look ma, no mayo!

Weighing up the various green leaves I’d been given, my eyes then spotted the baby potatoes on the table. Why not, thought I, make a pesto potato salad instead of the ubiquitous mayonnaise? Why not indeed.

Pesto can be built around basil if you like, but there are other green things that can be used for this spiky Italian sauce or dressing. This recipe was inspired by a gift of lots of green things and the young leaves I have growing in the shed out back.

There was Italian flat leaf parsley and an old variety of parsley with tiny, fine leaves (not the curly kind) and a bunch of soft butter lettuce, and I also had, growing in my shed, some young radish and broccoli leaves. I blended all of them with garlic and walnuts, moistened with olive oil, and finished it with grated Parmesan and salt and black pepper.

It doesn’t have to be exactly the same mixture or quantities of leaves, as long as they amount to about 160 g of leaves in all. And you can add more olive oil, to suit your taste.

(Serves 4 to 6 as a side dish)

Ingredients

20 baby potatoes, washed but not peeled

80 g lettuce

60 g parsley

20 g young broccoli and radish leaves

5 garlic cloves, very finely chopped

100 g broken walnuts

Olive oil, as much as needed

Salt and black pepper to taste

Method

Boil or steam the potatoes until al dente but not too soft. Turn off the heat and let them cool down to room temperature.

Rinse all the leaves and drain in a colander. Chop the garlic very finely. 

Starting with the leaves, put everything (not the potatoes!) in a food processor and pour in about half a cup of olive oil. Season with salt and black pepper and blend until fine and amalgamated. If too dense, add more olive oil until it has a runnier consistency.

Put the potatoes into an attractive bowl and spoon on the pesto. Using two wooden spoons (so as not to break up the potatoes with something harder or sharper), coat the potatoes in the pesto. Garnish with small leaves or flowers such as violas, which is what I used.

It wouldn’t do any harm at all to drizzle extra olive oil over them in the bowl. DM

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Champion 2021. His book, foodSTUFF, is available in the DM Shop or, if sold out, directly from him. Buy it here. 

This dish is photographed in a bowl by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.