Potato Salad with Cider Vinegar and Caper Vinaigrette, and More Fun With Vinaigrette

Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here!

This week, I’m continuing my series on the “mother” sauces of California Cuisine. Since California Cuisine does not have an official list of foundational sauces, and I thought it should, I came up with the following list of sauces: mayonnaise, vinaigrette, salsa, Bernaise (or Hollandaise), pesto, soy sauce and basic tomato.

I started my exploration of the mother sauce with mayonnaise and last week, I turned my attention to vinaigrette, which I’ll be featuring again this week.

So far for vinaigrettes, I have featured a terrific chimichurri sauce, a kumquat vinaigrette and a mayonnaise vinaigrette that puts ranch dressing shame, to name a few.

Today, I’m featuring a terrific take on potato salad with a French twist: French potato salad with cider vinegar and caper vinaigrette. Potato salad is one of those dishes I long for when the weather turns sunny and warm and I start fantasizing about picnics in the park, outdoor entertaining and firing up the grill. And as if on cue, we have been having fabulously gorgeous weather here in Northern California! While bone dry, the skies are crystal blue and we’ve been hovering around 70-75 degrees everyday for the last week. Spring is definitely on the way!

When I was a kid, growing up in Texas, a picnic wasn’t complete without potato salad. My Granny made a potato salad that was to die for. The recipe has been lost in the mists of time, but it featured dill pickles, boiled eggs and lots and lots of dressing made with mayonnaise, mustard, pickle juice and pickle relish. It was gloriously decadent and fattening and I have tried for years to recreate it, but have never gotten it quite right. One of these days, I’ll hit on the recipe and publish it.

But for now, I am very much enjoying this lighter version of potato salad using white wine and a cider vinegar and caper vinaigrette. The important tip to success for this potato salad is to not overcook the potatoes. No fair asking me how I know. The first time I made this salad, we got interrupted by a phone call and the potatoes got away from me. Since it was late and I wanted to press on, I made the salad anyway and while it wasn’t terrible, it was more like mashed potatoes with wine and vinaigrette. A little weird. Furthermore, the recipes I found for inspiration for this recipe included a lot–and I mean A LOT of white wine, which just kind of settled at the bottom of the bowl and made for slightly tipsy potatoes. Also a little weird.

In my recipe, I use only 1 1/2 tbsps of white wine and I added capers to the vinaigrette to give this potato salad a nicely balanced, but piquant flavor. The nice part about this salad is that since it’s not mayonnaise-based (like my Grannie’s was), it’s perfect for outdoor dining when the weather may get too warm for mayo-based dressings.

It’s also great with a seasonal vegetable such as asparagus;