Lighten up your summer potato salad with cauliflower and feta
Summer is potato salad season, and if you're like me, the only problem with that is a little thing called self-control. Potato salad is like egg salad, guacamole, hummus, french fries: Once I start, I can't stop.
I wasn't really looking for a solution to that, but I found one anyway, in Joshua McFadden's beautiful new book, “Six Seasons” (Artisan, 2017). The book's premise, by the way, is that seasonal cooking is more nuanced than just the big four: He divides summer into three sub-seasons, which makes so much sense to us farmers market shoppers. What's available in late June is certainly not the same as what's shiny and new in early September, with lots of ebbs and flows in between.
Back to that potato salad idea. McFadden's take is to sub in roasted cauliflower for half of the potatoes, which makes the whole affair lighter and less starchy. Even better, he triples down on the tart elements that are a big part of what keeps me eating the stuff. There are olives, pickled peppers and, best of all, feta that you whip smooth with a little olive oil and fold in instead of mayo.
I had every bit as much trouble keeping myself from devouring it as I do a more traditional potato salad, but I didn't feel nearly as guilty.