My daughter has life threatening food allergies. She goes into anaphylactic shock if she has the slightest exposure to any dairy products or eggs. While this makes cooking for her challenging, it also makes for some delicious takes on culinary classics. Take potato salad. I grew up eating, and loving, classic potato salad: boiled potatoes, chopped boiled egg, celery, maybe a little diced onion and pickles, bound together with a mayonnaise dressing.
While American-style potato salad is iconic, it is also calorie dense and can turn lethal at a picnic on a hot summer day. Can you say “food poisoning”?
In creating a potato salad for my daughter that was free of any dairy or eggs, I also found a lighter, healthier version of this family favorite, substituting roasted potatoes for boiled and incorporating vegetables from a summer garden. Tossed with a light olive oil-based vinaigrette not only adds a depth of flavor, it has the advantage of being safe picnic fare on even the hottest summer day.
The great thing about this recipe is how versatile it can be. I love it with fiddleheads and tomatoes early in the summer. You can add zucchini when that bumper crop comes in. My family loves it with fennel and arugula. Let your garden dictate the ingredients and you can’t go wrong.