insalata di patate con salsa cremosa di peperoni e anacardi / potato salad with red pepper and cashew dip dressing

potatoes dressed in red

I crave color these days, even though the weather has been mostly bright and sunny. A batch of my roasted red pepper and almond dip, made last summer and frozen, brightened me for a few days. I was about to thaw another one, when, in the freezer, I found a container of roasted Round of Hungary peppers, also from last summer. 

Round of Hungary (or pimento) peppers

I thawed them and used them to make half a batch of the roasted red pepper and almond dip substituting almonds (mandorle) with cashews (anacardi). I like the result: I detect the flavor of cashews in the background of the peppers.

Although I like them a lot, I have never used cashews in my kitchen. That's about to change, thanks to a collection of recipes focused on cashews that I received recently. In the meantime, having cashews in the kitchen gave me the idea of trying them in a known recipe.

purple majesty potato plant

The photo above is from last year, but I have a few plants like that in my vegetable garden now: I love the bicolored leaves. I also harvested some potatoes a few days ago, which screamed to be boiled and turned into a salad. Some were Purple Majesty and some of a pale-fleshed variety I don't remember (you can see it in the photo in this post). I selected the smallest ones and added to them, for variety's sake, a couple of red-skinned, white-fleshed potatoes from Warren Creek Farms (the same farm where I get the beautiful beans you've seen featured in several recent posts).

Based on how well the red pepper dip had worked as pasta sauce for my chestnut flour gnocchetti, I decided to use the cashew version as potato salad dressing. With a couple of small adjustments, it worked quite nicely. I am giving here the ingredients I used for a salad for two, but it is easy to increase them to match the number of people you wish to serve.

Ingredients:

• 10.5 oz. / 300 g new potatoes
• Fine sea salt, to taste
• 2 tablespoons roasted red pepper and almond dip made using cashews instead of almonds (see note below)
• 1 teaspoon olive oil of good quality
  
• Sherry vinegar, to taste

Note: cashews are sold already skinned, so no blanching + skinning is required. Toast them in the oven until golden. Carefully monitor them while they are in the oven to avoid burning. 

Scrub the potatoes and boil them in a pot of water until tender. Drain, cool and cube to obtain bite-size pieces. Season lightly with salt. Add the dip, olive oil and a touch of vinegar and toss lightly but thoroughly.

Let the salad rest before serving. If you refrigerate it, take it out ahead of time so it is not eaten cold.

This is a light and lovely salad, perfect served for dinner after a bowl of winter squash soup (recipe to be published soon, I hope).

This is my contribution to No Croutons Required, a monthly vegetarian soup and salad challenge hosted jointly by Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes and Lisa of Lisa's Kitchen. Jacqueline is the host for February and she chose potato salad as theme.

This post contains the roundup of the event.

 

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

insalata di patate con salsa cremosa di peperoni e anacardi

or launch the insalata di patate con salsa cremosa di peperoni e anacardi audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

potato, sweet pepper

Comments

[Alicia (foodycat)]

What a fabulous take on a potato salad! It sounds delicious.

[bellini]

So many out of the ordinary potato salads for this event. It makes us look at potato salad in a whole new light.

[Paz]

How delicious-sounding! I like your use of cahews, here. :-)

[Simona Carini]

Thank you, Alicia. I really liked it and will definitely make it again.

I agree, Val.

Ciao Paz. I will be experimenting more with cashews in the near future.

[diary of a tomato]

Wonderful use of goodies from your garden! And a great way to learn the Italian word for "cashews"!

[Johanna GGG]

lovely dinner - though I am tempted to just buy a red pepper and cashew dip because recently cashews in dips seems a big thing in our supermarkets - and I love cashews so no complaints

[Ruth]

It does look like a wonderful salad made awesome by adding your red pepper & cashew dip. I'm going to use some as a base for homemade pizza. Thanks for sharing.

[Simona Carini]

Dear Debra, I wish I were more of a gardener. I am grateful for everything I harvest, considering my inconsistency in terms of garden care. When I was a kid, I thought cashews were really exotic and they have not lost their special aura.

Hi Johanna. That's interesting. I'll talk more about how I got into cashews recently. They are certainly not cheap, but they have a nice personality.

Homemade pizza sounds good, Ruth!

[Peter]

I am currently taking a class that talks solely about food culture in Italy, and I must say that this dish looks simply amazing. I can only hope that when we go to Italy we experience food that looks this great!

[Simona Carini]

Thanks for your comment, Peter. That sounds like a very interesting class. I also hope that when you visit Italy, the food will rise to your expectations.