Southwestern Potato Salad - Daring Cooks June 2011

Jami Sorrento was our June Daring Cooks hostess and she chose to challenge us to celebrate the humble spud by making a delicious and healthy potato salad. The Daring Cooks Potato Salad Challenge was sponsored by the nice people at the United States Potato Board, who awarded prizes to the top 3 most creative and healthy potato salads. A medium-size (5.3 ounce) potato has 110 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no sodium and includes nearly half your daily value of vitamin C and has more potassium than a banana! 

 I love potatoes. I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned that. My Polish blood and all that. 

Strangely enough though, I'm pretty picky about potato salad. This is mostly because I'm not terribly fond of most mayonnaise and I hate it when potato salad is drowning in the stuff. I also don't love German potato salad because I do like it creamy rather than oily. 

The obvious way for me to deal with this is to replace some of the mayonnaise with greek yogurt as I normally do in many mayonnaise based recipes, but I wanted to try something a little different for this challenge. Instead of mayonnaise I chose to make a creamy sauce using one of my favorite healthy fats - avocado! And for the sake of reducing calories and adding some more veggies, I pureed the avocado with sweet peas which added a pleasant sweetness as well as keeping the salad creamy. 

I'll definitely make this little experiment again. It's like guacamole + potatoes! Who couldn't love that?

Southwestern Potato Salad

Makes about 6 servings

1 1/2 lbs baby red potatoes, scrubbed and quartered

1 cup frozen sweet peas, thawed

1 avocado

juice of 1 lime

1 garlic clove, minced

1 small red onion, chopped

1 jalapeno, minced (veins and seeds removed if you don't want it spicy)

2 Tbsp cilantro, minced

3/4 cup frozen corn

1/4 tsp salt, or to taste

1/4 tsp black pepper

1. Add the potatoes to a large pot and cover with cold water. Season liberally with salt, bring to a boil and cook for 15-20 minutes, or until tender. 

2. Meanwhile, add the flesh of the avocado, peas, lime juice and garlic to a food processor and process until a fairly smooth puree forms. Transfer the puree to a large bowl and add the chopped onion, jalapeno, cilantro, corn, salt and pepper and stir until well mixed.

3. Drain the potatoes and let cool for about  10-15 minutes. Once they've cooled slightly, add to the avocado mixture and stir gently until everything is well incorporated. Taste for salt and pepper and add as needed to taste. Chill and garnish as desired!