salads

Simple Potato and Chorizo Salad

Now the good weather has arrived in the Algarve, we cook outside on our gas barbeque more than by any other method. As a side dish we usually go for jacket potatoes or sometimes homemade potato wedges but this weekend my wife pointed out it had been a while since we had a good, old-fashioned potato salad. As if it were meant to be, we came across some lovely waxy little red potatoes in the supermarket.

Potato and Chorizo Salad

Potato and Chorizo Salad

When we cook a barbeque we often make a little bit too much as it makes for a good lunch of leftovers when we are working the following day, so I wanted to make this potato salad a little bit more interesting.

There is a huge range of chorizo sausages available in Portugal, from scary dark coloured morcela (blood sausage) to soft, juicy chorizo made from porco preto, the speciality black pork from the Alentejo. We had the remains of one of the latter in the fridge so to start with I removed the skin and chopped it into small, rough chunks.

I boiled the potatoes in salted water until cooked, but still firm. I then left them to dry in their steam and cool a little – it is best to dress the potatoes when still warm, but not hot.

In a mixing bowl, I added my warm potatoes, the chunks of chorizo, a good dollop of mayonnaise, half of a small finely chopped onion, a handful of chopped parsley and a big grinding of black pepper. I only added a tiny bit of salt as the chorizo is salty as it is. This would be equally good, and a little lighter with crème fraiche in place of the mayonnaise, or a mixture of the two.

The result: a creamy, chunky and chewy delight, which was great to accompany our barbeque and will, I suspect, be equally great when I have it as a main course with a simple green salad for lunch today.