Black Truffle Potato Salad

This recipe for Black Truffle Potato Salad is not your everyday potato salad. Baby potatoes are seasoned with a light dressing made with red wine vinegar, fresh herbs, and fresh black truffles. It is fantastic on its own but also pairs very well with grilled beef or chicken.

We had the honor of meeting Celine of Gourmet Attitude at the Pebble Beach Food and Wine event last month; thank you Pim for making this lovely introduction! Celine is a delight. We thoroughly enjoyed talking with her about our common interests; Paris, food, and one of her biggest loves, truffles!

Celine is the owner of Gourmet Attitude, which imports truffles and sells them to high-end restaurants such as The French Laundry, Daniel, Le Bernardin, to name a few. Celine deals with a producer directly which allows her to have control over the quality and freshness. The truffles are sniffed by their dogs, dug out of the ground, washed by hand only, handled with extreme care, and then shipped to her. The harvest takes place over the weekend and she receives the heavenly package on Tuesdays and in turn, she delivers them to her clients in Manhattan. She carefully selects what she will be sent to her chefs throughout the country – quality is key!

Upon returning to our respected homes we continued emailing back and forth. You can only imagine how excited I was when she asked if she could send Chez Us some truffles to enjoy! We felt, well, privileged, and honored. In turn, I said I would be delighted to photograph them, cook with them, write some recipes and most of all enjoy them immensely in order to thank her for this wonderful package.

We received a brilliant package last Wednesday, of Black Winter Truffles from Provence, some truffle oil, and a beautiful shaver. We were so excited to try them, that we could not wait to do so after our return home from holiday, so we carefully froze one of the little packages, put it on dry ice and brought it to Palm Springs with us.

We were grilling beef and chicken kabobs the other night and needed a light potato salad to serve with it. Why go with traditional when you can go with a gourmet! I cooked baby potatoes until they were cooked but still a little crunchy. Then I mixed them with slices of shallot and celery. The dressing was a light red wine vinaigrette that I seasoned with the truffles and some french thyme. I served it slightly warm but chilled is equally as good – we had leftovers! I was really pleased with how this recipe came out. This recipe for Black Truffle Potato Salad is light and flavorful as well as refreshing with hints of earthiness.

Tips:

Do not over cook potatoes, you want a little crunch not mashed potatoes.

Tools:

Truffle slicer will make slicing truffles easier than a mandolin or knife. Trust us!
Heavy bottomed pot
Mixing bowl
Pretty serving bowl

Recipe: Black Truffle Potato Salad

Ingredients:

1 lb red or Yukon gold baby potatoes, cut into small quarters
1 cup celery, thinly sliced
1/3 shallot, peeled and sliced thinly
6 tablespoons good olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons French thyme, minced
2 tablespoon black summer truffles, minced
kosher salt, to taste
fresh cracked black pepper
black truffle slices for garnish

How To:

Bring a large heavy bottomed pot of water to boil. Season with kosher salt.

Add the potatoes and cook only until fork tender. About 20 minutes. It may take a little less or a little longer depending on how big the pieces of potato are.

While the potatoes are cooking make the dressing.

In a jar, combine olive oil, vinegar, thyme, and truffles, shake to mix.

Place the potatoes, celery and shallots into a large mixing bowl. Pour over the dressing and lightly fold to mix.

I like to serve this salad slightly warm but cold is fine too.

Place the potato salad onto a serving platter.

Garnish with some truffle slices.

Serve.

Eat.