Provençal Potato Salad

And our Passover Seder

I’m still reminiscing about my week in Provence (please see previous post if you haven’t done so). Everything was so picture-perfect, so utterly Provençe, as you imagine it, as if someone had come and arranged everything to look just so, with extreme care and curation. As if it were almost a caricature of itself. Almost too good to be true.

In my native Argentina, when something is “a la provenzal” that usually means with garlic and parsley; it’s quite common to find potatoes or mushrooms prepared this way served in every typical Argentinian bodegón.

What I found to be the most Provençal food in Provence was the tapenade, or rather, the many many versions of it; there is green and black olive tapenade, of course, and they both have capers and anchovies. But there are also vegan versions, and colorful ones, and at the markets they are all sold at the same stall.

I do not recommend buying what they call hummus in Provence, which I tried (because I love hummus, although I know it is not local to Provence), and deeply regretted. Maybe they should just call it something else, as maybe it was the unexcpected acidity of the flavor of that spread that looked like what I know and love as hummus turned me off of it for quite a while. Or maybe it was just rancid.

This potato salad was featured at my recent Camila’s Mediterranean Picnic online class at The Civic Kitchen. A guest at that class said she thought the menu was totally Passover-friendly, and so I chose to reproduce a part of it for our Seder table.