Tony Jackman’s baby potato salad with celery, apple and peanuts. (Photo: Tony Jackman)
Two of the components of a Waldorf salad — celery and apple — add some crunch as well as flavour to this braai-side salad I’ve designed for your summer daze.
Named after the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Manhattan, the original salad contained only celery, apple and mayonnaise, but it has altered over the decades since its introduction to the salad world in 1896. Walnuts are a common ingredient today, as anyone who has seen the Fawlty Towers episode named after the salad will know.
In this potato salad, the grassy taste of the celery and the sweetness of the apple complement the main event at tonight’s braai very well, I think… I’m braaing pork chops marinated in apple juice and soy, with a little garlic salt, and I’ll also be grilling sliced apple to go with it.
Though a Waldorf salad also contains walnuts, I liked the idea of toasted peanuts, and when I spotted a packet of crushed peanuts — labelled sprinkles — in my local store I grabbed those, and toasted them. So that’s how this salad is finished with a nutty crunch.
But there’s another important step here. In a sense, this salad has two dressings. The first is just two parts of good quality vinegar to one part olive oil, and salt and black pepper. This goes into a bowl, and the hot potatoes are added to be tossed for the spuds to soak up all that flavour. This is refrigerated, and the cold, dressed potatoes are later turned into the whole salad with the addition of the celery, walnuts, chives and of course that homemade mayo.
Tony’s crunchy potato salad with celery, walnuts and peanuts
Ingredients
For the potatoes:
20 baby potatoes, unpeeled
Salted water
A bowl big enough to hold all the potatoes, containing:
2 Tbsp Rozendal fynbos vinegar, or alternative good quality vinegar
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Salt and black pepper to taste
To complete the salad:
1 celery stick, diced small
1 apple, peeled, cored and diced
Juice of ½ a lemon
4 garlic chives, chopped
50g toasted peanut sprinkles
Salt and black pepper
For your mayonnaise:
1 large egg
Juice of ½ a lemon (yes, it’s the other half)
1 Tbsp hot English mustard
Salt and black pepper to taste
About 2 cups canola oil
For the second dressing:
1 cup of your homemade mayonnaise
1 Tbsp Rozendal fynbos vinegar
A pinch of crushed black pepper
Method
In a large pot, add the unpeeled baby potatoes to plenty of cold, salted water and put it on a high heat. When it comes to a boil, time 20 to 25 minutes for the potatoes to become tender.
Use a handheld stick blender and its jug to make the mayonnaise: crack the egg into the jug and add the mustard, lemon juice, salt and black pepper. Hold the stick blender in one hand and the oil in the other. Pour the oil in slowly while immersing the blender, pushing up and down while the oil emulsifies into a mayonnaise. It will take barely a minute. Set aside or refrigerate.
Return to the potatoes. When they’re nearly done, add the vinegar and olive oil to a bowl as well as salt and black pepper.
Drain the potatoes in a colander and, once all the water has disappeared, immediately add the hot potatoes to the vinegar-oil in the bowl and toss well so that all the potatoes are coated. Leave to cool for an hour, then refrigerate until the potatoes are well chilled, at least 4 hours.
Remove the chilled potatoes from the fridge. Chop the celery, apple and chives and put them in a large bowl. Squeeze in lemon juice and toss, to prevent the apple dice from discolouring.
Toast the crushed peanuts in a dry pan.
Add 1 cup of your homemade mayonnaise to the bowl. Add the cooked potatoes and most of the peanut sprinkles and use wooden or silicone spoons/spatulas to toss the dressing through all the potatoes.
Mix the second dressing ingredients in a small bowl and stir. It will become a slightly runny dressing, rather than the thick mayonnaise it started out as. Toss this through the salad, then put the salad into a presentable bowl and sprinkle the remaining toasted peanuts on top. DM
Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award, in 2021 and 2023.
Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.
This dish is photographed on a plate by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.