FRESH Pesto Potato Salad

Pesto Potato Salad is a delicious way to up your potato salad game adding goodness and flavour to a traditional potato salad! Mixing some freshly made pesto into your potato salad gives it so much flavour and colour! This pesto potato salad is the perfect side dish for steaks or meats.

This pesto uses parsley as the main herb. You can do a mixture of basil and parsley but a parsley-only pesto is similar to a salsa verde which is beautifully fresh and gives a different sort of flavour. 30grams or 1 ounce of parsley seems like a very small amount but parsley is very light so it ends up being about the same weight as a bunch of parsley. I use flat leaf parsley, not curly parsley. If your parsley is growing crazy then this is a great recipe to use it up. I also recommend making double of this pesto. Double of the recipe below makes 175g or 8ozs or parsley so a small jar's worth.

Allergic to nuts? You can also make this without the nuts. It's delicious without them and really is like a salsa verde potato salad.

I used pink skinned desiree potatoes which looked pretty with the green pesto mayonnaise. Always make sure to cook your potatoes in strongly salted water so that the potatoes absorb the salt and are therefore seasoned well inside. Potatoes need salt for flavour!

I brought this pesto potato salad to a picnic. It's great for picnics because there's no need to dress the salad just before serving or worry about wilting leaves. It's the perfect springtime salad and goes with so many dishes or is filling enough to have on its own. After our picnic we found something rather interesting that coincided with the onset of spring.

There was a ottoman sitting in the driveway of our apartment block which is a very unusual sight. Usually our neighbours are tidy and wouldn't leave bits of furniture around so it stood out. We decided to take it to the rubbish area so went to pick it up and then saw what was inside and we couldn't believe what we saw!

bees

BEES!!

Lots of bees!

It was in fact a swarm of bees! I later learnt from a follower Bec who is a beekeeper that during spring time bees tend to swarm and while it looks very alarming, this is when they're calmest. They can swarm multiple times during spring and summer and most likely come back to the area.

As for what we did because bees are precious creatures we messaged a beekeeper Doug that I had written a story about and he said that he would be there the next day to collect it. But before he did someone else removed the bees ottoman and all. So they disappeared as quickly as they appeared! It was meant to bee! ;)

So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever seen a swarm of bees? Are you going on lots of picnics?

Pesto Potato Salad

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Preparation time: minutes

Cooking time: 10-15 minutes

Serves: 4 as a side dish

• 500g/1.1lbsDesiree pink skinned potatoes
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise

• Pesto from above

• 1/4 red onion, thinly sliced

• Salt and pepper to season

Parsley Pesto

• 30g/1oz. fresh parsley leaves (no stalks)
• 1 small clove garlic, peeled
• 2 tablespoons grated parmigiano reggiano
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 60g/2ozs. toasted pine nuts or cashews

Step 1 - First cut the potatoes into bite sized chunks and boil in salted water until tender but not falling apart. Drain and allow to cool while you make the pesto.

Step 2 - Wash the parsley well and shake dry (place it in a salad spinner or in a teatowel or between two paper towels and dry). Place the parsley, garlic, cheese, oil, lemon juice and nuts in a mortar and pestle and grind until it becomes a paste. You can also do this in a food processor if you are low on time.

Step 3 - Mix the pesto, mayonnaise, onion and potatoes together and season with salt and pepper.