The Café 2001 Green Pea and Potato Salad
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Potato salad is one of the dishes taken from the Western canon that’s become an essential in Japanese home cooking. It’s also a regular izakaya and yoshoku restaurant dish, from cheap and cheerful to high-end. Chefs tend to have a signature house potato salad, and mine is usually made with iburi gakko — a smoked rice bran pickled daikon. But potato salad can also be used as a satisfying way to enjoy the season, as the salads at Café 2001 tend to.
With that in mind we don’t use mayo in this one. Good mayo is divine but also envelopes all. This salad should be vibrant like the color and the moment of early spring.
This holds well until the next day and can also be made into croquettes.
At the cafe, I use potatoes from Weiser Farms and peas from Tutti Frutti, pea shoots and olive oil from Shear Rock — all available at the Sunday Hollywood Farmers Market.
Peel the potatoes and cut them into cubes roughly the width of a finger.
Add the potatoes to a medium pot of filtered water; add a piece of kombu to the pot or lightly season it with sea salt. Bring to a boil and cook the potatoes until tender, about 15 minutes (depending on the size of your potatoes).
Once tender, reserve about a cup of the boiled water and set aside. Drain the remaining liquid, and set the potatoes aside to cool.
Dice the white onion. Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Once the oil is shimmering, sauté 3/4 of the diced onion until almost translucent. With the remaining 1/4 of the diced onion, rinse under cold water and set aside.
Add the frozen peas to the pan along with a couple of spoonfuls of the reserved kombu water from boiling the potatoes. Cover the pan with a lid and steam for 2 minutes.
Put the cooked mixture from your sauté pan in a food processor and pulse the sautéed peas and onions until the mixture is a chunky almost pesto consistency. Set aside to chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
In a large bowl, mix the cooled potatoes with the pea and onion mixture. When mixing, slightly mash the potatoes. Add the raw diced white onion and raw English peas into the bowl, and season with salt to taste.
Quickly toss your pea shoots with lemon juice, olive oil and salt and serve alongside the potato salad. Finally, grate some fresh horseradish root on top and enjoy!
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