Serves 6
Ingredients
For salad:
- 3 large boiling potatoes, peeled, cooked and diced
- 2 medium carrots, peeled, cooked and diced
- 1 large Granny Smith apple, peeled and diced
- 2 medium dill pickles, diced
- 1 medium seedless cucumber, peeled and finely diced
- 3 large hard-cooked eggs, chopped
- One 16-ounce can peas, well-drained
- 1/4 cup finely chopped scallions (with 3 inches of the green tops)
- 1/4 cup finely chopped dill
- 12 ounces lump crabmeat, flaked; or surimi crab legs, chopped (or substitute chopped poached chicken or beef)
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For dressing:
- 1 cup Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, or more to taste
- 3/4 cup sour cream
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
- 1 teaspoon white vinegar
- Kosher salt to taste
Method
- In a large mixing bowl, combine all the salad ingredients and season with salt and pepper to taste.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together all the dressing ingredients, season with salt, and taste: it should be tangy and zesty.
- Toss the salad thoroughly with the dressing, adding a little more mayo if it doesn’t look moist enough.
- Adjust the seasonings to taste.
Serve in a cut-crystal or glass bowl.
This (formerly elitist) version of a simple potato salad originated in the 1860s at L’Hermitage, Lucien Olivier’s legendary Moscow restaurant. The proletarian version was developed in the 1930s (with chicken in place of grouse and carrots in place of shrimp). This popular Russian salad can now be found, in various guises, around the globe.
Copyright 2013 by Anya von Bremzen. Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
