Join Debbie as she raves about whole foods, rants about chemicals and generally celebrates cooking and eating with fresh, local, nutritious foods. And sometimes she might get a little feisty….

Really, what could be fresher than a potato salad made up almost entirely of ingredients from this week’s CSA farm harvest? Yes, it’s true: with the heat wave has come the vegetable wave, and we are finally getting a decent amount of veggies each week; a good variety too.

So while we’re still waiting for the tomatoes (I don’t suppose 10 cherries count?), there are still lots of other goodies in this salad: Yukon gold potatoes, corn, radicchio, zucchini, fresh basil and chives, all from our CSA farm. I tried to counterbalance the bitterness of the radicchio (only a selling point in my opinion) with the sweetness of some of the other ingredients as well as the balsamic vinegar dressing, and it turned out just the way I wanted it. If you’re not a fan of the bitter greens, you can use any greens you like, or blend some of the radicchio with something less strong to get the flavor you love.

Just one more word about the radicchio I used: this is real radicchio, not that bright white and red stuff you get in the supermarket. This is green with tinges of red, not all strange and wrinkly, but more like a hearty leaf of lettuce. It is bitter like its inferior supermarket counterpart, but also has a “green” taste to it. Delicious!

August’s Perfect Potato Salad

Ingredients:

• about 5 cups of potatoes, chopped and boiled until tender (I used Yukon gold)
• kernels from 2 ears of corn, cooked and removed from cob
• 1 zucchini, grilled
• 1 red pepper, grilled
• 1/2 head of radicchio (real radicchio)
• 1 cup chopped chives
• 1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted
• 1 cup chopped basil
• 1 cup feta cheese, crumbled

For the dressing:

• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon Sucanat
• lots of freshly ground black pepper

Whisk together the dressing ingredients. Once all of the ingredients are prepared according to the directions, Toss with dressing, a little bit at a time. I found that I didn’t need to use all of the dressing and it was covered just the way I wanted it.

Now I’ve got to ask you: is your harvest similar to mine? What things would you put into your August potato salad?