Spanish potato salad

Also known as Ensaladilla Rusa.  (Not sure if it's called this in Catalan.)  This was one of my favorite things I ate while in Barcelona.   

Lonja de Tapas (Placeta Montcada) was "our tapas place".  It was about a 10 minute walk from our apartment, around the corner from Santa Maria del Mar, a beautiful gothic church, and a few doors down from the Museu Picasso.  The first time we ate there, I ordered the "potato tuna salad" off the English menu.  I was smitten after one fresh, flavorful, delicious bite.  We also had cod croquettes, tortilla patata (Spanish potato omelette), and pa amb tomaquet that meal (this tomato bread will receive more blog space, as it so rightly deserves, at a later time :-)

That was our first dinner.  We ate very well during this trip and the food was exceptional everywhere we went.  Before we knew it, we were planning our activity for our final days.  We decided to have a last meal together (not on our actual last day) at Lonja de Tapas.  (Our third meal there.  The second time we went specifically for the paella.)

I had thought about this potato salad a number of times in the interim.  I loved it for its simplicity and its heartiness (light on its feet, though).  It also had a je ne sais quoi that I wanted to explore just a little more.  So I ordered it again.  I didn't photograph it because it's not a dish that "looks" good, necessarily, especially in the low light of a restaurant in the evening.  But, man, it tasted great.

This afternoon, I poked around the kitchen in my dazed jet lagged state and discovered that I had what I thought I needed to try to recreate the dish at home.  I googled and learned that the "je ne sais quoi" likely came from the roasted red peppers called for in this recipe which I ended up using as a guide.

I didn't have the peppers, I chose to follow the recipe and not add salt (I noticed a distinct, and of course relative, under use of salt in the Catalan cooking I enjoyed during my trip), I used frozen corn and peas (would like to use carrots at some point though) and fiddled with the amount of potato and mayo (didn't use as much as called for in this recipe).

It's a satisfying potato salad.  It's not the same, and it probably never will be (which is completely okay), but making it at home will be a wonderful way to connect back to my time in Barcelona.  And who knows, next time, when I use the roasted red peppers and add some salt and maybe a bit of acid...as I tinker with the recipe, the chemistry of the ingredients and flavors, I may hit upon something equally sublime.