Italian Root Vegetable Salad
Start with the one rule that makes or breaks this salad: cut everything to the same small dice. When the celery root, carrot, parsley root, potato, and apple all match in size, each spoonful comes out balanced instead of one bite of root vegetable and the next of pure apple.
This is a hearty “winter” salad of boiled roots, white beans, and peas, served as a dish in its own right rather than a light starter. A mustard-mayonnaise dressing sharpened with lemon juice ties the earthy sweetness of carrot and parsley root to the tang of dill pickles and fresh apple. The “Italian” label is more a nod to Mediterranean fashion than any real pedigree; finely diced boiled-vegetable salads like this were common in early 20th-century European restaurant cooking.
A couple of technical notes
Boil the potatoes in their skins and stop while they still hold together, or the cubes will fall apart. Add the apple only at serving time and toss it with lemon juice so it doesn’t brown. Skip canned peas in favor of frozen ones boiled for a couple of minutes; they taste fresher and are less sugary.
Part of Italian cuisine — 33 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Boil the beans and the vegetables (celery, carrots, parsley root). Separately, boil the potatoes in their skins.
Peel and dice all the vegetables and apples, then add the cooked beans, the drained peas, salt, sugar, and pepper.
Drizzle with lemon juice and mix with the mayonnaise and mustard.
Garnish with wedges of hard-boiled egg.
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