Potato salad

Have I mentioned that we are currently in our home town of Baguio City in the Philippines?  One thing I love about being here in the holidays is that one can request for their favourite dishes to be prepared for the Noche Buena feast and your wish will come true!  In this case I asked for macaroni salad but my mother-in-law said macaroni salad is soooo 80s.... why not have potato salad instead?



Her recipe uses the natural flavour of the ingredients to make this salad a huge hit on the dinner table.  To make the salad slightly sweet without using sugar, she uses cooking bananas.  I am not sure if she also uses sugar beets with her salad regularly, but my Nanay does and I just love the taste and festive colour it imparts to the dish.  So this recipe has sugar beets too.

Ingredients

250 ml all-purpose cream
250ml mayonnaise
1 small bottle of pickle relish
1/4kg chicken, boiled and shredded
10 medium cooking bananas
1/2kg potatoes
1/2kg carrots
2 medium sugar beets
salt and pepper to taste

Procedure
Place the potatoes, carrots, sugar beets, and bananas in a pot.  Pour water to submerge the ingredients then bring to a boil over medium heat.  Lower the heat to simmer.  Check after 15 minutes if the veggies are already tender by piercing with a fork; cook a few minutes more if still undone.  The potatoes should still offer some resistance when pierced.  Do not overcook so it can withstand cutting and mixing later.

Drain and set aside to cool.  Remove the skins and dice.  Place everything in a large bowl except the sugar beets to prevent its colour from running into the other ingredients in the meantime.

Add the shredded chicken, followed by the sugar beets.  Mix.

Add a couple of shakes of pepper, a very small dash of salt, and half of the pickle relish.  Mix again.

Add the mayonnaise and the cream and mix til everything comes together.

Finally, mix in the chopped red onions.

Taste, and add more pickle relish if desired.  Chill before serving.

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