Spanish Ensaladilla

Spanish Ensaladilla is actually a potato salad mixed with meat and assorted vegetables, bound together with mayonnaise. Most of the bars in Spain have this cold salad served with bread as tapas. The vegetables are finely chopped and steamed before mixing. This salad resembles the Russian salad with only difference being in the size of the chopped vegetables. In Russian salad they have bigger chunks of veggies and potatoes with pineapple added.

The non-vegetarian ensalladilla is quite tasty with boiled eggs, shrimps and smaller pieces of chicken added to veggies.

This week I decided to make a vegetarian one. My sister makes vegetarian mayonnaise at home, but I decided to make my own pesto to add to this salad with little variation.

I made this pesto by adding hung yogurt to the mixture of garlic, chilies, basil leaves, cream cheese, almonds, walnuts and olive oil.

All the vegetables are chopped very finely. It’s a backbreaking job. I would have asked my maid to chop it for me, but she might not chop the way I wanted. I chopped very finely following ingredients: carrots, olives, basil leaves, onions, stir-fried mushrooms, red and yellow capsicum, potatoes,

Although you see only two boiled potato, I have used one kilo of boiled potatoes with 50grams of each vegetables.

Mix pesto with chopped vegetables. Add more olive oil, sesame oil, chopped walnuts, basil leaves, ginger garlic powder and soya sauce.

Finally decorate with olives, red and yellow capsicum and boiled peas.

Tastes great with cheese garlic bread.