Afghan Potato Salad

When trying to figure out what should accompany our chicken kebabs, I chose not to go with bread or rice. I had already slotted in the bread for a different Afghan meal, and it's hard for B to eat a ton of rice since he's a little toddler (wrote this post in June 2020; now he just likes to make rice "rain" so it's still not the easiest), so I try not to make rice every single day. (I try to look at it from his perspective. If I was working on my spoon skills and rice were difficult and sometimes frustrating to eat, would I want someone to make it every single day instead of also giving me something easier to eat?) After looking around at more recipes on Afghan Culture Unveiled, I found the answer - potato salad! The Afghan potato salad, shor nakhod, was egg-free and mayo-free, and it seemed like something our family would really enjoy. I don't know if it's remotely traditional to pair potato salad with chicken kebabs in Afghanistan, but grilled chicken and potato salad do make for a quintessential American BBQ, which is probably why it was so easy for my brain to accept the pairing.

The ingredients for the potato salad were:

- 3 large Russet potatoes ($2.37)
- 2 cans of chickpeas ($1.75)
- 1 bunch of scallions ($1.29)
- 1 bunch of cilantro ($1.99)
- about 1/2 cup white wine vinegar ($0.54)
- salt and pepper to taste ($0.03)

The cost for the potato salad was about $7.97, which isn't that much considering it was half of our dinner and it did make enough to have a bowl left over for lunch.

The steps for making the potato salad were:

1. Prep potatoes. Wash, peel, and chop the potatoes into bite-size pieces. Put in large pot, bring to a boil, and cook until fork tender. Drain potatoes and allow to cool. [I was busy doing other things, and the potatoes cooked too long. They were beyond fork tender.]

2. Prep scallions and cilantro. Chop both as finely as possible. [The original recipe makes the dressing in a blender or food processor. I really hate lugging those out, plus the noise, plus the lack of space for it on the counter while making other things, plus the noisy mini food processor scares B, so I just chopped them by hand. Took a little longer, and not as fine as a blender would get it, but it worked out just fine. Probably didn't even need to be as finely chopped as it was, although in the recipe photo, the food-processed version pretty much turns the potatoes green instead of seeing the herbs themselves. Much harder to do that without the processor.]

3. Make dressing. Combine scallions and cilantro with white wine vinegar, salt, and pepper. Season to taste. [Given that I used more potatoes and chickpeas and scallions than the original recipe, I needed more vinegar than the recipe, and probably could have used even more S&P.]

4. Drain chickpeas and rinse. Add to large bowl with the potatoes and the dressing. Mix well and season to taste.

The potato salad could be served warm or chilled. We had no room in our fridge to chill it, and I didn't make it far in advance, so I just left it under a fan for as long as it took to make the chicken kebabs. It tasted good, but so many salads work even better once the flavors have time to meld together and chill. We did have leftovers though, which I ate for lunch the next day, and the flavor of the dressing came through much more, which I really liked.

Overall, the salad was good, even if it was 75% of the way to mashed potatoes given how long I boiled the potatoes. Since it was vinegar-based, the sour flavors were predominant in the dressing, along with the strong bite of the herbs. I personally liked that a lot, but not sure B was that into it since he would normally eat more potatoes than he did. Despite being full of heavier ingredients like potatoes and chickpeas, the dressing gave the salad a lightness that I really liked. I would make this again, although I have a very long list of potato salads to try first!