I recently dined at Carvalho’s Brazilian Kitchen in Scottsdale AZ and tried their potato salad with my steak. The Brazilian Potato Salad had a good play of flavor between the sweet soft carrots and briney olives. It also was  very bright tasting maybe from lemon.  I became inspired to create a similar salad. The interesting thing that seemed different to me was the texture. It was more like mashed potatoes mixed with chunks of firm potatoes.

My recipe isn’t exactly the same but it is similar. I took liberties and added hearts of palm because it was suppose come with my dinner and was substituted with something else. The hearts of palm surprisingly goes well in the salad.

Some of the tricks to making this potato salad are to boil the potatoes just right. You need to have a cooked but firm center and the ends need to be softer so than when you mix you get a creaminess from the ends of the potatoes. The other part of my trick is to infuse the potatoes with flavors from boiling them with a hot banana pepper and scallions. The palm hearts I added added another texture and taste that goes remarkably well in this salad.

Honestly my potato salad came out really amazing but I never would have thought about making such a salad if it wasn’t for Carvalho’s Brazilian Kitchen.

Ingredients for about 8 servings

2 LB russet potatoes – peeled, cut in halves

1 hot banana pepper (or other hot pepper you like to boil the potatoes with)

4 scallions (to boil the potatoes with)

1 Tablespoon salt (kosher or sea salt)

3 carrots peeled – cut in quarters longways- and half again

1/3 cup olives pitted and then rough chopped – I used kalamata

14.1 oz. can hearts of palm – rinsed well and drained – rough chopped

3 scallions – rough chopped on a diagonal

1 lemon -just the fresh squeezed juice

1/2 cup low fat mayonnaise

fresh ground salt to taste (about a Tablespoon)

fresh cracked pepper to taste (about 1/2 a teaspoon)

Directions

Place your potatoes, 1 tablespoon salt, hot pepper and 4 scallions in a medium size sauce pan. fill with water to the top of produce. Bring to boil and then reduce to a slow boil for around 15 minutes. You want the potato to be just fork tender. Remove the potatoes with a slotted spoon and set them to the side. You will re-use the water to do your carrots. When cool enough to handle cut the potatoes in large chunks and place in a large bowl. set to the side.

Now add the carrots and they need to cook about 8 minutes. You want them soft but not falling apart.

When carrots are done drain them and add them to the large bowl of potatoes.

Throw out the used scallions and used hot pepper. (you might want to keep the liquid for making vegetable soup)

Now to the large bowl add olives, hearts of palm, 3 scallions, lemon juice, low fat mayonnaise and stir gently. Add fresh ground sea salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste.

The forking truth is that after a gave my husband a small bowl to try he kept coming back for more. He kept saying this is really good. He didn’t even think I should call this potato salad Brazilian Potato Salad. He said it’s just REALLY GOOD Potato salad.