Round two: warm spud salad

Sometimes you see what you think will be a great recipe.  It looks really tasty and you can tell from the ingredients that it should taste good.  Hopefully great.  Then when you make it, something about the prep or the ratio of ingredients or some unknown kitchen gremlin leaves it turning out somewhat less than spectacular.  I tried a potato salad like that last year for a picnic.  Oh it turned out fairly well, but I had to fiddle with it to make me happy.  And the preparation for it was so involved that I never made it again.  I saw another recipe like that today and decided to try it again my own way.  This one turned out to be a keeper.  Not too involved, well not extremely time consuming - maybe 25 minutes from start to finish, and it was exactly what I thought the other one should have been.  The hubby pronounced it a keeper - something the first rendition did not achieve.  And unfortunately it was so good to me that despite being stuffed to the gills, I wanted to keep picking at it.  I had to make it disappear into the fridge where it could not tempt me.  The nice thing about this warm potato salad  is that there is no mayonnaise/eggs, so it keeps better at room temperature for say a barbeque or picnic. 

Warm Potato Salad

About 5 servings

1½ pounds small red potatoes

1 cup fresh sugar snap peas, broken into 1" pieces

5-6 slices good thick bacon (that would be however much you can fit in your skillet)

1 small green pepper, chopped (or half a large pepper)

1 celery rib, diced

2 tbsp snipped fresh chives

Dressing:

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp garlic olive oil

1½ tbsp white wine vinegar

1 tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp dried oregano

½ tsp sea salt

¼ tsp fresh ground black pepper

1½ tsp minced parsley, plus more for garnish

Put spuds in a large saucepan and cover with water.  Lightly salt the water.  (Maybe ¼-½ tsp.)  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10 minutes or until just tender.  Add snap peas and cook for a minute longer until peas are crisp tender.  Drain and cool slightly.  When the spuds are cool enough to handle,  quarter them and place in a large bowl. 

While the spuds are boiling, slowly fry up the bacon in a large skillet.  When the bacon is crispy, remove it to a plate to cool a bit then chop it up.  Leave some bacon drippings in the skillet and saute the pepper and celery until crisp tender, a couple minutes.  You may toss the peas in there too if you wish.  Then add them to the potatoes.

In a small bowl or glass measuring cup, combine the oils, vinegar, lemon juice, oregano, parsley, salt and pepper.  Whisk together with a fork.  I would suggest doing this while the potatoes are boiling and the bacon is frying.  It gives the flavors some time to meld.  Pour the dressing over potatoes mixture and toss gently.  Sprinkle with fresh parsley if desired.  Serve warm.

Some things don't lend themselves well to photographs and I think spud salad is one of those.  That and it got demolished before I could get a decent picture.  ☺  But I do like to see pictures of recipes so I'll include this one that I managed to get taken before it was all gone...

Update:  This was very good cold the next day for lunch!