The potatoes and eggs could be cooked a day ahead and refrigerated. The sauce holds 3 days in the refrigerator.
To simplify this dish for parties, you could leave out the potatoes and mayonnaise, just serving the eggs on greens drizzled with Dill Mustard Sauce.
Wedges of hard-cooked egg tucked into chopped salad greens end up mimicking tightly clustered chrysanthemum petals—a great presentation.
What no one knows until they dig into the salad is that hidden under the greens are slices of potato. Slathering the platter first with mayonnaise ensures the salad is flavored from the bottom up, as well as the top down.
Given some hard-cooked eggs and boiled potatoes, you can make this fancy-looking dish in a few minutes. Zigzag the mustard sauce over the eggs, and you are done.
Ingredients
Dill Mustard Sauce
(Makes 1 cup):
1 small garlic clove, minced
3 tablespoons minced onion
1/4 cup white or cider vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar, or more to taste
3 tablespoons cold-pressed canola or safflower oil
Generous 1/2 cup coarse-grain dark mustard
1/3 to 1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
Salt and fresh-ground black pepper to taste
Salad:
2 generous tablespoons mayonnaise
1 small head Bibb lettuce, stacked and sliced into thin strips
8 large hard-cooked eggs, peeled and cut into 4 wedges each
2 tablespoons chopped dill for garnish
1/4 cup chopped sweet onion (Vidalia, Maui, Walla-Walla, etc)
1 pound (7 to 8) small red-skinned potatoes
Instructions
1. In a 6-quart pot, simmer the potatoes in water to cover 15 minutes, or until potatoes offer a little resistance when pierced with a knife. Drain and rinse them with cold water to cool. Peel and slice them about 1/4-inch thick.
2. While the potatoes are cooking, make the sauce. In a medium bowl, blend together the garlic, onion, and vinegar. Let them stand 10 minutes to mellow. Whisk in the 2 tablespoons of sugar, the oil, mustard, and 1/3 cup of the dill with salt and pepper to taste. Taste for sweet-sour balance, adding sugar or vinegar as needed. Add more dill if you like.
3. On a large platter, spread the mayonnaise in a 9- or 10-inch circle. Top with the potatoes, overlapping the slices. Sprinkle them with salt and pepper, then pile the lettuce on the potatoes. Top with the egg wedges, tucking them into a tight sunburst pattern (like flower petals). Season them with salt and pepper.
4. Before serving, zigzag streaks of the dill mustard sauce over the eggs and greens. Scatter the chopped dill and sweet onions over the eggs, and serve with additional sauce at the table.
From The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper by Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift, Clarkson Potter, 2008.
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