Kitchen Experiment #18 - Demented Mock Potato Salad

The conscripted members of the Low Carb Confidential Taste Panel (my wife and two daughters) cast a wary eye at some of the things I prepare. Long experience has told them that to accept my innocent-sounding invitation to ‘take a taste’ puts them in a bind, as what was offered might indeed be yummy - or not so yummy, often in strange, unfamiliar ways that leave them even more wary the next time.

As I have a good track record - I do come up with a number of concoctions that they do like (my daughter loves my 1-minute brownie recipe, for example), they can’t dismiss me out of hand, because they know they might be missing out.

And yet, I know that they fear that one day, after they take a taste, they will be told that what they’ve eaten resembles one of the food challenges in ‘Fear Factor’: “Oh - that’s some trout pudding, dear - do you like it?”

I haven’t been all that creative in the kitchen of late, which I think they (not-so-secretly) appreciate, but my dry spell in the kitchen was broken by my wife’s decision to make her infamous potato salad.

My wife’s potato salad is not your ordinary potato salad: she adds diced kielbasa, chopped hard-boiled eggs, and diced apple to the potatoes, then uses Italian dressing rather than mayo - I don’t know how it sounds to you, but it’s a crowd-pleaser.

So how was I going to resist this? Ugh! A massive bowl of this stuff with a hungry low carber in the house? It was a recipe for disaster (no pun intended).

I had once made a variant of the above with cauliflower as a replacement for the potatoes, and it came out good, but I didn’t want to go through all the trouble - and end up with two massive bowls of food that would go to waste - or my waistline. No, I wanted something fast and easy, that would be a low carb substitute, and fill the craving and keep me away from that damn potato salad.

So I asked my wife to put aside some of the egg and kielbasa and I stopped at the store the next day to get some frozen cauliflower.

I got the cauliflower and came home to make my batch, but drat! There was no more kielbasa - it had got eaten. In my estimation, the flavor from the sausage was critical - it wouldn’t be the same without it.

I then began to scan the fridge for some analogue.

In the deli drawer, I found liverwurst - I didn’t buy the stuff all that often, but had a hankering for it that week.

Kilbasa is from Poland, Liverwurst is from Germany - same geographical location, more or less. Both nitrated deli meats. Hmmm. Could it act as a substitute? Maybe - but something told me that this is not how you eat liverwurst.

I tried it anyway:

• 1/2 pack of frozen cauliflower, microwaved for 5 minutes (mushier is better for simulating potatoes)
• 3/4 cup diced hard-boiled egg
• 2 slices diced liverwurst
• mayo to taste
• a small bit of vinegar to taste
• small amount of salt
• pepper

The verdict?

It came out pretty darn good. It was also a breeze to make - dash together a few ingredients, mix well, stash in the fridge overnight to let the flavors meld, and you’ve got yourself a flavorful dish that I found was particularly good at keeping me full for a long while. Safe for induction - I’m in ketosis after eating it, so it had little impact in that department.

Try it if you dare. I will certainly make this again.