Last Word on Potato Salad [from my ISP deleted journal Playing with Food]
    Remember the Berry Inspirational gathering? I didn’t want to do coleslaw or potato salad because I knew someone else would. Well, except for my concoction and a chicken/crouton casserole that I loved because it burned around the edges (yes, I’m one of those), the entire buffet was salads, primarily potato salads. The affair ushered me into a meditative moment on potato salad.
    Each of us has forthright opinions on potato salad. If we make it, we don’t make it like anyone else. We’re particular about “deli” potato salad, too. I’ll bet the number of delis per capita is a 1:1 relationship between delis and potato salad fanatics in any particular neighborhood.
    I’m not a fanatic, but, in my time, I’ve made lots of potato salad and conducted some unusual and sometimes spectacular experiments with the idea. I made a potato salad for a family dinner that starkly catered to my own tastes: tart, briny, bitter; it included radicchio, capers and salad olives, a variety of colorful, fresh chopped onions and peppers, grated parmesan cheese and was dressed with a kind of pesto called Gran’Mere’s Recipe, one of my all time favorite products on the market; I'm sure I'll mention it later. [UPDATE ON Gran’Mere’s Recipe 2020: This product apparently no longer exists. I was introduced to it in Seattle in the early 90's and continued buying it In Phoenix into the first decade of the 2000's, I believe. A good pesto hearty with added garlic, taragon vinegar and loads of basil will suffice beautifully. If you do this to an amount of your favorite pesto, be sure to give the flavors several hours to mingle before using it.] Everyone had “a little” salad, as in “Try a little, dear.” Enough to decide they didn’t want more, although I prefer to think that this instance was one of mind over flavor. It didn't appear like potato salad; it was more a colorful vegetable concoction with lots of potatoes in it (including some purple ones I couldn't resist) and a very strong, very Mediterranean aroma. I could have considered it a failure since I took most of it home. I ate it all week for dinner, though, with gratitude. Sometimes, your knockout recipe isn't going to appeal to anyone else, but don't despair. That leaves more for you.
    One of my socially successful potato salads was a Meat and Potato Salad I devised for a luncheon I held for all the local mothers in my family. It was as mouthwatering as it sounds.
    Making potato salad is one of my occasional obsessional behaviors. It’s usually triggered by eating someone else’s potato salad. At the potluck, I sampled seven potato salads that weren’t quite to my taste. Since then, I’ve had potato salad on the recipe part of my brain. This morning, I realized my compulsion was actually a directive from the Potato God to make my kind of traditional potato salad.

My Take on Traditional Potato Salad

Salad Ingredients:

2 very large baking potatoes, baked dry*, skins on 3 hard boiled eggs, chopped The top of 1 small head of celery w/leaves 3 slices sandwich-sliced bread and butter pickles

1/2 package shredded cabbage with carrots 24 pitted olives stuffed with pimentos 1/2 large, flat Bermuda onion, chopped small

Dressing Ingredients:

a little less than half a 16 oz. jar of mayonnaise A generous splash of olive brine Several shakes of dried herb Italian seasoning About 1/2 tsp onion powder About 1/3 cup of sour cream A few shakes hot pepper flakes

About 1/8 cup prepared spicy brown or stone ground mustard About 1 1/2 tsp celery salt About 1/8 tsp garlic powder Several grinds of black pepper corns Several shakes of caraway seeds

    The secret to this recipe is as much in the preparation as it is in the ingredients:

• The potatoes: I microwaved them for 15 minutes (three sets of 5 minutes each, breaking to turn the potatoes over) in a 650 watt turntable microwave. *Baking dry indicates that I did not oil the potato skins. When the potatoes were done and cool, I chunk-chopped them, skin intact.
• The celery: I sliced it thin, leaves and all, down the head to where the outside leaves stop. Usually, this is where the slender stalks end and the thick main stalks bulge out. On the head I bought, I used one third of its length.
• The pickles: I dried the olives and pickles by patting them with a cheesecloth pad then cutting them on the pad (slicing the former and dicing the latter), for two reasons:
1. I hate it when moisture collects at the bottom of a bowl of dressed salad;
2. drying pickled ingredients allows me control over the amount of brine flavor that leaches into the salad.

    I made the dressing using one of my favorite techniques: opening a partial 16 oz. jar of mayonnaise, dumping all the ingredients into the bottle, screwing the top back on and shaking it. The measurements are approximate because this is a measure-by-feel and use-up-what’s-left recipe. When I finished the dressing, the jar was three quarters full.
    Toss everything together with the salad dressing.
    Let it sit for a few hours so all the flavors infuse through all the ingredients. Mine is in the refrigerator right now, primping for dinner. When I finished assembling it, I tasted a well-dressed chunk of potato to test whether I’d successfully created the flavor I’d imagined. It’s wonderfully zesty; I might not eat anything else for dinner, tonight!

- posted by Gail Rae @ 09:18   email...this post