After tackling a complicated Black Bottom Pie yesterday, I decided to embrace a bit of simplicity today by making Martha’s Potato Salad from her All-American section on page 49.
I always read the stories associated with the recipes and this potato salad is considered a must-have for picnics. This made me laugh and say “Hey, Jeff, let’s have a picnic today, I’ll bring the potato salad!” The reason it’s funny is because we’re on our second straight day of torrential rains and thunder storms here in not-so-sunny Florida, so an outdoor picnic was not an option! Instead I made a roast pork that I cooked up the same low and slow way I did for the Italian Pork Roast, only this time I added some honey mustard glaze at the end and then gave it a few minutes on broil. I topped the pork with some warm sauerkraut, and had this awesome potato salad as a side dish. The flavors all worked together in harmony and I drank it down with a nice citrus ale – it was like eating at a German pub – very comforting during a storm.
I really enjoyed this potato salad recipe, the scallions are what makes it special. A potato salad is also the kind of dish where you can tweak the recipe a bit to accommodate your own taste. I added a little cayenne and a dash of ground cumin. Recipes are not all created equal; when you’re making something like a meringue, the slightest deviation can throw everything off, but when you’re making almost any kind of salad, you can play around with the seasoning and use the recipe as a guide, while making it your own.
When the weather clears up maybe we will have a neighborhood picnic, and I’ll take Martha’s advice and bring a huge bowl of this potato salad – it’ll go along way towards making me a popular person to invite to a party!
