Pink Potato Salad
Potato
salad is a staple of every summertime gathering, traditional recipes
and creative variations competing for attention. I didn't learn to
cook until I left the house, relying on a single volume of Betty
Crocker to instruct me in the culinary arts.
I
tiptoed cautiously through one item at a time, working a recipe over
several times to calibrate cooking times, methods and temperatures,
ingredients, adaptability to crock-pots, ambient humidity, etc.
Can
you tell my dad was an engineer?
Remember
Photo-mats? And film? Years passed before I grasped that most
finished glossies emerged from an exponential number of outtakes,
pictures that never made the cut. Good cooking, too, results from
trial and error. I wanted to get to the prizewinning dish via the
shortest route so I grabbed my behemoth comprehensive cookbook that
every kitchen has like a dictionary or reference book, looked up all
the potato salad recipes, reduced the ingredients to common
denominators and went to the pantry.
Potatoes.
Mayo. Vinegar. Salt. Pepper. Seasonings. These formed the foundation
with myriad add-ins and regional preferences. So I went to work.
Large potatoes would take an hour to bake, longer to cool, so I sped
up the process by boiling cubed spuds, then cooling 15 minutes in the
fridge. Hard-boiled eggs at the ready, radishes, celery, onion. For
the dressing, 2 tablespoons of prepared relish and mustard added to
great scoops of mayo. Vinegar: apple cider seemed appropriate, and I
could economically dispose of the tiny bit of plum vinegar left by my
Japanese friend at the last potluck. Excavate the large stainless
bread bowl and stir.
Something
wasn't gelling. Seeking a gourmand's opinion and mouthing my
disclaimer about still-warm potatoes melting the mayo while a mere
teaspoon or less of plum vinegar tinted the results, I presented the
dish to my critic who gazed stunned into the pink liquefied vortex
that was the culmination of the afternoon's efforts.
A
story I once heard best described my hypersensitivity about cooking –
all my endeavors, really. In the days when cooking was the crucial
fabric that bound families together at the dinner table, a new bride
prepared a simple sheet of cookies for her husband. Burnt. New home,
unfamiliar appliance, factors outside her experience. Placating his
tearful young wife, the spouse uttered those fateful words: “Oh,
don't cry, honey. I like them that way.” Instinctively I
recognized the far-reaching implications, for not only was this man
now doomed to forever eat burnt cookies, he could never be seen
eating unburned ones.
My
critic knew this story, and understood his next words could establish
a lifetime of generous capitulation or abstention from one of life's
simple pleasures. Several seconds stretched into long moments before
he spoke. Finally he said, “I've never seen anything like it!”
We
collapsed into laughter, delicate feelings assuaged. Actually, the
flavor was wonderful but I was the only taster. When I discovered
purple potatoes some years later, I prepared those for dinner one
evening and he got the first fork-full right up to his open mouth but
could go no further.
