Eats/Reads

This is my aunt's German potato salad which I'm recording here for posterity. I ate this dish several times a year - always at Christmas and Easter - while I was growing up. As an adult I've tried to recreate it several times - with mixed success. I could never get the dressing right. Then six months ago I found out she used the pickle juice! This would be easier to make in the US than the UK (where we live) because it's hard to get real dill pickles here - and even hard to find really good sweet pickles. Ah well. At least the bacon here is good! 5 lb bag of potatoes 1 lb of bacon 1 jar of sweet (bread & butter) pickles 1 jar of Kosher dill pickles 1 apple Boil potatoes until they burst - don't overboil. Pour off water. Cut pickles into tiny cubes. Save water from pickles. Fry bacon. Peal potatoes, slice into pieces the size of little finger. Mix pickles into potatoes. Add one-half jar of pickle water. Add one-third of the bacon fat. Taste and add fat and pickle...

We didn't have the right pickles to make Aunt Imme's German potato salad so we came up with this version, which we had all the ingredients for. It was great! We used sausage instead of the usual bacon (cause that's what we had on hand). It would have been great with bacon too (duh). Would also be nice served with fresh parsley. We served it with fresh lettuce - a great warm weather meal! I'm sure it would be possible to do a veggie version too - with no meat, just cooking the onions in oil. [The toddler ate some plain sausage, boiled potatoes with butter, and as much chopped up pickle as we would allow her.] 1 small onion, diced 1/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp white vinegar 1 Tbsp oil 2 tablespoons water 2 tablespoons white sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper About 1 lb potatoes 2 small sweet and sour pickles 3 small, organic gluten-free pork sausages About 1/2 a head of lettuce Boil potatoes until soft. Set aside. Cook sausages on medium heat in a cast-iron ski...

This was the result of banging together what we happened to have in the fridge, rather than buying ingredients on purpose. The result was quite tasty. Notes: It was a little light on sauce, and the sauce might have been better with some lime juice. Also next time, dress the lettuce lightly too. 400g grilled salmon, flaked 2 small carrots, grated 4 scallions, chopped Fresh basil and mint, chopped About 1/4 mango, in small cubes 1 head of lettuce sauce: 1 tbsp fish sauce 1 tbsp light soy sauce 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar 1 tbsp brown sugar 1 tsp toasted sesame oil 1 chili, minced Thai jasmine rice Mix the salad ingredients together. Mix the sauce ingredients together. Then mix the sauce with the salad. Make a bed of lettuce on a plate, put the hot rice on top, then put the salad on top of the rice.

A friend sent us this recipe, and it was fantastic. 400g beef sirloin, lightly grilled and thinly sliced 200g cucumber, peeled and shredded 50g onion, sliced thin Fresh herbs, chopped Whole lettuce 2 tbsp fish sauce 2 tbsp lime juice 1 tsp sugar 1 hot chili, minced 1 clove garlic, minced We can't grill in our flat, so we pan fried the steak the way Best Recipe recommended: heat an iron skillet for 10 minutes, add a little oil, salt and pepper the steak, and cook it for 5 minutes on the first side, 3 minutes on the second. This was supposed to give us rare steak, but I would call the result medium or medium-well. Still tasty, but next time I'll cook it less. We used coriander (cilantro), mint and basil for the herbs, because we happened to have all three. Any nice collection of fresh herbs will likely do nicely. Mix the sauce ingredients vigourously. Mix everything else besides the lettuce. Add the sauce. Serve over the lettuce. Simple and delicious.