Two Summer Salads

There's so much great produce around right now that I couldn't resist making not one, but two gorgeous salads for last night's dinner.

My friend Maggie gave me a bag full of cucumbers (this is what people do with cucumbers, right? There's no ducking it.) Her farmer neighbor had given them to her, since they were too big to sell at the market. She suspected maybe they'd be seedy. I peeled a couple of them, and cut them open and scooped out the seeds.  With some sliced red onion, cherry tomatoes and dill from our garden, olive oil, rice wine vinegar and salt and pepper, I thought they tasted just fine. 

This beet salad had me up during the night thinking about it. In a good way, of course.

It's roasted beets with diced red onion and crumbled bacon over steamed beet greens with vinaigrette. You can find the recipe here. 

We ate the salads with breaded pork chops and roasted red potatoes. Pretty much stuffed ourselves silly. 

Potato Salad Secrets (finally) Revealed

Oh, dear. I promised potato salad secrets. Then was laid out flat all weekend with a headache. It took me three days to write this post, because I had to keep going to lie down. Much better today though.

So, what's better on a holiday weekend than a cookout? With potato salad? Nothing, in my estimation. I love potato salad, but I could never quite get it "right". It's one recipe that I've worked on for years, trying this and that. I think I finally have it, though there's always room for improvement. Sadly, I'm undisciplined and so I don't have the official amounts of things. It's all in my head, and I make it by taste. Helpful? Not really, but at least I can share some of my methods.

The flavor I like: vinegary, a bit sweet, a little crunchy. I like a lot of different flavors working together. Mine was never quite vinegary enough. Until one day I tried a friend's potato salad, and there it was. I had to know her secret. Turns out it was her grandmother's method, and when someone tells me something is her grandmother's method, I pay attention.

Secret #1: 
Sweetly engage friends in conversation. Then steal their grandmother's recipes. In this case, I found out about vinegar.

After you boil the potatoes, drain them and put them back into the pot. Then sprinkle them with a couple of tablespoons of cider vinegar. As the potatoes cool, the flavor seeps in. I should mention that any type of potato will work, russets are great, or red potatoes, or a combination of different types of potatoes. Cut them into bite-sized pieces. Also, that water that you boil the potatoes in? Salt it liberally.

Secret #2:
Don't just glop mayonnaise on top of your potatoes and call it a day.

Make a dressing. The one I like has about 11/2 cups mayo, 1/4 cup red wine vinegar and 1/4 cup sugar with salt and pepper to taste. Something like that. It's pleasantly pink and a little sweet. It also mixes in way better than just glopping in mayo. I get all the ingredients chopped up and in the bowl, then mix in the dressing.

Let's talk hard boiled eggs for a minute. I think they're a vital ingredient. I love these Appalachian Harvest eggs. They're from free range chickens raised by former tobacco farmers.

But here's the problem: when hard boiled, these fabulous, healthy, good cause brown eggs are a bitch to peel. Not sure why, and I'd love to know. Is it because they're super fresh and awesome? I'd love some ideas on this.

Secret #3:
Use regular old supermarket white eggs. Boil, cool, peel and chop.

Secret #4:
Is not really a secret at all. Just a list of other ingredients that I like.

Red onion
Celery
Fresh herbs: chives, dill, parsley
Bell peppers (red or yellow for sweetness and crunch)
Paprika, sprinkled liberally on top

So there you have it. Most of this is not really secret at all; anyone with Google and a couple of cookbooks could figure it out. But my salad has gotten the thumbs up from friends, and it got rave reviews from my mom and aunts last summer (they said it was "awesome").  Feel free to share any of your secrets with me. And if I ever get the actual recipe amounts straight, I promise to share.