So the story starts out something like this... A family Easter brunch was planned and food assignments were made. Someone was planning on store-bought potato salad. Now I don't know about you, but I'm not a fan of mass-produced potato salad. Sometimes there's so much creamy fluff to it that you can't help but wonder if they ran short of potatoes. So. I emailed back and volunteered to make potato salad. The email correspondence that ensued shall hereafter be referred to as The Great Potato Salad Discussion of '10. And let's not refer to it again, please, because by Friday afternoon I'd really had enough discussion about potato salad already. Hmph. Who'd have thought there was so much to say!?
To bring our story to a happy conclusion though... homemade potato salad was approved (with caveats, of course, e.g., enough leftovers for someone, and not to be made with red potatoes for that person, and no eggs, and...). Right. Homemade Potato Salad.
What everyone didn't know... is that I had long since moved on and was plotting to make both Potato Salad and Coleslaw. Hah! We're pulling out all the stops for our brunch here!
Except that I've never made coleslaw before. So to avoid erroneous ad-libs with julienned carrots and golden raisins, I pulled out that seminal tome of fresh cooking, The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. Coleslaw recipe, page 244. Hmmm... right next to a Potato Salad recipe that I've never read, page 245.
Coleslaw looks pretty easy, right? Well, the good news is that it was! I even had almost all the ingredients on hand. Except for the cider or wine vinegar. And curiously enough, Alice used it in her potato salad recipe too. Hmmm... really? Really.
(!)
I decided to be adventurous. I would try Alice's potato salad recipe with the cider vinegar instead of using my usual mustard-based method. And guess what?
That little bit of cider vinegar added to the cooked potatoes was magical. It gave the salad a wonderful, subtle flavor that was simply delicious. Alice, once again, I am amazed, simply, amazed!
I'll definitely be using that tip again. So now you know too. The magic ingredient in potato salad? Cider vinegar. Who knew?!
And P.S. to Alice: thanks for not including julienned carrots or golden raisins in the coleslaw either. That bit of apple though? It was perfect! {whew!}