This is not your mother's potato salad.

Over Memorial Day weekend I was asked to bring potato salad to a friend's house for dinner. I am personally not a big fan of the usual potato salads you find at the store or at Midwestern potlucks.
My sister makes a lovely German potato salad, which I do like. I had a feeling my host was hoping for something more traditional. I have never made potato salad from a recipe, it was time to try. I applied my usual technique of looking at several recipes online, and combining them into one. As my host and my husband shoveled seconds on to their plates that evening, I thought "well, that worked".

The first thing I learned was to use small potatoes, no huge russets please.
Secondly, I was admonished in one article to treat those little potatoes gently !! They said to use a pan big enough for almost a single layer of potatoes when boiling.
Several of the recipes had me sprinkling them with vinegar and oil once they were drained but before they cooled, who knew ??
Most of the recipes called for small amounts of buttermilk, who has that sitting around in their fridge??  I found my homemade yogurt worked just fine.
I was shocked by how much salt one recipe had me add after I dressed the potatoes, amazingly  it was correct. 
Little potatoes cook very quickly, don't over cook them !!
While beautiful, purple potatoes cook much fasted that all others and turn to mush. I removed them before I made the salad.

Here's what I came up with...

Laurie's Potato Salad

Ingredients

2 1/2 -3 pounds little potatoes, avoid the purple ones but a variety of other kinds is nice.
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon cider or rice vinegar
4 radishes
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 large carrot grated
1 tbsp chopped sweet onion

Note: the next time I made this salad I used some other veggies: cooked asparagus, finely chopped red cabbage, use whatever you have around that will add textures and interesting tastes.

The Dressing

1 cup good quality mayonnaise
1/4 cup yogurt /buttermilk or sour cream
2 T Dijon mustard
2 T wholegrain mustard
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1-2 T chopped fresh dill/fennel
1 T chopped fresh chives

Note: you can use dried dill and chives, and could add some fresh parsley or basil.

1) In large pot with salted water, boil the potatoes for 10-15 minutes, until just cooked. Check them at 10 minutes by cutting one with a knife, if it yields, it's done.

Notice how they are in one layer in the pot.

2) Drain and toss gently with olive oil & vinegar, set aside to cool.
3) While the potatoes are cooling, prepare the vegetables you plan to add.

4) Mix together the dressing ingredients with a whisk. Save a little of the fresh herbs for garnish.

5) Into a bowl, carefully slice the potatoes into one inch cubes or whatever size you like. The skins may come off a little, just discard them.
6) Gently moisten the potatoes with the dressing, you may have more than you need. Set is aside for another round of potato salad or use it as a dip or green salad dressing.
7)  Add the other veggies plus 1-2 teaspoons salt , 1/4 teaspoon pepper.
As I mentioned above I was shocked by the addition of MORE salt but it really does need it and I am not one who likes really salty food. The salt soaks into the potatoes, so if it tastes too salty don't worry that should go away during the chilling.
8) Chill several hours, garnish with fresh herbs before serving.

Burma Superstar, Clement St. and art in SF.

The other day my lovely friend, Susan and I went to The City for an art date. We do this several times a year usually taking in special exhibits at the De Young and the Legion of Honor both in the same day. We drive up highway 1 to 35 to the Great Highway, it's a beautiful, stress free drive.

Both museums honor the same ticket which is great. Last week we saw the Botticelli to Braque exhibit from the national galleries in Scotland.

At the Legion we enjoyed the High Fashion exhibit from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection.

Susan had a recommendation for our lunch spot, half way through our day we are ready to sit and rejuvenate. Burma Superstar was the perfect place.

It was between our two museums on Clement St. and lucky for us it wasn't crowded when we arrived about noon. The decor is unassuming but easy on the eyes. The waitstaff efficent and pleasant. I knew I would be happy here when I discovered their house special tea was an rose tea, just tiny rosebuds in a pot.

We ordered samusas as an appetizer, similar to the Indian samosas, they were stuffed with a nice potato filling, wrapped in a thin wonton like skin and deep fried. They paired well with my rainbow salad, which you can see in the right of the photo below.

I wish I had been quicker to photograph my salad. It has 22 ingredients, including four kinds of noodles and a tamarind dressing.The plate comes to your table with many little piles of ingredients and the server tosses it, as you watch. It was light, crunchy and full of interesting flavors.

Susan had the lunch special, a tea leaf salad and samusa soup. That's right they put samusas in a light broth for an satisfying and very unusual soup.

After lunch we were delighted to find that Clement Street is full of interesting places to window shop, Asian markets and eateries, cool bookshops and more. We found it so interesting we agreed to come back this summer just to explore more, hopefully another lunch at Burma Superstar.

As we left Santa Cruz that morning, Susan's husband Steiny had one word for us : "Schubert's". It's a bakery that's been around since 1911, just down the street from Burma Superstar. Luckily our lunch was light enough we could indulge in one of their famous mousse cakes, the small ones, of course.

 It took us a while to choose...as you can see it was a feast for the eyes as well.
We both brought home treats for the husbands, as well :-)

We both agreed it was a very successful day, feeding all our senses.

Infused sugars and the May Day Art Faire.

I was surprised to realize that I have not posted since April 22. Mostly this is due to art fair last weekend, I was busy making things to sell there. I had my usual assortment of jams and jellies, a few body products and my photo cards. It was a fun two day show with lots of friends coming by to shop and support local artisans !

There was so much beautiful art, this fused glass work by Randie Silverstein.

These adorable bags by Dawn O'Regan.

Our hostess, Nancy Howells is queen of pique assiette or broken plate mosaic.

I was happy with how well I did considering it was my first time at the this show. I do still have jams for sale in case you missed it: sunrise marmalade, rose champagne jelly, apple pear butter, hot pepper jelly, pumpkin chutney and raspberry jam.

It was fun to introduce a couple of new products at this show: infused sugars ! They are all the rage in the foodie world, you can use them for tea or coffee, mixed drink or in baking.

I offered three flavors: fresh lemon, mandarin orange and cardamom. Each uses a slightly different technique. For the fresh lemon I used fresh peel with the sugar in the food processor. The mandarin sugar has peel that I dried and powdered, it also has a couple of drops of orange extract. The cardamom uses the whole crushed pods as well as some of the powdered spice. Each jar comes with a recipe. The lemon sugar has my favorite lemonade. The mandarin sugar is great in the orange cake I recently posted. My chai spice cookies are divine with the cardamom infused sugar. I made the cake and cookies as treats for the shoppers at the show.

You might notice that there is a jar of brown sugar in the photo, that's another thing I wanted to try. I always make my own brown sugar, and while it is relatively easy, most people won't go to the trouble to do it. Homemade brown sugar tastes so much better than what you buy at the store, it makes your morning hot cereal a gourmet meal.

Look for these new items to be at my show in November !!