food Archives - 3jamigos

Call Me Old Fashion (Devon’s Mom’s Potato Salad)

By threejamigos | September 28, 2016 | Comments 1 comment

Ninety-degree weather welcomed us home from Nashville yesterday. Mother Nature is giving us one last summer hurrah and it’s a doozy. Perfect time to fire up the grill and send summer off with some classics-dogs, burgers, corn on the cob, and POTATO SALAD. Ok, all I want is the potato salad. The rest is just window dressing for your benefit. I LOVE potato salad.

During our Houston trip, a delightful meal at Lucille’s Soul Food included potato salad. The potato salad was vinegar-based and not mayonnaise-based. Yes, it was tasty, but for me, a good old-fashioned classic potato salad is made with GOBS and GOBS of mayonnaise. When I was a kid my mom would buy the little plastic tubs of potato salad at the grocery store. Sweet and tangy, flecks of red and green from the pimento and relish all held together with Miracle Whip. Yep, fond memories for me. I also love the Japanese version of potato salad which omits pickles, has diced carrots, cucumbers, ham, and corn instead, and is held together with Kewpie Mayonnaise. It’s the first thing I attack in a Bento Box.

For the longest time, I was content with squelching my potato salad cravings by having it as a side with a deli sandwich. It didn’t occur to me that I could make my own until one day my co-worker Devon brought her Mom’s Potato salad to a potluck. With one bite, I had flashbacks of those long-ago summertime picnics when I shamelessly stuffed my face with potato salad.

Devon, “I NEED your Mom’s potato salad recipe.” Lucky for me she said yes.

What’s in it? White rose potatoes, plenty of mayonnaise, hard-boiled eggs, red onions, sweet gherkins, ballpark mustard (no fancy schmancy mustard needed), celery seed, Beau Monde seasoning, and salt & pepper. Over the years I have tweaked the recipe, but, at its core, it is still a classic potato salad. I have substituted sour cream for a portion of the mayo, added diced celery for extra crunch, or diced bell peppers for sweetness and color. If Wes makes it he will add a dollop of sweet relish for good measure.

The key is to boil your potatoes until they are soft but not falling apart.

When you mix it you want some of the potato to stay in little chunks and some to break down.

If you like old-fashioned potato salad..look no further..this is potato salad heaven.

Call Me Old Fashion...Devon's Potato Salad

Classic Old-fashion Potato Salad, mayo, pickles, hard-boiled eggs, more mayo...the best

Course comfort food, dinner, lunch, picnic, Salad

Cuisine American

Keyword mayonnaise, picnic food, Potato Salad, potatoes

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 45

Instant Pot Cooking 6

Equipment

1 Pressure Cooker

Ingredients

Potatoes and Fixins

7 medium white potatoes boiled until very soft, cooled and peeled, diced
3 hard boiled eggs peeled and mashed
1/2 medium red onion diced
3 sweet gherkins diced

Dressing

1 tsp celery seed
a couple of dashes of Beau Monde seasoning
1 1/2 cups mayonnaise approximate, to taste
1 tsp ball park mustard
juice from the gherkins to moisten to taste and consistency
salt and pepper to taste
milk to moisten as needed

Riffs & Additions

1/2 cup sour cream to replace equal amount of mayo
1 stalk of celery diced
1/2 cup diced red or green bell pepper
dollop of sweet relish to finish

Instructions

How to boil potatoes

Devon's mom boils the potatoes whole therefore so do I. But you can cut them up and boil them which would significantly reduce cooking time.

Place potatoes in a large pot and cover with water (an inch above potatoes)
Add 1/2-1 teaspoon salt
Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Once it boils turn heat down to keep the water at a gently simmer.
Whole potatoes will take approximately 40 minutes to cook. Test by piercing the potato with a knife or fork. It should be tender enough that the knife meets with little resistance.
Meanwhile, make the sauce. Combine mayo or mayo-sour cream blend, mustard, celery seeds, couple of dashes of Beau Monde. Set aside.
Drain and rinse under cool water. Transfer to a mixing bowl or colander.
Dice potatoes approximately 1/2 -3/4 inch cubes. Place potatoes in a large bowl. Add red onion, pickles, and mashed hard-boiled eggs to bowl. Then add about 3/4 of mayonnaise-mustard sauce.
Mix well but gently so you don't break up the potatoes too much. Adjust if you need more dressing or not. Add pickle juice, taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper if needed. Add. more mustard if it needs some tartness. If it seems too dry add milk. It's all a guessing game for your tastebuds.
You pretty much know the drill..go ahead and make it your own! Add corn or peas or try it with fancy mustard, its up to you. I have added diced chicken or ham to the salad.
Put your salad in the fridge to chill and let the flavors meld.
Garnish with parsley or chopped scallions before serving

Summer: Alfresco Meals & the Bacon Caper

By threejamigos | May 27, 2015 | Comments 0 Comment

I love alfresco dining and today was the perfect day to enjoy breakfast outside. Banana blueberry pancakes made by my daughter, crispy bacon, a big bowl of fresh berries and mangoes (another reason to love summer), and yogurt with homemade granola. Perfect! We set up outside in the garden, wait, forgot the coffee, back inside, grab the pot. Back outside….WHAT? Sammy our dog, who has never, ever, ever eaten anything off the counter or table (a point of pride for us); who will sit in a car surrounded by food including banana bread, egg rolls, fried chicken wings AND not touch any of it; HAS EATEN THE ENTIRE PLATE OF BACON, in a matter of seconds gobbled up 10 slices of bacon and licked the plate clean. I’m still mad at him…..

Well, we still have pancakes. I will share the easiest way to cook perfect bacon despite not having a photo of said bacon, just the dog who ate the bacon.

Print Pin

Oven Cooked Bacon

Ingredients

1 pound of thick cut bacon
Variations:
1/4 to 1/3 cup brown sugar
2-3 T maple syrup
1/4 tsp. cayenne
1.4 tsp. black pepper

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and set wire rack on top. Lay bacon slices on rack. Do not overlap slices. Place in oven and bake 15-20 minutes until desired doneness. The bacon cooks perfectly, lays flat and best of all you don't have to stand at the stove watching it fry! Clean up is relatively easy, especially if you line your pan with foil.

Variations:

For a sweet bacon, sprinkle bacon with brown sugar and bake as directed, spice it up by adding cayenne to brown sugar and sprinkling on bacon.
Brush with maple syrup , bake as directed.

My Favorite Scottish Shortbread

By threejamigos | May 8, 2015 | Comments 3 comments

I love baking cookies. Every Christmas I bake an assortment of cookies for family and friends, a tradition I started years ago. Last year I made bags of granola instead and realized just how much less stress I had by not baking 10 different kinds of cookies! But (sigh), I’ll go back to baking cookies, its a labor of love and I am a glutton for punishment. There are the tried and true cookies I bake year after year; the few that show up from time to time and then, one or two new cookies each holiday season.

The Perfect Cookie

The cornerstone of my Holiday box of cookies is the traditional Scottish Shortbread. The recipe, from the long-defunct Cuisine magazine, was the bonus to the story, My Father’s Shortbread. The author recounts watching his father making shortbread every Christmas. His father’s only tools were his hands. I cheat a little and use a mixer to combine the flour into the kneaded butter but everyone should make shortbread completely by hand once.

Shortbread is my absolute favorite cookie. It’s probably because I am a butter FREAK. I love butter. People ask, do you want a little toast with that butter? Shortbread cookies are the closest you will get to just popping a little pat of moo-magic in your mouth.

The dough can be rolled and cut into traditional wedges or works beautifully as cutouts. I have in my collection a couple of embossed rolling pins that can be used with shortbread. Roll the dough to approximately 1/4 inch and then use your embossed pin to create the pattern on the cookie. The dough is easy to work with and very forgiving.

_V3A6829 — (left upper corner going clockwise) Nutmeg logs, World Peace cookies, pecan tartlets, mocha macadamia slices, jan hagels, thumbprints, crescents, peanut & bittersweet chocolate cookies, traditional shortbread, corn cookies

My Father’s Shortbread is my favorite, go-to shortbread cookie, but Bouchon’s Shortbread is a close second!

Adapted from My Father’s Shortbread by Sydney Edelson Cuisine Magazine Dec 1983

Print Pin

Traditional Scottish Shortbread

Butter in cookie form

Course cookies, Dessert

Cuisine European

Keyword Shortbread

Prep Time 30

Cook Time 45

Ingredients

1 pound cold lightly salted butter
1 cup superfine sugar
1/2 tsp salt
4 cups unbleached all purpose flour

Instructions

Work butter until soft but not melting. Easiest thing to do is pound the butter with a rolling pin Fold butter in half and smoosh it with pin (yes smoosh) until malleable but not warm.
Place butter in bowl of a stand mixer, add sugar and salt cream until combined, do not beat until fluffy as this will incorporate too much air into butter.
Add flour to butter mixture and mix on low until particles cling together. Remove from bowl and knead gently until smooth and soft. Pat or roll into a rectangle about 3/8" thick. Mark off pieces 1" x 2-1/2", prick with fork and chill for 1 hour.
Cut apart and place on cold baking sheet 1/2" apart.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees, place shortbread in oven and immediately turn temperature down to 275 degrees. Bake for 30 minutes, rotate pan and leave for additional 10-15 minutes.
Cookies are done when bottoms are golden brown and sand color on top. You can use cookie cutters if you wish. Shortbread retain their shape well.

Notes

Remember to turn your oven down to 275 when you put the cookies in the oven!!!