Potato Salad

How many varieties, colours, sizes and textures. The texture is almost as important as the concept of the potato itself. Versatile too. It is an important vegetable too, not just from the perspective of sustaining a huge percentage of our planets population, but economically on a global scale, potatoes are traded as a commodity and people earn money speculating on the price of potatoes which is based on the European Processing Potato Index. Who on earth dreamt that up?

Mashed, fried, boiled, baked, roast or boiled then mashed or par-boiled then roasted. You can do a lot with them and like most things it is what you do to them that makes them interesting or for that matter bland.

Chips, fries, French fries, big fat chips, triple cooked. Who does not like chips. True you get good ones, bad ones and great ones.

You can even ferment them, then distil and make spirit from them. Maybe this is why the Russians and Polish are 2 of the largest producers of potatoes in the World.

But, at the start of the cooking process, they are just a raw potato. A lump of water held together by starch molecules.

Potato Salad anyone. Think of uniform tiny chunks, barely cooked in a bland and watery so called mayonnaise and you have a ready made potato salad from a supermarket. They aren’t all bad and some are better than others but with a bit of thought you can probably make enough potato salad to feed a dozen or so people for the not much more money.

• Waxy potatoes (low starch content and high water content) hold together better,
• Boiled then crushed slightly. Add finely sliced red onion and a crushed clove of garlic.
• Add the mayo, onions and garlic to the potatoes while they are still hot and gently stir in.

Other things to stir in. A bit of what you fancy.

Chipotle Paste. Miso paste. Chopped Kimchi. A good BBQ Sauce. Katsu Curry.