Special Recipe For Potato Salad

My mother’s potato salad is legendary (in our family). My mom is German and my father used to say: In WWII, if the Germans had bombed with your mother’s potato salad, they would have won the war! Yes my father was prone to hyperbole (Some would say: like father, like son), but the truth is that mom’s potato salad is fantastic and a great addition to a summer supper club menu.

Like many great family dishes, the recipe is somewhat unique tothe author. The truth is that my mom makes this dish a little different every time. She uses the same basic formula, but will taste as she goes along and add something here and there to get it the way she wants it. Sometimes she will add lemon juice, sometimes not. Sometimes she will add a little mustard, sometimes not. It isn’t that she is being secretive, it’s just that flavors vary. She knows what she wants it to taste like and has a few tricks to get the results she wants.

You can ask Mom’s 6 grandkids what is their favorite dish that mom-mom makes at the beach and potato salad is way up on the list. As stated, the potato salad is legendary, but there is also the fact that dish brings them back to the great memories of their youth, growing up at their grandmother’s beach house.

My father claimed that coffee and tea tasted better in a glass cup. The truth is that he remembered having tea at my mother’s mom’s lake house when my mom and dad were first married. Tea and coffee in a glass cup reminded him of the good times and of course, the memories made things taste better.

Mom’s potato salad is more than great memories. It is great. Here is the potato salad recipe. There are some basics that she does that are different and repeatable. For one, she marinates the potatoes first:

Check out the video of the prep and marination.

There are also some tricks in her final dressing of the potato salad

Check out the video on her final dressing

After we made the video, mom continued to taste her potato salad and couldn’t help herself and commented “Boy this is good!”.

Check out the potato salad recipe

We enjoyed the potato salad along with a menu of other salads as part of our Home and Away series of visits with our daughters in-laws. Every summer we visit my mom in Westhampton and Helene and Rick live in Montauk which is the east-end of the Hamptons. We are only 40 miles apart but with summer traffic it can take two hours. No matter what it is always fun with the grandkids, good food and great times.

Check out the video of the pre-meal festivities

Helene & Rick Menu

Appetizers

Roasted Pepper Rolatinis With Salami, Goat Cheese And Pesto
Smoked Salmon Spread Canapés

Salads

Curry Chicken With Apple, Toasted Pine Nuts, Raisins and Fresh Dill
Mom Mom’s Legendary Potato Salad
Caprese With Tomato, Fresh Mozzarella, Pesto and Basil
Grilled Peaches With Creamy Blue Cheese And A Balsamic Glaze
Poached Asparagus With Olive Oil, Red Wine Vinegar, Pepper & Onion

Dessert

Peach Cobbler Tart With Vanilla Ice Cream

If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.

First Impressions Are Key

Whether you are having a dinner party for 2 or 200, it is important to set a positive first impression that establishes the tone for the evening. It doesn’t have to be over the top awesome. It can be as simple as having something beautifully aromatic in the oven (Potatoes Gran Mere ) or an enticing cocktail (Cranberry Mint Mojito ). Giving your guests the impression that they are in for something special will set your dinner party apart from the ordinary.

Marketing can be fun!

Speaking of over the top awesome, Chef Lucien Vendome and our Marketing team at Kraft Food Ingredients put on many spectacular events, but the event we staged at The Research Chef’s Association in Montreal was something special. An Ice Pyramid that highlighted our brands set the first impression. KFI sold industrial ingredients to major food manufacturers. One thing we offered that most of our competitors couldn’t was the ability to license the use of our brands along with the sale of bulk ingredients. So today, whenever you see an Oreo Lava Cake, chances are that our Ice Pyramid imbedded with Kraft brands, planted the seed of the idea.

This is where you are probably thinking…It is easy to set a phenomenal impression when you have an enormous Marketing budget. Well the reality at KFI was that we had great ideas and virtually no budget. The key was that we did most of the work ourselves. As for the Ice Pyramid:

We designed the pyramid ourselves
We built the base for the pyramid in Lucien’s garage and reassembled it ourselves
We found and ice sculpture at Mont Tremblanc who did the ice work for self promotion
We had our entire Sales and Marketing team on site at 6 am on the morning of the show putting all the pieces together
We were scrambling 5 minutes before the doors opened to get all the final touches in place. (I still remember our friend, Chef John Li, showing up just as we needed him and rolling up his sleeves to help out).

To this day, attendees thought we had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to host the event. The truth is we spent a fraction of what people thought. We got it done with creativity and sweat equity.

The funny story behind the pyramid was in the assembly of the base. To save money we had to build the base ourselves. This base had to be strong and stable enough to support 3,000 lbs. of ice. Lucien, in addition to being a world renown chef, is an expert furniture maker. He had built the base in his garage. He and I had assembled it in his driveway. It was made with the highest grade of wood. We knew it was perfect. Then we took it apart and shipped it from Memphis to Montreal. At 6 am on the morning of the event, we got everyone together and had two teams reassemble it from each end. When we got to the middle we were 6 inches off. Panic set in! Instantly, Lucien came out with the circular saw to trim the extra six inches. I started screaming NO!. We took it apart, and started from one end and it came together perfectly.

The Pyramid

The Base

The Team

If that pyramid had crashed, we would have made an unforgettable first impression and it would have been the end of my Marketing career.

First impressions are key. The next time you are hosting a dinner party, think about how you can impress your guests at the start. Quite often, it is that first impression that lasts forever.

What Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong

“A disaster beyond your imagination will occur!”

This line from “Phantom of the Opera” is with me every time we host a Supper Club event. No matter what happens, with a little planning and some quick thinking no one will ever know you had a problem.

Working with Kraft we staged culinary events around the world. And, pretty much what could go wrong did go wrong. With that said 99% of the attendees at those jinxed events had no idea we had a problem.

The two biggest issues that occur are:

Something gets over cooked
You run out of a feature item

Having backups is the easy answer. Most cooks will have an extra or two in the hopper. A microwave’s defrost features work wonders. Quick substitutions are virtually never noticed.

Then there are those disasters that you can’t plan for:

We once hosted a culinary event in San Diego that was disrupted by the outbreak of the war in Iraq. The show went on and we got to watch lots of action as the event was held on a beach in site of the Naval Air Station.

There was the trade show in Säo Paulo where our kitchen equipment short-circuited. Every time a chef touched a pan he got shocked. We had an electrician do the cooking until the problem got fixed.

The classic was a trade show in Chicago where we were featuring an Oreo Lava Cake. To this day I don’t really know what happened, but after day one of a 3 day show we ran out. We bought the chef that short ordered the lava cakes a new calculator and served lots of Oreo cheesecake.

When in doubt, over order. To this day my wife Susan complains about me overcooking. Guilty! In my opinion leftovers are never a disaster!