WELCOME TO OUR KITCHEN: We're making potato salad!
Who doesn't love potato salad? We're making a recipe that was mentioned on our Facebook group (COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK) by a listener: potato, pasta, a combo of potato and macaroni salad. A great treat.
We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough, authors of three dozen (and counting!) cookbooks (not counting the ones ghost-written for celebs--now there are some stories.) This is our podcast about our food and cooking passion . . . and mostly about potatoes this time around.
Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:
[00:39] Our one-minute cooking tip: store potatoes in a cool, dark place at room temperature.
[01:50] We're making potato salad with pasta, a U. S. Midwestern (and elsewhere!) classic. Here's the recipe:
Start with 1 1/2 pounds (675 grams) VERY SMALL yellow potatoes, boiled in a Dutch oven with lots of water for 7 minutes. (Or larger potatoes, cut into 2-inch (1-centimeter) pieces.
Add 1/2 pound (225 grams) dried small elbow macaroni. Cook until both are tender, about 5 more minutes.
Drain in a colander set in the sink. Cool just a few minutes, then whisk together this dressing in a serving bowl: 3/4 cup (155 grams) mayonnaise, 1/4 cup (60 ml) apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons (30 grams) pickle relish, 2 teaspoons (10 grams) Dijon mustard, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon ground black pepper, 1/2 teaspoon onion powder, and 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder.
Stir in the warm potatoes, pasta, 2 cups (360 grams) corn kernels and 4 thinly sliced celery stalks. If desired, top with 2 or 3 hard-cooked eggs, peeled and sliced. Just FYI, the salad tastes better when cold. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.
[13:47] What’s making us happy in food this week: cherimoya and rhubarb pie!
Transcript
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:And I'm Mark Skarbrow, and together with Bruce, we have written three
Speaker:dozen cookbooks, have now turned into three dozen and one cookbook.
Speaker:It's, uh, well, gonna be a lot of talk about that upcoming, but this is
Speaker:our podcast about food and cooking, our major passions in our life.
Speaker:And to that end, we've got a one minute cooking tip about potatoes.
Speaker:We're going to be making potato salad in this episode of the day.
Speaker:Take a look.
Speaker:podcast based on a comment someone made in the Facebook group Cooking with Bruce
Speaker:and Mark, and we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week.
Speaker:It's a potato show.
Speaker:So let's get started.
Speaker:Our one minute cooking tip.
Speaker:Never store your potatoes on the counter where you can see them all the time,
Speaker:because that means light is hitting them.
Speaker:When light hits your potatoes, they turn green.
Speaker:They have
Speaker:a chlorophyll like reaction.
Speaker:Um, you actually can eat the green stuff.
Speaker:I know it doesn't look really good.
Speaker:You can eat a little of it.
Speaker:If you eat very much of it, though, you will get a stomach ache.
Speaker:It's unadvisable to eat it.
Speaker:If you see it, cut it out.
Speaker:And let's just say that at the supermarket, Carrot.
Speaker:The potatoes are stored at room temperature.
Speaker:So take your cue from there.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:At the supermarket.
Speaker:They also throw a blanket over the potatoes at night because all of those
Speaker:fluorescent lights they keep on will in fact, turn those potatoes green.
Speaker:So they cover them.
Speaker:You should do the same at home.
Speaker:You should.
Speaker:Okay, before we get to making potato salad, let me say that as I've
Speaker:already indicated, there is a Facebook group, Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:You might want to check that out.
Speaker:You can find us on social media under our own names.
Speaker:There's even a TikTok channel, Cooking with Bruce and Mark, where you can
Speaker:find us making recipes for each other.
Speaker:Check all of those ways that you can connect with us on social media.
Speaker:Okay, we're going to make potato salad.
Speaker:Every week, we ask you to share what's making you Happy in food on our Facebook
Speaker:group and cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:And this week Sandy did, and she, a lot of people did, but Sandy
Speaker:had something really interesting.
Speaker:She said it was her mother in law's potato salad made with
Speaker:pasta, fresh corn and eggs.
Speaker:And I actually thought that was really unusual.
Speaker:I'm told by my husband sitting across from me that it's actually
Speaker:not as unusual as I thought.
Speaker:You know, Bruce, first of all, um, uh, uh, when I was in the Midwest in grad
Speaker:school, I had a lot of potato salads with, uh, macaroni or pasta in them.
Speaker:It's like a potato salad, uh, macaroni salad cross.
Speaker:But eggs?
Speaker:Yes, I grew up with hard boiled eggs and potato salad.
Speaker:I grew up in the South.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So, that is a totally normal thing in my book.
Speaker:I'll get
Speaker:slammed for this, but I don't think it's a Jewish thing.
Speaker:Um, no, I don't think it is either.
Speaker:In Jewish delis, you don't have hard boiled eggs in potato salad,
Speaker:but, uh, it's a very southern thing.
Speaker:I don't really know where that came from, but my grandmother
Speaker:used to put them in potato salad.
Speaker:So it's like
Speaker:egg salad, and macaroni salad, and pasta salad.
Speaker:The potato salad.
Speaker:All in one.
Speaker:All in one.
Speaker:So we're doing that.
Speaker:So what you hear at the moment is a big pot boiling away, and in that
Speaker:pot is one and a half pounds or 675 grams of very small yellow potatoes.
Speaker:Oh, these things are tiny, like walnuts.
Speaker:We're smaller.
Speaker:Yeah, you want to find that Yukon gold and then instead of buying
Speaker:them already packaged picked through the bin of them and find the
Speaker:smallest ones you can and have them.
Speaker:Um, I just to tell you, if you don't know years ago, we wrote a book,
Speaker:the ultimate potato book and book in which it's all about potatoes.
Speaker:And we've got lots of potato cells in that book of French potato, green beans, right?
Speaker:Oh,
Speaker:The German is my favorite with bacon and onions.
Speaker:I mean, what, what's not to like with bacon and all that bacon fat
Speaker:becomes part of the dressings.
Speaker:And then a nice was potato salad with olives and fresh tuna.
Speaker:We have really good
Speaker:potatoes, smoked salmon, and in there we do have potato salad with pasta in it.
Speaker:It is common thing.
Speaker:I, I swear, I probably asked for it in the book from my days in the Midwest.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So we've had this thing boiling these potatoes boiling for seven minutes, right?
Speaker:And so now.
Speaker:We're going to add a half pound or 225 grams of small elbow macaroni.
Speaker:You can use gluten free, um, you can use, uh, any kind of macaroni you
Speaker:want, even a whole wheat macaroni.
Speaker:It'll just take a little longer to cook.
Speaker:And this is a great thing.
Speaker:You can boil them together.
Speaker:We give the potatoes a head start, seven minutes, and they were
Speaker:not quite tender, but almost.
Speaker:So I figured the five to seven minutes at the elbow macaroni will
Speaker:take, we'll finish them off quickly.
Speaker:perfectly.
Speaker:And while that cooks, we could talk some more about potatoes.
Speaker:So
Speaker:potatoes began their life.
Speaker:If you don't know this, they're, they're horticultural life high in
Speaker:the Andes, and they were a staple crop among South American cultures
Speaker:before the colonizers arrived.
Speaker:They are, um, bad.
Speaker:They bear no resemblance to what is now called a potato.
Speaker:The closest thing.
Speaker:you could come are the modern blue potatoes, but even
Speaker:that has been hybridized.
Speaker:I
Speaker:love blue potatoes, although I think they're more purple than they are blue.
Speaker:Yeah, it depends.
Speaker:Some of them are purple, violet.
Speaker:They spread really quickly.
Speaker:Potatoes did as a staple crop through the Incan cultures all
Speaker:up into Central America even.
Speaker:And then when Conquistadors and the Spanish arrived, they brought
Speaker:the potatoes back to Europe.
Speaker:Uh, you should tell you, if you don't know this, that they brought
Speaker:them back as a curiosity because the theory was, just let me have this.
Speaker:I know it's kind of gross, but let me have this.
Speaker:The theory was that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were devil worshipers
Speaker:and potatoes grew in the ground.
Speaker:And so the devil was under the ground.
Speaker:So this is the food they ate.
Speaker:So they brought it back as this curiosity of like, you know,
Speaker:devil food from under the ground.
Speaker:And
Speaker:no one ate them.
Speaker:They brought them back and everyone was afraid to eat them.
Speaker:Like Rosemary's baby, you can't eat the potatoes.
Speaker:The brave soul probably, you know, set in to eat a potato.
Speaker:And then that did that.
Speaker:I wonder what the first potato eaten.
Speaker:Was it boiled?
Speaker:Was it roasted?
Speaker:Maybe it
Speaker:was air fried.
Speaker:Yeah, sure.
Speaker:With the electricity in 1500's Europe.
Speaker:Didn't
Speaker:you grow up like I did where your grandmother told you if you ate
Speaker:raw potatoes you'd get worms?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:We were always told don't eat raw potatoes.
Speaker:You get worms.
Speaker:No, I
Speaker:didn't we didn't eat raw potatoes Well, I grew up going to my grandparents.
Speaker:Well, actually my great grandparents farm In the summers and I grew up there
Speaker:a lot in the summers It's I was outside of Oklahoma City in what is now Yukon,
Speaker:Oklahoma, which is a city suburb of Oklahoma City, but at the time it was all
Speaker:farmland, and my great grandparents had a farm out there and all the family kind
Speaker:of decamped that house for the summer.
Speaker:And my job was tending the potato patch and I hated it because that
Speaker:potato patch was full of snakes.
Speaker:Oh, you loved snakes.
Speaker:you, full up of snakes.
Speaker:You loved snakes.
Speaker:No, and I still do.
Speaker:kid I really hated them.
Speaker:I hated even going in that.
Speaker:It was about an acre of potatoes.
Speaker:It was for the family.
Speaker:It wasn't a commercial venture.
Speaker:It was just growing potatoes for the family.
Speaker:And, uh, I was so afraid to go in there and weed and water that potato.
Speaker:I would stand on the edges of it with throwing buckets of water over.
Speaker:Potatoes.
Speaker:I think your
Speaker:grandmother's a genius, though, because you told me she's kept
Speaker:cold boiled potatoes in salt in a crock in the kitchen.
Speaker:She did.
Speaker:She would
Speaker:boil potatoes, cool them, and then pack them in salt in a crock.
Speaker:That sounds so delicious, I would probably weigh 8, 000 more pounds than I do.
Speaker:Any time
Speaker:that you wanted anything to eat, she'd always say, go get a potato.
Speaker:out of that crock under the sink that was just kind of a thing,
Speaker:a snack in the early afternoon.
Speaker:It's probably why I grew up snacking on salty things and not sweet things.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Anyway, we're done with our pasta and our potatoes, so we're going to drain
Speaker:it in a colander set in the sink.
Speaker:Oh, I can tell you about that in a minute.
Speaker:Well, all right.
Speaker:I'm going to drain it.
Speaker:Mark can tell you the story while I do this.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:The story
Speaker:here is that you have to be really explicit when you write cookbooks.
Speaker:people have been known.
Speaker:to drain things in colanders and the water goes all over the counter because you
Speaker:didn't say in the cookbook, set it in the sink, so thus my insistence on what to do.
Speaker:Okay, so it's been drained.
Speaker:And I usually like to dress potato and macaroni salads while everything's
Speaker:hot because it absorbs the dressing.
Speaker:But not when I'm using mayonnaise.
Speaker:There's something gross to me about eating a mayonnaise.
Speaker:Yeah, it should
Speaker:be, in my opinion, mayonnaise dressing on potatoes, it should go on warm
Speaker:potatoes but not hot potatoes.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:I am going to take a cue from the great British baking show.
Speaker:And if you ever notice when they take their cakes out of the oven and they
Speaker:have to frost them in two minutes, they start fanning them with cutting boards.
Speaker:So I am fanning these potatoes with a plastic cutting board.
Speaker:And I'm going to keep doing this while Mark mixes up the next batch.
Speaker:bit of the salad.
Speaker:Okay, so it's a mayonnaise dressing.
Speaker:So I've got three quarters of a cup or 155 grams of mayonnaise.
Speaker:You can use low fat.
Speaker:You can use fat free.
Speaker:You can use avocado oil mayonnaise.
Speaker:We're
Speaker:using avocado oil.
Speaker:You made me buy that when we were in Costco.
Speaker:I did.
Speaker:I like it a lot.
Speaker:So use any kind of mayonnaise you want.
Speaker:I've also got a quarter cup or 60 ml of apple cider vinegar, and two
Speaker:tablespoons or 30 grams of peanut butter.
Speaker:pickle relish, two teaspoons or 10 grams of Dijon mustard, a teaspoon
Speaker:of salt, teaspoon of pepper, a little bit less of onion powder
Speaker:and way less of garlic powder.
Speaker:So if you want to find this recipe, it's going to come out
Speaker:probably in our newsletter.
Speaker:So you don't have to copy all this down.
Speaker:I'm just making a basic mayonnaise, apple cider vinegar dressing.
Speaker:And the key kick here is adding a little pickle relish and a little Dijon mustard.
Speaker:And I put Put out the sweet pickle relish for you to use on this, not the
Speaker:dill, because I wanted this to be sweet.
Speaker:Yeah, okay.
Speaker:So, uh, now we've got that, and we've got two cups of corn kernels.
Speaker:So, uh, how'd you get these kernels?
Speaker:I opened a can, and I drained them, a 15 ounce can.
Speaker:But, you can use frozen and thawed.
Speaker:You can even cut, Corn kernels right off the cob and throw them in.
Speaker:Because did you know that corn is the only whole grain you can eat raw, right?
Speaker:And it's natural state
Speaker:only whole grain that humans can eat raw cows or another matter.
Speaker:Let me say this about that.
Speaker:If you don't like eating raw corn or the idea of it, but you want fresh.
Speaker:Cut your kernels off the cobs and put them in the colander.
Speaker:That way, when you pour the hot potatoes and pasta over
Speaker:them, they will cook in that.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:We have a whole set of recipes in our book, The Kitchen Shortcut Bible, in which
Speaker:basically we call it colander cooking.
Speaker:And you put things in a colander, you bring pasta to a boil on the
Speaker:stove, you cook it, and then you pour it into the colander and it cooks.
Speaker:He cooks what's in the colander from the heat of the water and the heat of
Speaker:the, the noodles, you know, sitting on top of what's in the colander.
Speaker:It's a whole thing we came up with in colander cooking.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So anyway, we got the corn and now we got four stalks of celery and that's
Speaker:very thinly sliced and Bruce is going to now, uh, fix in the potatoes, right?
Speaker:I'm going to
Speaker:pour those over the top and then here's what Bruce is going to do
Speaker:because Bruce likes to do this.
Speaker:He's snapping on his surgical gloves.
Speaker:Oh, and he's going to mix this up with his hands because I would
Speaker:rather use my hands than a spoon So I know it's all blended up good.
Speaker:And plus it feels good.
Speaker:It sounds oh, and it sounds good.
Speaker:Oh We're not that kind of podcast So now it's all getting mixed up
Speaker:and I'm kind of revolted by it But um, he's got his hands in there.
Speaker:You should see this.
Speaker:He's got black latex gloves on it's really kind of Wild.
Speaker:Um, anyway, we're not that kind of show.
Speaker:So, um, so once this is all mixed together, Bruce has got two hard
Speaker:boiled eggs that he made earlier.
Speaker:They're peeled.
Speaker:I'm going to slice these and put them on top.
Speaker:You're not going to stir them
Speaker:in and make it, make it like egg salad.
Speaker:Well, that's
Speaker:what my grandmother would do, but we're going to be fancy and we're just going
Speaker:to slice these and put it all over.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:That's the real way to do it.
Speaker:Scoop it up.
Speaker:We'll get it in
Speaker:there.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:The question is, shall we taste it now or let it chill?
Speaker:Um, well, since we're doing a podcast, let's just taste
Speaker:it now and cut to the chase.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:This is like the best macaroni salad I've ever had.
Speaker:The potato, I feel like rather than having a potato salad with macaroni, I
Speaker:feel like I'm having macaroni salad with
Speaker:potatoes.
Speaker:It's amazing.
Speaker:It's really, this is a carb fest.
Speaker:This is really hearty and you could probably stretch this thing out to
Speaker:serve 10, even with what we've made.
Speaker:If you made other things on the grill, it's kind of sweet from sweet
Speaker:from the pickle relish and the corn
Speaker:and the potatoes.
Speaker:I would
Speaker:probably squiggle Sriracha over this top of this, but that's because
Speaker:I like everything hot lately.
Speaker:So I like everything spicy or I would mix a little Sriracha into it from
Speaker:the get go into that dressing, but I'd probably squiggle it on top.
Speaker:That's how I do it.
Speaker:I like to switch on avocado toast, so you know what else
Speaker:would be great is if I shredded up some cabbage or even some
Speaker:kale and stirred that into it.
Speaker:So it's not only potato salad, macaroni salad, egg salad.
Speaker:It's also coleslaw dinner
Speaker:dinner.
Speaker:That's ridiculous.
Speaker:That's like every protein and you.
Speaker:Carb that you could possibly can slice up hot
Speaker:dogs and throw that in there you go.
Speaker:And, and now it's a potato salad.
Speaker:All right, Sadie, thanks for the idea for a potato salad with pasta in it.
Speaker:Something new to Bruce and not so new to me, but new in this incarnation to me.
Speaker:Thanks for writing in on the Facebook group.
Speaker:group.
Speaker:Let me remind you that we have a newsletter.
Speaker:It comes out in, I don't know, we have a couple of weeks, maybe every three weeks.
Speaker:You can find it on our website, cookingbersonmark.
Speaker:com or bruceandmark.
Speaker:com.
Speaker:It includes recipes such as this one and other things related to our life
Speaker:in food or our life in New England.
Speaker:As I've always told you, I can't capture your email.
Speaker:I set it up to block your email from me and block your name from me.
Speaker:And, uh, actually we pay more so that the provider can't capture your email
Speaker:and your name and can't sell it.
Speaker:So it's completely safe and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Speaker:Up next, traditionally, our third segment, what's making us happy in food this week?
Speaker:For me, it's a cherimoya.
Speaker:And if you don't know what a cherimoya is, other names for it are the custard apple.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:which doesn't really sell it.
Speaker:And I
Speaker:don't know what else they would call it, but it is, like,
Speaker:shaped like a sort of an apple.
Speaker:Sort of.
Speaker:But it looks like it's scaly.
Speaker:It looks like a little dragon skin.
Speaker:It does.
Speaker:And it's green.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:And it gives, a little give when it's ripe, like an avocado.
Speaker:And when you cut it open, the inside is white with big black seeds.
Speaker:You get those black seeds out of the way because they are toxic and you
Speaker:want to scoop out the white flesh.
Speaker:It's very creamy.
Speaker:It is almost like custard.
Speaker:It has a flavor that's like a cross between a strawberry and a banana
Speaker:and a mango and very tropical.
Speaker:When we were in Madrid last year, we were in a restaurant where they had cherimoya.
Speaker:vegan ice cream for dessert, and it was so delicious.
Speaker:And now I know why, because this is so creamy.
Speaker:Cherimoyas are so rich and creamy that I think I may have to make some ice cream
Speaker:out of the extra one I have in the fridge.
Speaker:So what's made me happy in food this week is I made some pies to
Speaker:take to a friend's house over last weekend, and I made a rhubarb pie.
Speaker:Rhubarb is.
Speaker:In where we live in New England, it's now really in.
Speaker:In fact, it's that time of year and I made a rhubarb pie and
Speaker:not a strawberry rhubarb pie.
Speaker:I was insistent that it just be a rhubarb pie.
Speaker:I miss rhubarb pies from my childhood.
Speaker:I love them.
Speaker:so much.
Speaker:Bruce made a ton, a metric ton of creme anglaise.
Speaker:We brought that to a friend's house, and they, their grandkids, us, we
Speaker:all just ate pie till we rolled on a
Speaker:rhubarb
Speaker:pie.
Speaker:I know, rhubarb pie is a favorite.
Speaker:Fantastic thing.
Speaker:Well, that's the podcast episode for this week on Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:Thanks for joining us.
Speaker:We certainly appreciate your spending your time on the podcast landscape with us.
Speaker:And every week we share what's making us happy in food.
Speaker:So keep on sharing what's making you happy in food this week at our Facebook
Speaker:group, Cooking with Bruce and Mark, and we might just make your recipe right
Speaker:here on Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
