Potato salad with gherkins, radishes or something similarly crunchy, lots of dill, a wisp of spring onion and a sensibly generous amount of good quality mayo – ahhh. I’m writing this before lunch and can only be grateful I’m sitting here on my own so no one can hear the loud, embarrassing growl coming from my stomach. Potato salad is one of my forbidden luxuries.
To be honest, my mother did her best to put me off it when I was a kid. Her version inexplicably featured diced cooked carrots and – horror of horrors – peas from a tin. Why? Search me; she probably thought she was smuggling hateful veg in a dish I liked, so I’d not notice. More fool her. I would meticulously pick out all the single green and orange objects and leave them festooning the rim of my plate.
But why a forbidden luxury – why of course, carbs, fattening, spuds and I have a love/hate relationship. It is so unfair that my fave food isn’t kale.
This dish is the best of all possible worlds: not only a potato salad but ROASTED potatoes, and that’s one better. It’s served warm so various individuals averse to cold potatoes may not complain. It’s got the added goodness, omega-3-ishness and inexpensiveness of smoked mackerel – which makes it a complete meal. Can you beat that?
Yes. Just boiled diced spuds with mayo. But I’ll shut up about it.