Welcome to my new cooking column! Here you will learn all you need to know about making delicious, quick meals that will leave your friends (sometimes violently) begging for more. I should lay out a few ground rules though; Cam doesn’t do “directions” or “recipes.” Cam does good food.
First, measurements are for boring people. If you identified with the Sackville-Baggins or would have left the ring with Tom Bombadil, you are not welcome here. A tablespoon is about the size as a normal spoon, and measuring cups have no useful purpose (except as a small food-safe container in which to mix sauces and dressings). Cooking isn’t a science—it’s an engineering.
Second, if you don’t have an ingredient, you don’t need it. Maybe some people have the time and money to run to the store and spend $5 on a jar of honey for their pecan pie. For the rest of us, there’s sugar, water, and vanilla extract.
Third, every meal is salvageable. In my two-year career of intense, twice-per-day and thrice-on-the-weekends cooking, I have only once produced a meal that was inedible. Everything else was at least damn-near delicious, and often the thing I ended up with had no resemblance to the vision I had when starting.
So, on to the salad. Potato salad is a great summer treat. Stick it in the fridge for a while and it’s as effective as ice-cream at cooling you down after a long day in air-conditioned lecture halls. I figured with summer coming, I should have a dish in mind in case I get invited to any parties or barbeques; I hate coming empty handed almost as much as I hate spending money. So this was a trial run, to make sure it was as simple to make as I thought.
Start with a few handfuls of potatoes. Wash them, slice them into thirds, quarters, or eighths (the less time you have, the smaller they should be), and put them in a pot. Add water and a couple shakes of salt. Put them on the stove and leave them to cook for a while. They are done when sticking a fork in the largest piece results in a dissection (don’t torque the fork). While I was cooking my potatoes, I found I had too many and the pot kept boiling over. I took out a couple of pieces, placed them on a damp towel, and microwaved them for two minutes to make some easy oil-free potato fries. Once your potatoes are cooked, drain the pot.
At this point, you have two options. If you—like me—don’t have a dishwasher or man-servant I would recommend running a stream of cold water on the side of the pot to cool it down, then putting it in the fridge. If you have a man-servant, have him or her put the potatoes into a large bowl for you. Either way, you should now have potatoes in a not-boiling-hot container. Next add a few dollops of mayonnaise, some spices (I recommend paprika) and any other dressings you like. My favourites include mustard, chives, and sliced hard-boiled egg (from which the water and pot can then be used for the potatoes to save energy and heating time). When I was making my dish, my mustard container ran out. Not wanting to waste the substantial amount of food left inside, I added some acetic acid, shook, and poured the resultant mixture into the bowl. It worked so well that I would recommend anyone following this article add some vinegar to the mixture even if they don’t have a condiment container that needs cleansing.
And that’s all there is to it. If you can think of any alterations to it, they’ll probably work pretty well and might even be better. And remember, if you don’t have any of the foodstuffs I used, you should be able to make a pretty good substitute by combining the first three things you read on the ingredients list in appropriate-looking proportions.
Leave a Reply