rosemary lemon garlic lamb chops grilled with tomatoes and onions/horseradish potato salad/grilled pineapple with vanilla ice cream

This past weekend Nathan's mom and stepmom came to New York to visit, and we spent Saturday battling the storm, only to eventually retreat back to Nathan's grandma's house to prepare an easy, rib sticking dinner to help us warm up from the sleet and snow.

This is not that meal. Instead, I am going to turn back the clock to the dinner that I prepared with Nathan's help the last time I saw Tenli and Marie, back in sunny California this summer. Just as I did when I stayed with Aunt Elise and Uncle Ed at their home, I wanted to prepare a nice meal as a thank you for their hospitality.

roasted potato salad with poblano mayo

poblano potato salad with bacon crumbles

Today I drove 4 and a half hours, largely in stop and go traffic on a stick shift. There were serious leg cramps involved, and I am tired and not exactly in the mood to blog about some potato salad I made over a month ago. But here I am, blogging just for you. And National Blog Post Writing Month, obviously.

There is a common thread in much of my writing here on the blog– "I got x vegetable, so I made x." This will start to trail off in the weeks to come, as I only have two more pick ups before the end of the season, but today's entry is another one in that mold.

I had a) potatoes, b) cilantro, c) poblano peppers and d) garlic. The obvious solution to the problem is Rick Bayless's potato salad. The potatoes and garlic are roasted, and then mixed with an olive oil based roasted poblano pepper mayo that you make in the blender. Then you add chopped scallion and cilantro, and plenty of crumbled bacon.

Of course, this was way way too spicy for me because I am a wimp, even though I used far less poblano than the original recipe called for. Also, the mayonnaise totally broke. So much for the foolproof blender method. Personally, I've never failed with a whisk and a slow drip of oil, but this go around with the blender totally confounded me. There was definitely a big puddle of oil on the bottom of my salad. I love Mexican genius Rick Bayless, but I count that as two big problems with this recipe, or at the very least my rendition of it.

Of course, there were a lot of things that were yummy tasty about this dish. Crispy potatoes and bacon, bright green scallions and plenty of roasted garlic. All good things. But the overly spicy peppers and too much slick and oily dressing really killed this potato salad. Don't get me wrong; I still ate it, but I felt like my own parent, bribing myself to eat just three more bites before I could have a cookie.


Rick Bayless's roasted poblano potato salad

Rick Bayless is still the man, but I definitely need to adjust his recipes to better suit my wimpy palate.

homemade mayonnaise for a summer potato salad

So I finally did it: I made my own mayonnaise! This is one of those things that only professional chefs and food bloggers do anymore, and now that I count myself among the latter, I suppose it was only a matter of time before I joined the ranks of the mayo makers.


freshly made mayo

Look how gorgeous! Watching the unlikely combo of egg yolk and olive oil come together to form a delicate and creamy mass was oddly satisfying, but I have to say that I probably wouldn't try to pull this off on my own.

I started off whisking the yolk vigorously with my right hand, and trying to slowly drip in the oil with my left. My parents have a nice olive oil bottle with a small spout, but if left unchecked it still was more of a small but steady stream rather than a series of oil droplets. I soon tired, and called in my dad from the sidelines. We teamed up, taking turns with the more exhausting whisking and easier dripping. It came together beautifully, and was lightly seasoned afterward. I suspect it could have held even more olive oil, but we were both getting tired and I decided it was good enough.

As cool as I felt making mayonnaise from scratch, the primary reason I decided to try my hand at it was that I was making potato salad, and I didn't have nearly enough Hellman's. This potato salad was part of the ribs and zucchini meal I posted about yesterday, and immediately followed my gigantic coleslaw. As such, I had already used most of my parents' stock of the condiment in question. Enter the handmade variety!


macaroni and cheese

My parents weren't too crazy about this potato salad. I guess it was tasty enough. Boiled potatoes cut up and mixed with mayo, diced celery, minced parsley and basil. I added salt and pepper, and possibly a little dijon. This was just a quick and dirty potato salad, (labor intensive mayo aside), as the real star of the meal was the ribs. I'd like to try making a more interesting potato salad later on this summer.