Pesto Potato Salad

I've been making a lot of pesto. I think "Ooo, I want to make tomato basil napoleons and this bunch of basil is only a dollar!" I buy two bunches. I use ten leaves. It wilts. I make pesto. I might as well make another kind of potato salad, right? What is this, six?

This pesto salad is best with either 2/3 cilantro and 1/3 mint (C: too minty) or all arugula or the really oily pesto one buys in stores if one does not have a produce fixation. Boil one pound of potatoes until tender- try to use a sweetish potato, like white potatoes or German butterballs or Yukon golds. Destem one half pound green beans and cut into inch long pieces. Blanch the green beans until tender- about two minutes.

Slice the potatoes into bite sized chunks. Add green beans. Dress with olive oil, lemon juice, and 1/4 cup pesto. (I suppose you could use less pesto, but at this point I'm just dumping it into everything. Oil and lemon are to taste- a dollop and a half lemon, probably.)

It's a pretty good potato salad, but I like all potato salads. Obviously.

The 800 Calorie Problem.

I'm skeptical about diets. (This is a rarely used definition of "skeptical" meaning "violently opposed to".) Part of it is my total lack of impulse control- when I get hungry, I am going to eat something. I will eat all of the things in my lunchbox, and then if I am still hungry, I will eat other things: Entire fennel plants. Acorns. Wayward deer. Unwary coworkers.

I assume other people buy a candy bar or something.

Thus, my lunchbox always contains at least 800 calories and 10 grams of fiber. (And ample 'pocket jerky'- edible but non palatable items.) My challenge this summer was all vegan lunches- it's a little hard to find things that are sufficiently energy dense. I've relied heavily on potato salads.

Potato Salad with Mint and Lemongrass
Boil 1 pound of potatoes until fork tender. (Potato texture is not important in this recipe, except that it be delightful. Thus, this is a good slush recipe for those strangely textured potatoes in your life.) Cut into large chunks. Add three stems thin sliced lemongrass and 1/4 cup chopped mint. Dress with 1/4 cup rice vinegar, 1/4 cup olive oil, and 1 tsp sugar. Salt to taste.

German Potato Salad

This is a sorry excuse for a vegan recipe- being as it required the suffering of three different species. Happily, my mother informs me that it's also a sorry excuse for German potato salad. According to her every potato chunk should be coated with an acrid gloss of roofing tar- or a roux made with bacon fat and cider vinegar and whole wheat flour. Regardless of cultural accuracy or following the sentiments of this blog, it's pretty good potato salad. It has no mayo, if that's a thing. Also, it's what I'm having for lunch this week, so stop whining.

I will be giving my Midwestern recipes extra leeway, because I can think of about three dishes that are perfectly vegan. They are all pickles.

Dice two onions, and caramelize them in 1 tbsp butter, lard, or for those of us without seven generations of German grandmothers hissing in our prefrontal cortexes some sort of vegetable oil. This will take a while- that's why one does it first. At some point you may find the onion pan to be dry- add more fat and make sure the heat is nice and low. Cut 10 Yukon Gold or other waxy potatoes (the red ones or the white ones or the purple ones)in half, and boil them until fork tender.

Chop 4 stems of celery, a good handful of parsley, and cucumber pickles. The total amount of chopped pickle should be half the amount of chopped celery. You should use dill pickles, but I'll still be your friend if you use bread and butter. Or non-cucumber pickles, actually. Hell, I still love C, and the man hates pickles. I've gotta find some with Yellow #5. Put the chopped vegetables into a large bowl. Oh, and dice one slice of bacon.

You'll probably finish chopping long before the onions turn properly brown and the potatoes become edible. Do some dishes or something.

When the potatoes finish, cut them into thick slices and put them in the bowl. Add the onions. Take the old onion pan, turn the heat up to medium high, and fry the bacon until crisp. Keep stirring, or it will burn and you will be sad. This is where you'd make a roux if you were bound by tradition, but we already silenced those demons with lard earlier. We are strong. Instead, add one tbsp of mustard, (not French's, fools) 1/3 cup of cider vinegar, 1 tsp sugar, 1/8 cup of olive oil, and 1/3 cup chicken broth. (The secret to great vegan cooking is homemade chicken broth.) Turn the burner off, stir until blended. Pour over the vegetables, mix everything together. Chill.

This should be a little on the acid side, because I was raised on acrid roofing tar potato salad, so you may want to hold back on the vinegar at first. Or to be more accurate, I added sauce ingredients until it tasted right instead of measuring, and too much vinegar is the only thing likely to make the final product inedible. If the balance is off, add things until it tastes good. This holds up very well in a backpack- though that might be in contrast to my memories of dubious mayonnaise based potato salads.

Please note: butter, bacon, and chicken broth. Tasty.