IAN'S POTATO SALAD

My dad was a keen cook - he wasn't adventurous in the slightest however he had a recipe repertoire that he liked to do and he did well. He cooked various things brilliantly such as veal with mushroom sauce or steak Diane and he made the most amazing egg mayonnaise sandwiches although his mac and cheese was revolting!!! I wish I'd made a note of his successful recipes before he died as all I ever wrote down was his welsh rarebit and potato salad. Dad never followed a recipe book and instead was more "naked chef" (thankfully not literally) with a little bit of this and a little bit of that!

I do try to make his potato salad every summer when we have barbecues as it brings back some good memories of him. This is the "rough" version he gave me.

I have tried to tweak it but do taste as you go, I have also made a few alterations such as including bacon.

Ingredients for 4-6 people as a side (depending on how hungry you are):

750g new potatoes
3 garlic cloves
8 spring onions
14 rashes of streaky bacon
100ml beef stock cube
4 tbsp olive oil
1.5 tbsp white wine vinegar
1-2 tsp sugar
Salt and pepper

First thing first boil the kettle or heat the water to boil the potatoes. You want them to be soft which takes about 15-20 minutes so check them after 15 minutes and see if you need longer. Then boil the kettle again for the stock cube.

At the same time slice the spring onions and crush the garlic.

Frying the bacon is tastier as you can get it really crispy (especially if you add butter)! However it isn't exactly healthy so I grilled the bacon in batches. This took about 15 minutes.

Once the potatoes are soft, slice them into chunks.

In a bowl mix the 4 tbsp of olive oil, 1.5 tbsp of white wine vinegar, 100ml of the beef stock, salt and pepper and a teaspoon or two of sugar - taste as you do it and add more of the ingredients if necessary.

Add to the bowl, the potatoes, garlic, spring onion and bacon.

Then mix!

I much prefer this potato salad to a mayonnaise based one and surely it is more healthy?! It is based on a German potato salad so you could always add sausage rather than bacon. If you can, try and serve it warm, but I never get the timings right. 

I never once cooked for my dad, at the time I couldn't even boil an egg, so I think he would be very happy that not only am I regularly cooking his potato salad, but I am also sharing it with others. 

Enjoy!