![[Image]](images/BornToGrill-761.jpg)
We read recently in a fashionable food magazine that potato salad is too boring to serve at a cookout. We thought about that awhile and decided the author must have a really lousy recipe collection. In commiseration, we threw together a spud salad studded with righteous Cajun flavors, in the same league of boring as a high-stepping zydeco tune.
SERVES 8
| 3 | pounds potatoes, preferably Yukon Gold or yellow Finn, halved |
| 5 | slices uncooked bacon, chopped |
| ¼ | cup olive oil |
| 1 | large sweet or mild onion, chopped |
| ½ | medium green bell pepper, diced fine |
| 1 | large celery stalk, minced |
| ⅓ | cup thin-sliced green onion tops |
| 2 | tablespoons cider vinegar |
| 2 to 3 | tablespoons Creole mustard |
| 1 | teaspoon salt, or more to taste |
| ¼ | teaspoon Tabasco sauce or other hot pepper sauce, or more to taste |
| Generous grinding of black pepper |
In a large saucepan, cover the potatoes with salted water and bring them to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer the potatoes until fork-tender, about 20 to 25 minutes. Drain the potatoes and, when cool enough to handle, cut them into bite-size chunks. Transfer the potatoes to a large bowl.
In a heavy skillet, fry the bacon over medium heat until crisp. With a slotted spoon, drain the bacon and reserve it. Pour the olive oil into the bacon drippings and heat through. Stir in the onion and sauté several minutes until soft. Spoon the mixture over the potatoes. Add the remaining ingredients and toss the salad together. Let the salad sit at room temperature for 20 to 30 minutes for the potatoes to absorb the other flavors. (The salad can be made earlier in the day, covered, and refrigerated.)
Stir in the bacon and serve the salad warm or cold. If serving cold, remove it from the refrigerator and let sit at room temperature for about 20 minutes before serving.
No other side dish complements a grilled meal like potatoes. Whether you put them in a salad, smother them with butter and sour cream, fry them crisp, or bake them in the coals, spuds say you're serious about your eating. Grillers have cooked them every way possible—even in a pot of boiling rosin, a dangerously flammable by-product in the manufacture of turpentine.
In The Florida Cookbook (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), Jeanne Voltz and Caroline Stuart conjecture that rosin potatoes originated in the old turpentine camps of north Florida, probably by accident when someone dropped a lunchtime spud in a distilling vat. The potato came out coated with the sticky cooking liquid, but as fluffy as fleece inside. The flavor eventually won acclaim from such eminent outdoor cooks as James Beard and Maggie Waldron, and the novelty of the approach produced a minor fad, big enough in the 1950s that Look featured a recipe in a story on the "barbecue bug." The ultimate hot potato, it had to be eaten under wraps, covered in several layers of newspaper to protect hands from the scorching, gummy rosin.
Our suggested accompaniments are much simpler and safer. We selected them first of all for their great taste alongside grilled food, but also for ease of preparation, flexibility in timing, and expandability of portions. Tried-and-true rather than trendy, the sides all pair well with many dishes in this book and most of them make great leftovers for another day of grilling. You won't burn your fingers on a single one.