Yes, you can use baking potatoes for everything (and no, you don't need waxy ones for salads)

Warm salad with russet potatoes, crispy bacon, various herbs, shallots, garlic, bacon fat and olive oil, chopped green onion, vinegar, wine, mustard, and salt and pepper. Recipe is in Onion: The Essential Cook’s Guide by Brian Glover (2011).

I love recipes, wherever they come from — magazines, cookbooks, the Internet. And I like recipes that have a confidence in what they’re doing and why. But what I don’t enjoy so much is the way that we, the reader and home cook, are often shepherded towards certain beliefs and away from certain freedoms for no very good reason. Look no further, for an example of what I mean, than the way we are supposed to view potatoes.

Waxy potatoes are best for salads, we are endlessly told. Why? Do they taste better than baking potatoes? No, not really. But because they are waxy, they supposedly hold together better: they’re not so crumbly. So don’t make your potato salad — of whatever kind — with anything other than a waxy potato.

Well, guess what? I don’t mind waxy potatoes, but they’re not the zenith of potato, in my book. In fact, I find them less desirable than baking potatoes (whether russet or something similar) for the very reason that they are waxy instead of fluffy. And the fact is that I prefer my potatoes on the bready side of the spectrum: crumbly, porous, light, easy to mix with other ingredients. Whether I’m making seafood cakes or mash or jacket potatoes, I like a potato flesh that is airy rather than clay-like. There is no single recipe that I have ever tried that was truly better because the potatoes were of the waxy variety. It stands to reason, I think. If you could dry the clouds in the sky and preserve them, they’d be baked potatoes not waxy boiled ones.

I mention this because I made a warm potato salad this afternoon, from a recipe in a book about onions. It’s a very nice book, with a lot of appealing recipes I’m looking forward to trying. But it asked for waxy potatoes, and I knew straight away I was not going to do that. I prefer the taste, texture, and yes, the relative mouth-meltingness, of typical baking potatoes. I knew that they would hold up well in this salad, and they did (see photo of what was left, after hubby and I eagerly devoured the bulk of it). There was no problem of over-crumbliness: I simply turned the dressing, herbs, and shallot-garlic mix gently and slowly with a spatula, and everything remained intact. And you just can’t beat the flavour.

So the next time you are told to use waxy potatoes, and you either don’t have them or don’t fancy them, use your favourite varieties instead. They are almost guaranteed to give you an equally beautiful, and perhaps tastier, result.

In Praise of Celery

Even two years ago, if you had told me that I would be seriously Up With Celery, I would have said what????

Celery, for me, was always a washed-out flabby stick the colour of the boring soap and the flavour of tortoise-feed. It was the sort of thing people of the 70s filled with Cheese Whiz and ate as diet food. Of all the vegetables, even more than radishes (which I haven’t bought or eaten in decades), it was unspeakable.

But I was wrong. Celery is wonderful.

What brought about this change? Well, it was a sneak attack. In the first place, I like a roast chicken fairly often, and I like to stuff the cavity before I cook. That means chopped onion, lemon wedges, rosemary or other herbs, salt and pepper… and celery. So, doing roasts more regularly, I bought celery.

Then I noticed that celery is actually very green when newly picked. I was so used to pale, hardly green and almost white celery, that this was something of a shock. And something in me knows that the greener it is — the brighter it is — the more likely a vegetable is to contain vital nutrients. Not to mention tasting better. So I started slicing celery stalks very finely to put in our near-daily salads. And I liked the crunch, the added texture the celery brings. I decided also that I do like the flavour. And now, I’m a big ambassador of all things celery.

Tips: 1. Do buy celery when it is so green it almost makes your eyes water to look at it. The celery should be very stiff. If not very green and not very stiff, don’t buy it. 2. You can eat the leaves, and they make a nice addition to salad, along with the stalks. 3. Celery is safe and good for dogs, bulking up their meals and increasing their fullness while adding negligible calories. 4. Celery, in my experience, keeps best when washed once you get it home, and then put in a suitable container (just cut the base off first). 5. Celery is a good ingredient in vegetable stock, or add it to the pot when making stock from a roast chicken. It is also an ingredient in my recipe for potato salad, here:

SOOTHE POTATO SALAD

3 baking potatoes, boiled and diced (see my advice for boiling potatoes)

2 boiled eggs (optional), cut up finely

minced fresh celery stalk

garlic clove, minced

chives, snipped 

prepared mustard, 1 teaspoon

mayonnaise (half a cup)

medium-fine sea salt, 1 tsp (or a bit less, if using fine)

black pepper, ½ tsp

paprika and/or piment d'espelette, ¼ tsp

sprinkling of snipped curly parsley on top

Mix the mustard into the mayonnaise before putting on salad, then combine the ingredients, turning gently with a large spoon.