74. Two Recipes, for Potato Salad with Dill, and for Tuna & Herb Salad

for Frances (& for her birthday, though I forgot to give it to her) (& for Gavin), Kay & Steve, & Anna, most of whom have eaten some of this, and for Erna, who feeds me similar

Two recipes, not corrosive in the slightest

& as political as they are pastoral

– now, the tuna salad is long-noted

(distributed summer & winter) & counter-

balanced by the potato dish

blending Erna’s dill with my wife’s

probably quite American potato salad[1]

For the potato salad we can see you’ll need

           little new potatoes

                  – however many – neither excess nor restraint matters

                                                      only need

           mayonnaise

                      but silence here on brand names

                      again as you need & desire

                      even maybe make your own[2]

           a couple of eggs

           (and/or a couple of bacon rashers)

           some french beans or similar

           several sprigs of dill

                             – essential for our savour!

           maybe some other kinds of seasonings

                            there are no secrets here

                            only what gives pleasure

then first boil or steam those potatoes

(washed, scrubbed as necessary & unless all minute

cut into smaller bits, pragmatic in equality)

as they do this, hard boil those eggs

then cool, peel & cut also into what pieces

or grill the bacon till crispish, cool then cut up

steam (I insist!) your trimmed beans, again

cut into whatever suitable size

& when all cooled

mix, not quite again & again, but enough

all with whatever amount of mayonnaise &

with several fine cut sprays of dill

maybe more with the egg

leave it for taste to develop a while

& serve (if you like) attractively sprinkled

(as if transient stains) w/ parsley or chervil say

The other salad is a fresher comedy

instantaneous as rioting if you’ve got

what you need (as you ought)[3]

           a jar or tin of good quality tuna

                           (from as sound a fishery as you can find)

           a small red onion

           a chilli or two or more

           lots of fresh herbs like           

           chives, apple mint, thyme, oregano

           a little fennel, some tarragon &

           a little lovage, some chervil is good[4]

                            – we could live by this – tastes like light!

           good olive oil, good wine vinegar & some pepper

           even a sprinkling of salt or dash of soy

so first peel & cut that onion reasonably fine

(let its bits be a little resistant at last)

seed & cut the chillies and cut small all the herbs

mix all this with drained pieces of the tuna flesh

add the oil, a little vinegar & seasonings as you wish

fork it – taste: inextinguishable once born

& its attack matches the silence of the potato salad well

or excellent with good bread or even for sandwiches

[These recipes of course transform, yet remain the same. How you serve them, and how precisely you do them & with what, is open to the always encouraged art of improvisation. As I said, the potato salad harkens to my wife’s recipe (surely from American-influenced poolside snacking in post-war Singapore), blended with Erna Weiss’s “continental” (as we used to say) cooking. The tuna salad, again, probably from Ginie at its origin, but I seem to have made it all my adult life. I’ll throw in another little one, a sandwich filling – sauerkraut, salami & tabasco sauce – such bastard blends the algorithms of taste churn out, like jackpot wins on a slot machine, in some now-ruined high street.]

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[1] We ate Heinz of course in my childhood – & their delicious vegetable salad, as macedoine as this poem sequence, nested in the friendly acerbity of salad cream.

[2] Lazy Amorite that I am, I don’t!

[3] Also to riot

[4] Also grow them!