Mise en place: The ingredients for Olivier Salad, a Russian-style potato salad, are chopped up and ready to go. Photo by Stuart Bratesman Editor’s Note: Barbara Asnes sent this to us last year, and we’ve been saving it for the appropriate date; we’re pleased to publish it now. If you’d like to contribute to Home Plates, send a recipe and a story telling us how you came to cook it, who you cook it for and why it’s found a place in your life to pgrodinsky@pressherald.
com . Also, please tell us a little bit about your life as a home cook, include a photo of the dish, and yourself, possibly together, and let us know the source of the recipe. To read more Home Plates columns, go to pressherald.
com/homeplates . Tonight, I got it in my head to make potato salad because it’s Memorial Day, but after 40 years making it for my husband and me, I am tired of making our usual version. I wanted something different, but I wasn’t sure what that would look like.
I am of Eastern European Jewish descent; my mother’s family emigrated from Lithuania when she was 4, and my father’s family was originally from Ukraine; he was the first generation born in the U.S. I learned to cook from my maternal grandmother, and the recipes and the tastes of Russia and Eastern Europe were my earliest experiences.
So what finally came to mind for my potato salad was a composition I had once tasted in Arlington, Virginia, at the Rus Uz restaurant, which serves Russian and Uzbek cuisine. The salad go.
