Food Fantastic

I watch a lot of food shows, and enjoy recreating much of what I see. Be it a fantastic show on Food TV such as Alton Brown or Iron Chef, or something on a not-always-food-related station, like Top Chef, or Hell's Kitchen. The show doesn't usually matter, it's the lessons that they teach.

Let's take Top Chef as an example. A bunch of chefs compete for a prize that will help them start their own restaurant by cooking food in many different challenges against many other people, sometimes in teams, and sometimes on their own. Each week someone is sent home.

The thing that absolutely stuns me about this show is that many of the contestants for the first couple of weeks seem to absolutely suck. They don't taste their food to make sure it's seasoned well, they very often just DON'T season their food, and they don't seem to understand the fundamentals of cooking. Now, I'm not saying I could do a better job, but it's a great show for learning what not to do, and what to do by watching their follies in the kitchen.

Alton Brown, on the other hand, is a cooking show where Alton teaches you how to cook, and why it works, which I think is even more important than having a good recipe, because if all you have are the blueprints to a house, all you can make is a house; if you understand how the building blocks go together, you could build a house and a garage.

So today I'm reprising one of my favorite dishes, and making some home made stove-top macaroni and cheese for dinner. Alton Brown taught me the basics of the dish, and I've made it my own since then. I've become very good at making this dish, and the results are always fantastic, if I can say so myself. I always think of ways to improve it, but even as it stands without those improvements, it's good.

But.

Yesterday I tried making something that every single person over the age of 30 has probably made, and that everyone over the age of three has probably eaten at a family picnic (barring people with allergies): Potato salad.

It's simple, right? Boil potatoes and eggs. Cut up some celery, other stuff, the potatoes and eggs; throw together with some mayo, maybe some spicy mustard, a little seasoning. Should be great.

How the hell do you mess up potato salad? Mine came out bad, and I don't know what I did wrong*. Individually, these things are good, and together they should have made something that tasted at least good, if not better. Maria, the kind sport that she is, said it's not bad, and even took some with her for lunch today. I think she's being kind.

I don't know where I messed up.

So, I'm turning to the internet for help. Do you have a potato salad recipe that you'd be willing to share? I'm thinking that if I can see a recipe that someone I know tells me is good, I'll be able to look at it and deconstruct it, go back and see what I might have done wrong.

Please, share your recipes with me.

In the mean time, I'm going to have to start rethinking my desire to be on Iron Chef.

*Okay, so I did undercook one of the potatoes, which is a bad mistake, but that shouldn't have affected everything else.