Summer begins...let's get salady!

Well, summer is definitely here!  The temperature is in the high 80s and the humidity is somewhere near...oh...water.  It's time for some great summer recipes.  Here are a couple of my favorites:  potato salad, macaroni salad, and cucumber salad.

Traditional Pared-Down Potato Salad from the Hyde Family

Ingredients:

1 pound waxy potatoes
1 tsp. salt
1 tbs. vinegar
1 big scallion or 3 small scallions
3 medium stalks of celery
3 medium carrots
1 tsp relish
1 cup of mayonnaise
ground black pepper to taste

For the potatoes, I've recently discovered cute little red fingerling potatoes.  The biggest ones are less than four inches long and all of them are between three-fourths and one inch thick.  I cooked them in water with salt and vinegar added.  It helps if you pierce the potatoes a few times so that the flavored water infuses the potato flesh.  When the potatoes are soft but still holding together (the timing varies with how high the heat on which you cook them is), remove them from the water and cool them in the fridge.
Chop the onions.  If you are working with a big thick scallion, cut it in half lengthwise and then make a few cuts down the length of the white part from the greens to the base. Now, cut across the onions to chop them into very fine slices, including the greens.  Put the chopped onions in a bowl.
Now, moving on to the celery and carrots, wash the celery stalks thoroughly.  If you have the time, let them soak in cool water for ten to twenty minutes and then scrub them with your hands (no brushes).  Trim the branches at the top and the white bases and either throw them out or save them in your freezer to flavor stock.  Peel and trim the carrots (unless you really like soaking and scrubbing carrots, don't bother saving the peelings for stock...no-one likes dirty stock).  Chop both the carrots and celery into one-eighth inch dice and add to onions.
Take the cooled potatoes out of the fridge (they should be completely cold all the way through).  Cut them into half-inch dice and add to the bowl.  Add a rounded teaspoon of your favorite relish--just use one of the small spoons from the silverware drawer and scoop a nice generous blob of relish and add it to the bowl with the veggies.
Now the mayonnaise is a bit tricky.  Use your favorite brand, as long as your favorite brand is Hellman's.  For heaven's sake, don't use Miracle Whip or salad cream or anything else of the sort.  And definitely don't get iron-chefed into making your own mayonnaise.  Just a nice big pillowy scoop of Hellman's Mayonnaise.  Start with a little less than the full cup (say maybe three quarters of a cup).  Add it to the veggies and mix them gently (reverse fold them together by running your spoon down the edge of the bowl and then bringing it up and out in the middle of the bowl, lifting the ingredients and letting them fall back against the side of the bowl while rotating the bowl so that you are folding all the ingredients evenly).  If the salad seems moist and coated enough, you don't need the remainder of the mayonnaise.  If the salad looks a little dry and the dressing seems skimpy, add a bit more of the mayonnaise and stir again.  When you get the right amount of dressing, add fresh ground pepper to taste.
Ideally, this salad should then be stored in the fridge for a while to let the flavors mingle just a tiny bit.  Say, maybe a half hour?  That sounds right.  Check for salt and pepper before serving the salad.

And now on to the macaroni salad.  This is a recipe from a friend of the family.  Very unusual and very delicious:

Kathy Krise's Delicious Macaroni Salad

Ingredients:
2 cups of elbow macaroni
lots of salted water
1 large scallion or 3 small ones
3 medium carrots
1 large green pepper
1/2 cup mayonnaise

Cook the macaroni in the water until it is a little past al dente.  This is not an Italian recipe and the macaroni will firm back up when it chills later.  What we are looking for here is a slightly spongey texture, but still able to hold its shape.  When the macoroni gets to the perfect degree of doneness, drain it in a colander and then plunge it into a waiting bath of ice water.  Swish them around until they are cool and then drain the noodles again.  Shake them in the colander to get as much water as possible out of the macaroni.  Stash them in the fridge while you prep the rest of the ingredients.
Chop the onions using the same technique described in the potato salad above.  Peel and trim the carrots and cut into chunks.  Quarter the pepper and remove the core, the seeds, and the veins and discard.  Chop the pepper quarters into chunks also.  Put the carrots into the bowl of a food processor and pulse the blade to chop the carrot into very fine crumbly pieces.  Add the peppers and pulse the blade again until the pepper and carrots are mixed together as very fine crumbs.
Combine the carrots and pepper mixture with the chopped onions and the mayonnaise.  Mix the mayonnaise with the chilled macaroni.  If you need to add a little more mayonnaise, go ahead.  You want a slightly wet sauce to coat the macaroni and ooze inside the elbows.  Season with salt and fresh ground black pepper if you like.

And finally, for the last component of the summertime salad trinity, cucumber salad:

Cool and Cooling Cucumber Salad

Ingredients:
3 medium cucumbers (or more if you are using smaller cukes)
1 medium onion
pure water
Cider vinegar
sugar
salt

Prep the cucumbers.  If you have purchased typical supermarket cucumbers (the kind with the smooth dark green skin), you'll probably want to check the seeds.  Cut the cucumber in half crosswise.  If the seeds are large and well-developed, try one between your teeth and see if it's tough.  If it is, cut the cucumber lengthwise and scoop out the seeds.  If the seeds turn out to be tender and digestible you can skip the de-seeding step and slice the cucumber into rounds.  If you've deseeded the cukes, then you will have to give up on the idea of round slices and resign yourself to crescent slices.  Make the slices as thin and consistent as possible.
Cut the root end and the top end off the onion.  Look at the exposed rings of the onion and establish the best way to divide the onion in half so that it will form nice half-rings when sliced (most onions have at least two centers and you want to get through both of them with one cut).  Lay the divided onion down on it's cut side and slice it into as thin slices as possible.
Put the sliced cucumbers and onions in a bowl and cover with cold water.  Add one to two tablespoons of cider vinegar (just enough to faintly color, and more importantly flavor, the water).  Sprinkle with a teaspoon of sugar (more or less, use your judgement and taste) and salt.  The water should have a faint sweet and sour briny flavor.  Stir everything together and let sit in the refridgerator for at least a half-hour to let the flavors meld.
After the salads have all had time to meld their flavors, take them out and serve them to hungry friends and family.  But...of course...leave the cucumber salad away from me. =)