Basta Pasta Potato Salad | Everyday Dorie

When heat advisory is the order of the day, I want to avoid any unnecessary shopping. To make the Basta Pasta potato salad, you need mostly potatoes and cucumbers. Fortunately, I got some from a recent visit to the farmers’ market. The only ingredient missing is the sweet pickle. It’s not a usual pantry item I stock. So I proceed to make my own following some quick pickling recipes I’ve done before. Combining mini cucumbers in halves, lime juice, rice wine vinegar, citrus peel, sugar, salt and pepper, the pickle will be ready for the potato salad in short order.

Dorie explains that Basta Pasta is the name of a New York City restaurant. There she tasted this potato salad, which is somewhat hard to define, and in her word: “indescribable.” Kind of like potatoes, seasoned with pickles, capers, wasabi, orange and saffron, meanwhile delivering surprise after surprise.

What amazes me is how Dorie just went ahead, constructed a recipe based on the flavors she remembered from eating in a restaurant. This potato salad is just one piece in a mosaic. And she did it again and again as revealed in Everyday Dorie and her cookbooks—14 and counting. How does she do that? Whatever the case may be, we’re certainly better off for her endless inspirations and ingenuity.

Here are the steps:

• Boil the small potatoes (1 1/2 lb), 15-25 minutes until soft. Drain and let them dry.

• Grate the zest of an orange in a large bowl. Add a pinch of saffron. Set aside the juice.

• Put mayo (2/3 cup), pickle (1/2 cup) and juice, capers, 2 mini cucumbers, scallions and wasabi into the bowl with the zest.

• Cut potatoes in chunks and add them to the bowl, along with 2 tablespoons of orange juice.

• Stir to coat the potatoes. Add salt and pepper and adjust the seasoning.

We have the Basta Pasta potato salad for dinner together with a can of tuna and call it a day. A cold salad and no cooking. Very agreeable and most fantastical, except for the severe heat wave.

Cookbooks by Dorie Greenspan