POTATO SALAD, BUKOVINA STYLE

Savella says that potatoes are ‘the mainstay’ of meals in Ukraine.  

That was also true for our farm in Canada. 

                                                     my sister, Diana, with potatoes in background

Mother had not one but two huge gardens – one was right by the house, the other about a mile away.   Imagine trudging to the far garden on hot summer afternoons to battle the portulaca weed, Mom’s most hated enemy.

   

About half of each garden was for potatoes.  Mom hoed and hilled those potatoes and dusted them.  (Even so, I still remember picking off potato bugs and their disgusting pink larvae.)

Then, in the fall, pail after pail of potatoes rolled through the basement window into a storage bin.

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MENU for a HOT SUMMER DAY

Cocktail: the Bronx:  popular in the 1900s before Prohibition  

Appetizer:  Pickled eggs with delicious Swedish Rye Bread:

   from Bake Your Own Bread by Floss and Stan Dworkin:  made by my very own Cheflovik!                  

Soup:  Chilled Kherson Style Borsch:  “The Best of Ukrainian Cuisine” by Bohdan Zahny, p. 38 : 

Main:   Baked Farmer’s Sausage

Sides:    Bukovina Salad:  recipe provided below

                Lettuce Salad

Dessert:   Orange Pecan Cake from Grandma Rose’s Book of Sinfully Delicious Cakes…

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BUKOVINA POTATO SALAD:  serves 6 – 8

based on Bohdan Zahny’s recipe in The Best of Ukrainian Cuisine

1 pound cooked sausage:  garlic sausage, smokies, etc.

3 ½ pounds potatoes

8 ounce carrots

2 green peppers (about 12 ounces)

4 green onions

1 cup frozen chopped green beans

1 cup mayonnaise

1 tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

¼ tsp garlic powder

1/8 tsp cayenne

1.  Boil potatoes in their jackets in salted water.  Peel and chop into 1 inch cubes.  Put in large bowl.
2. Peel and boil carrots.  Add to potatoes.
3. Boil green beans.  Add to potatoes.
4. Chop green peppers into ½ inch squares.  Add to potatoes.
5. Chop green onions.  Add to potatoes.
6. Chop cooked sausage.  Add to potatoes.  (Or you can serve the sausage separately as a hot meat dish . . . that’s what I did.)
7. Stir seasonings into mayonnaise.
8. Stir mayonnaise into potatoes.
9. Refrigerate until serving. 

My daughter loved the meat-mayo-veg salads in Ukraine and asked me to make one.  I will incorporate the meat and serve this salad as an appetizer sometime.