[I'm in Napa, but I put this post together in advance.  If we can't all sip crisp whites and spicy reds together, I'm hoping this is the next best thing.]

Some recipes just have your number.   Call it destiny, or maybe love at first read.  But, before you’ve even made the recipe, you just know.  This recipe—for sweet cherry compote—was one of them.  It has all the elements of my kind of recipe: a project (cherry pitting); a tranformation (rendering cherries from firm globes to slouching folds); color (a deep, seductive ruby—one that flirts, even, with purple); and a marriage of flavors that is equal parts sweet, salty and sour.  Like I said, it was over before it began.

Speaking of destiny: this compote always had one destiny and one alone—a turkey sandwich.  Which is pretty shocking for a girl who, not so very long ago, simply could not abide the presence of fruit on her sandwich.  Be it banana-topped peanut butter, pear-threaded grilled cheese, or cranberry sauce over thick slices of leftover Thanksgiving turkey, my answer would be, emphatically, no thank you.  Maybe even just a firm “no,” dispensing with the “thank you.”  Heck, I didn’t even much like pb&j as a kid (the jelly, of course, being the problem).

I’ve long taken my sandwiches seriously and fruit, for many years, was seriously out of bounds.  My sandwiches fit a predictable pattern: some sort of brownish bread, maybe studded with whole grains or seeds; super-thin slices of turkey; a good heap of greens; a slick of spicy mustard; a white cheese, maybe cheddar, swiss or gruyere.  It was a formula I developed over time, starting, I think it’s fair to say, as early as my elementary school nights, when I dutifully packed my lunch.  (Don’t forget the pickle.)

But I’ve clearly grown up, clearly let my hair down, clearly gone just a little bit nuts in the sandwich department.  Because, these days, fruit is welcome.

And that’s how this cherry compote—saucy and complex and very ready to stain your best white shirt—came to its final resting place: atop a turkey sandwich, built high upon a bretzel roll.   There’s just no messing with destiny.

Sweet Cherry Compote
Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Body + Soul

2 cups sweet cherries, pitted
1-2 tablespoons sugar (adjust based on the sweetness of your cherries)
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
1 tablespoon water
fresh-ground black pepper, to taste
sea or kosher salt, to taste

Combine the cherries, sugar, vinegar and water together in a heavy pot and bring to a gentle boil.  Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until cherries are nice and tender and liquid is slightly thickened, 12 to 15 minutes.

Remove from heat and season lightly with salt and liberally with pepper. Let stand at room temperature until cool. Serve or store.

Oh, dear.  It seems I’ve got a serious case of ants in my pants.  Or let’s call it wanderlust, maybe.  Yes, that’s better—more sophisticated, altogether grown up.  Wanderlust.  Whatever you call it, I’ve got it.  It all started in Boulder.  We were there last weekend for a wedding and, though I’d been there once before, the town thoroughly charmed me.

From the lively earthiness unfolding all day long on Pearl Street to the foothills that ring the town—punctuated by flat sheets of rock, jutting up into the sky (flatirons); from the stalls after stalls at the Saturday morning farmers’ market to the never ending games of croquet in my friends’ childhood backyards; from a serious commitment to beers to the little girl in the park asking her mom where she could compost the paper cup in her hands: it was my kind of town.  I could get used to this, I thought.

Which is trouble because, as you might recall, I’m headed to Sonoma and Napa in just a few hours.  If I’m already in a Boulder-addled state, I can only imagine what a punch the wine country will pack.  We might never come back.

But back to Boulder and the ants in my … er, wanderlust it’s unleashed in me.  If all those things I rattled off above weren’t enough, the town also proferred a restaurant that was truly meant for me.  It’s called The Kitchen and it sits on Pearl Street, a slim space that’s a mix of white and brick and black slate and weathered wood.  The menu is not large, but still it tempted me with at least a dozen options.  It was so good, dear readers, that we went there twice.  In two days.  It was that kind of perfect.  Of all the things we had there, the thing that stands out the most is the excellent use to which The Kitchen put chick peas, which were sprinkled throughout the menu.  So excellent, in fact, that even after two chick pea-laced meals at the restaurant, both Kevin and I came home hungering for more, which is how the salad below—a mish-mash if ever there was one—came to be.  We’re also hungering for more vacation—that wanderlust thing, again.   So we’ll see you on flip side.  If we come back, that is.

Chick Pea-Feta Salad

2 1/2 cups cooked chick peas
1/2 cup minced red onion
1/2 cup thinly sliced celery
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
1/4 cup crumbled feta
kosher or sea salt, to taste
fresh-cracked black pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl; stir to combine.  Serve at room temperature or chilled.

The end of a long holiday weekend, I find, inspires a renewed resolve in the diet realm.  Where I was slathering a brat with mustard and reaching for another frosty beer just a day or two ago, I am now yearning for leafy greens and sparkling water.  The Fourth of July, it seems, breeds an earnest in me.  For a couple of days, that is.

And this bread is just the post-holiday thing, ready to chase away any over-indulgences of the weekend past.  Chalk full of whole grains, super-powered flaxseed, and tangy yogurt, this bread is about as earnest as it gets.  Sure it’s got a sweetness, but it’s only a whisper.  The main ingredient of this bread is a vegetable, for pete’s sake!

It’s a happy thing when zucchini bread season rolls around.  As if overnight, the stuff starts showing up in bakery cases and picnic baskets around July.  And each recipe is a little different.  Some involve chocolate, laced with chips or flavored with cocoa powder; some are deeply spiced; some are dark and some are more blonde; some are dense, while others are light.

This one is hearty and tender and complex.  The chopped pecans distributed through the batter and the whole pecans that bake atop the loaf lend a nice meatiness, while a dusting of raw sugar imparts a shimmer and a sweet crunch.  And, like I said, it’s earnest enough for the Fifth, Sixth or Seventh of July.

Zucchini-Pecan-Flaxseed Bread
Adapted from Cooking Light

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup ground flaxseed
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 cups shredded zucchini (about 2 medium zucchini)
1 cup plain yogurt
2 eggs
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup chopped pecans, toasted
Cooking spray
3 tablespoons whole pecans, toasted
1 tablespoon raw or sanding sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°.

Combine flour, granulated sugar, and next 7 ingredients (through nutmeg) in a large bowl, stirring well with a whisk.

Spread zucchini onto several layers of heavy-duty paper towels; cover with additional paper towels. Press down firmly to remove excess liquid.

Combine yogurt, eggs, oil, and vanilla in a medium bowl, stirring well with a whisk. Stir in zucchini.

Add zucchini mixture and 1/4 cup pecans to flour mixture, stirring until well combined. Pour batter into a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle batter with 3 tablespoons whole pecans and 1 tablespoon raw sugar (optional).

Bake at 350° for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes on a wire rack. Remove bread from pan; place on wire rack.

I associate some holidays with certain people, particular places—finely wrought traditions accumulated over the years.  But not the Fourth of July.  I’ve spent that holiday in a number of places and with various casts of characters.  Instead, my associations of the holiday run more sensory: the heat, the splashes of fireworks in the night sky, the oldies that play on the radio, the hiss of sparklers.  Most of all, though, it’s the smell: the scent of fizzled out firecrackers mixed with the aroma of so many smoking Weber grills.  And, of course, the foods that pass over the grill, developing a char, taking on a smoke and feeding a hunger built up after a day spent in the sun.

True to form, we’ll be doing something new this Fourth of July too.  We’re heading to Boulder, for a wedding celebration of sorts for our friends Emily and Jon (who, as you might recall, were actually married months ago, but, hey, who’s counting?).  After that, we’ll come back for a short week before hitting the road (er, air) again—Napa bound (wine country recommendations, anyone?).

While all of this is incredibly exciting—so thrilling, in fact, that I’m having a hard time sitting still, let alone working or completing other such mundane tasks—I’m a little sad to be leaving our grill at the height of the summer and over the Fourth of July, of all times.  It feels a bit like we’re forcing the grill into an unseasonal hibernation.  The wedding and wine tastings are worth it, sure, but still: I’m going to miss that grill.

Anticipating this conundrum, we were sure to put the grill to work last weekend and the star of the get-your-grilling-in-now show was this chicken.  I’ve been wanting to make a brick chicken—the catch-all name for a whole chicken flattened and cooked under the weight of a brick or other heavy object—for a while and now that I’ve done it, I’m kicking myself for waiting so long.

This version of brick chicken has you tuck slim slices of lemon under the bird’s skin and pat it all over with a liberal dusting of smoked paprika, one of the loveliest spices, I think.  Between the hot grate of the grill and the heft of a cast iron skillet, some kind of magic happens with the chicken: the skin becomes crisp—almost papery, not greasy in the least.  And the flesh goes juicy, flavored subtly with the smoke of the paprika and the tartness of the lemons.  If you’ve got an opening on your own Fourth of July barbecue roster—assuming you’ll be home, with your grill, as you should be—maybe you’ll add this recipe.  For me?

Smoked Paprika-Lemon Brick Chicken

1 whole chicken, back bone removed (your butcher can do this for you)
1 small lemon, half sliced thinly and half cut into small wedges
kosher salt
fresh-cracked black pepper
1-2 tablespoons smoked paprika

Heat a grill over medium heat.

Place the chicken on a work surface, skin side up.  Press the chicken between the breasts to flatten.  Loosen the skin covering the chicken breasts and slip the lemon slices beneath the skin. Sprinkle both sides of the chicken generously with salt and pepper.  Rub both sides of the chicken with smoked paprika.

Transfer the chicken, skin side down on the grill and cover with a cast iron skillet or a foil-wrapped brick for 15 minutes.  Flip the chicken and recover with the skillet or brick and grill for 20 minutes., or until the juices run clear  Remove the chicken to a plate and allow to rest for 5 to 10 minutes before serving.  Serve with the lemon wedges.

Can you feel it?  We’re teetering on the edge.  Summer is about to bust wide open, flooding us with easy warmth and languid sunsets and, best of all, a bounty of produce.  The blueberries and raspberries at the market this weekend were the harbingers, I think—so tiny and juicy and tart.  They are the first trickling signs of the fruits of summer that will soon gather speed, rushing in with a deluge of corn and tomatoes and summer squashes and melons and peaches.  Heck, the Fourth of July is in less than a week, somehow.  If that’s not real-deal, in-the-thick-of-it summer, then I don’t know what is.

As we snaked our way through our neighborhood market—a smaller affair, less than a dozen stalls hugging a path that cuts an s-curve through Wicker Park—I nearly squealed when I saw the blueberries and raspberries.  Strawberries are still exciting, but by now a few weeks on the scene.  It was the inky blue and magenta berries that really sent my heart fluttering.

Truth be told, a good portion of our berry haul didn’t even make it home from the market.  Those we ate straight from their juice-stained cartons as we walked home up Milwaukee Avenue on a clear Sunday morning, sunny but windy.   Popped into my mouth one-by-one, chased with gulps of Intelligensia coffee, I was one content Chicagoan.  It’s hard to believe that the very same park now peppered with white tents was once covered in snow, that the same walk along Milwaukee once required multiple layers and elicited a defensive hunch against the biting wind—the same wind that blew gentle and warm just yesterday.

When we got home, I set to thinking about what recipe would put the remaining berries to work.  I haven’t yet culled the best recipes for these types of fruits—not wanting to get my hopes up quite yet.  I wanted something simple and homey, something that would let the berries shine, something that would invite a small scoop of vanilla ice cream.  This buckle recipe fit the bill.

A buckle, it seems, is a snap to make: cream together softened butter and sugar, before whipping in three eggs, one by one, and a splash of vanilla.   Into that go flour, salt and baking powder, whisked together.   Slather the simple batter into the bottom of a baking dish and scatter the berries, like little rubies and sapphires, over the top.  Those berries will hover atop the sturdy batter, but in the oven they’ll nestle in, releasing their juices in an irresistible jewel-toned web  meandering through the buckle’s golden brown surface.  Scoop of vanilla ice cream optional, but recommended.  It is summer, after all, people.

Mixed Berry Buckle
Adapted from Martha Stewart

Printable Recipe

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for baking dish
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 cups mixed berries, such as raspberries, strawberries (halved or quartered) and raspberries
vanilla ice cream, for serving (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 2-quart oval or square baking dish. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition to combine.  Add vanilla and beat to combine.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder; with mixer on low speed, gradually add flour mixture until incorporated.

Spread batter in baking dish. Scatter raspberries on top. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean and top is golden brown, 45 to 50 minutes. Let cool 20 minutes. With a large spoon, scoop out onto serving plates; serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, if desired.

Arriving at my parents’ house is always an adventure.  Usually, only one person comes to retrieve me, and now Kevin, from the airport; no one else can tear themselves away from the fun going on back at the house.  Once we arrive at the house, we always enter through the garage, which delivers you directly into my family’s kitchen—the undeniable hub of the house.  It’s a little like opening the door of a dollhouse—cracking one hinge provides a glimpse into all the action going on inside, except the scene is real, the house and its occupants full-sized.

These days, you can find my grandpa on an overstuffed couch to the left, his bad foot propped up on the coffee table.  He’ll clap his hands on his knees and exclaim “Hiya guys!” before hoisting himself up with the help of his walking stick, spreading his giant arms for a hug.  My grandma is likely at the kitchen table, the playing cards she travels with arranged before her in a game of solitaire.  She too jumps to her feet, clapping her hands and perhaps even hooting and hollering a little bit.  The only one who beats these two to the welcome is my parents’ dog Bailey, tail whipping back and forth, a toy clenched in her jaw.  She gets a good scratch behind the ears before we move on to the rest of the family.

My mom, if she wasn’t our airport chauffeur is undoubtedly in the kitchen itself, (wo)maning an array of pots and pans on the range, each emitting a welcoming scent.  She’ll wait for everyone else to get their hugs in, before swooping in for a hug that lasts a second longer and squeezes a little tighter than everyone else’s.  My stepdad might be on the back deck, which stretches out from the kitchen, smoking his pipe or tending to the grill or the just generally surveying the scene.  He too comes in for a hug, brimming with some story or another with which he can’t wait to regale us.  Ali has usually folded herself into an impossible position on an armchair, her laptop balancing on the arm.  She look up from over the top of the screen and throw a “Hey” our way.  Seeing as though we’ve likely been exchanging emails, texts, and messages all day, a hug doesn’t really seem necessary.

Our bags will sit by the door as we immediately launch into chatter and the until-then-bare counter mysteriously fills up with an assortment of snacks.  Anchoring the spread, always, is bowl of rippled potato chips (Old Dutch) and a small tub of an old family favorite—Top the Tater dip, a creamy, chive flecked dip that is the most perfect accompaniment to a rippled chip that you will ever find.  The counter usually boasts a few other more sophisticated, elaborate, homemade dishes, but it’s the Top the Tater we can’t resist.

Before Kevin warmed to this rather overwhelming homecoming scene, he warmed to that dip.  We’ve all loved it for years, but Kevin quickly became its biggest champion.  My mom started buying extra containers of the stuff in preparation for our visits, pressing at least one foil-wrapped container into our hands before we head back for Chicago.  You see, we’ve never seen the dip outside of Minnesota-a fact that has deeply troubled Kevin.

Kevin’s resting much easier these days because I’ve learned to make the dip at home, a fact that elicited deep admiration from my family when we were in Minnesota last weekend.  It couldn’t be easier, really, and I can’t for the life of my figure out what took me so long to give it a go.  Perhaps I was hesitant to divorce the dip from the homecoming scene, from my parents’ house, from Minnesota.  Now that we have the recipe at the ready, I’m happy to be able to conjure up these memories at a moment’s notice.

Creamy Chive Dip

1 8-ounce block cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sour cream
2/3 cup chopped chives
1 teaspoon fresh-squeezed lemon juice (or more, to taste)
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

Combine all ingredients in a food processer until smooth.  Serve immediately, with chips or raw vegetables, or chill.

Ladies and gentleman, start your watermelons: barbecue season has arrived.  Finally.  It took its sweet time and left us wallowing in puddles of rain and shivering under sweaters for many weeks, but it’s here now and I’m more than ready to let bygones be bygones.  So long as barbecue season agrees to stick around until, say, late September, you won’t hear another weather-related complaint out of me.  (What will I write about?)

As (good) luck would have it, we had a barbecue planned on the very first evening that barbecue deigned to grace us with its presence—last Thursday night.  After a very cold, damp, gray week, I was more than a little worried about the forecast for our barbecue.  Even still, we stocked our fridge with beer on Tuesday and stayed up way past our bedtime on Wednesday making baked beans and toasting bread cubes for panzanella.  At work on Thursday, I obsessively refreshed my zip code’s forecast on weather.com, where the chance for precipitation vacillated between 30 and 50 percent all day long.  By the time I left work, I had lost all hope that the sun would shine on us as we grilled.

But, you know what?  The sun did shine.  And it was hot.  And the baked beans were saucy and delicious as usual and this summer’s first panzanella was lovely.  Burgers were grilled to perfection by Kevin and everyone ate and drank and talked and laughed until the sun dipped out of sight.  After that, we lit a couple of candles, not ready to call it a night just yet.  For one thing, we hadn’t yet sliced into this cake: a peanut butter pound cake, baked into a bundt pan’s charming ring and anointed with a thick crown of chocolate glaze.

The recipes for the cake and glaze come from two of my favorite baking blogs: the cake from Bake or Break and the glaze from Joy the Baker.  As if you need any convincing when it comes to peanut butter and chocolate, the cake was wonderful: sturdy and studded with chocolate chips and gently peanuty.  And the glaze, oh, the glaze.  It took on body and tang from the addition of sour cream and depth from a splash of strong coffee.  Best of all, the cake got better as it sat.  I enjoyed my slice just fine at the end of our sun-drenched barbecue, but, by the next day, the flavors had developed and the texture had improved, growing denser and more moist.  It, like the barbecue, is sure to make repeat appearances all summer long.  I hope your barbecue season has gotten off to a good start too.

The recipe for Peanut Butter Pound Cake, at Bake or Break, is here.

The recipe for Mocha Sour Cream Glaze, at Joy the Baker, is here.

Most Americans of my vintage grew up eating a certain kind of breakfast: sugary bowls of cereal, fruit(ish)-filled toaster pastries, frozen waffles in a strangely yellow hue, packets of mini-donuts powdered thickly with confectioners’ sugar.  I delighted in some of these things, from time to time (my grandma, for instance, smuggled us Fruit Loops) but on the whole, they were forbidden.  Instead, we usually ate bagels, english muffins, toast.  These were typically topped with butter or peanut butter, but every so often, my mom would up the ante.

She’d toast slices of wheat bread, butter them to perfection (all the way to the edges; not too much, nor too little) and dust the whole thing with a shower of cinnamon and sugar.  Cut diagonally, this was my favorite childhood breakfast.  And, until last weekend, I’d all but forgotten it.

When I made that little pot of strawberry-honey butter, I told you that I began dreaming up all kinds of wonderful things that could be slathered with the pink spread.  Quickly, I settled on something cinnamony and gently sweet.  This bread was just the thing.  And one bite of the finished product harkened back to those nearly-forgotten childhood breakfasts and to my mom’s expert application of cinnamon and sugar to warm bread.

Whether you slather it with strawberry-honey butter (a combination so lovely that you might just consider subsisting on it alone, for days on end) or eat it up straight up, I implore you to give this bread a try.  It’s that cinnamon-sugar toast I loved as a kid, all rolled up into one tidy loaf.  It’s a cinnamon roll with restraint.

And it’s a fun project too, even if the recipe is a little odd.  Nothing beats the satisfaction (or the smell) of making a homemade loaf of bread.  And it makes a lovely breakfast.  I think even the 8-year-old me would agree.

For the recipe, I’ll send you to honey & jam, the blog where I found Martha Stewart’s Cinnamon Swirl Bread recipe (along with beautiful photos of Hannah’s loaf).

I’m in the throes of my early-summer torrid love affair with strawberries.  It’s an annual thing and, over the years, I’ve learned not to fight it.  Instead, I embrace it—juice stained fingers, seeds in my teeth, and all.  This year, I’ve been delighting my way through pint after pint in a few ways: strawberries sliced over a bowl of creamy yogurt, my first bites of the morning; plucked whole from the box, pinching the stem between my thumb and forefinger as I bite away the juicy flesh; baked into a simple but delicious cake.

But now I’ve got another strawberry destination to add to that list and it comes in the form of a small pot of strawberry honey butter.  It’s essentially a sweet spin on compound butter and, like a pouchful of fairy dust, it magically makes everything it touches taste better.

The process is simple: puree whole strawberries and pass them through a sieve, to strain away the seeds and any under-ripe bits.  Gently boil the puree with a squeeze of honey and lemon juice, until it reduces a bit and takes on some body.  While it cools to room temperature, pull your butter out of the fridge (if you haven’t already) so that it can soften up.  Once everything comes to room temperature, whip together the puree and butter until you’ve got a gorgeously pink and creamy bowl of butter.

Transfer the butter to an airtight container and promptly begin scheming up all the things you can slather the stuff on.  Along the way, you’ll fall even harder for strawberries, I can guarantee.  But you’ll also realize that this thing you’ve got going with strawberries is far too good to resist it.

Strawberry-Honey Butter
Adapted from Gourmet

Printable Recipe

1 pint strawberries, hulled
2 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
pinch salt
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened

In a food processor purée the strawberries and force the purée through a fine sieve into a saucepan. Add the honey and the lemon juice and boil the mixture, stirring, for 3 minutes, or until it is thickened. Let the strawberry mixture cool to room temperature.  Season with salt, to taste.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, begin to cream together the butter and the strawberry mixture until it is blended but not yet smooth.  Beat the mixture in the stand mixer for several minutes, until the butter becomes smooth and creamy.  Let the butter stand, covered, in a cool place for 1 hour to allow the flavors to develop.  Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Potato salad is not a one-size-fits-all affair.   There are a lot of options out there.  Finding the right one is not unlike buying a new dress or a pair of jeans or (brace yourself) a bathing suit, in that you can’t just expect to breezily pluck the first one you see off the rack and expect it to fit like a glove.  You’ll need to try on various options for size and you’ll probably have to sift through dozens before finding one that suits you perfectly.

I suppose this is all on my mind because, with wedding season upon us, I’ve been on the hunt for a new dress.  I just got back from a shopping trip, in fact.  It’s a rainy, cold morning here in Chicago (more April than June, as has been the trend for the past two weeks running) and I figured shopping was as good a way to while away the gray day as any.  Sadly, I struck out in the dressing room: too short, too long, too casual, too formal, too clingy, too boring, too loud.  You name it, I tried it on this morning.  I will search the depths of my closet instead, I’ve decided.  I will find a dress already hanging in there that will work just fine.  I can’t take any more hangers, any more dressing rooms (even with the lure of their flattering light and deceptively-tilted mirrors), any more rainy shopping trips.

Though I seem to have failed in the dress department, I’m happy to report that I’ve had much better luck in the potato salad department lately.  I have finally found The One.  While others are too creamy, too mushy, too eggy, too bland, this was is none of those things.  It’s punchy and clean—and pretty, to boot.  It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.

It employs tiny red potatoes, sliced thickly and boiled in salted water until they are just soft—the potato equivalent of pasta’s al dente.  The still-warm rounds go into a vinaigrette of sorts—heavy on the vinegar (sherry) and mustard (whole grain), bound up with your very best olive oil.

The kicker though is this: the salad is also flecked with tiny bits of bacon and bright green snipped chives.  They’re the final touch that sends this salad over the top—kind of like the effect the perfect bag or a smart pair of heels would would have on a  great dress.  Had I found a great dress, that is.

Potato Salad with Sherry Vinegar, Chives & Bacon

Printable Recipe

Serves 4-6

2 pounds baby red potatoes, scrubbed and sliced into 1/2-inch thick rounds
2 slices thick-cut bacon, minced
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup snipped chives

Bring a pot of water to a boil.  Salt the water generously, add the potato rounds and cook until the potatoes are just tender.

Meanwhile, add the minced bacon to a dry skillet over medium heat; cook until the bacon is browned.  Transfer the bacon to a paper towel to drain.  In a large bowl, whisk together the mustard, vinegar, oil and bacon.

Drain the potatoes and add to the vinaigrette, along with almost all of the snipped chives.  Toss until the potatoes are well coated and have soaked up all the vinaigrette.  Transfer to a platter and scatter the remaining snipped chives on top.  Serve warm, at room temperature or cold (allow the salad to cool to room temperature before refrigerating it).

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