The Dippin' Dots Theory of Good Times

I've got potato salad, a gin cocktail, alt-rock, a good book and more in this week's Friday Newsletter. Hop in!

I’ve long held a pet theory that it is difficult—if not impossible—to have a bad time when Dippin’ Dots are nearby.

This is more a matter of correlation than causation, mind you. I enjoy a plastic souvenir batting helmet full of The Ice Cream of the Future as much as the next 11-year-old, but it’s not the kind of treat that can carry a day’s fortunes all on its own. The places it’s found, however, are almost exclusively A Good Time—amusement parks, ballparks, zoos, carnivals, and so on. They’re not selling them at the airport or the courthouse. I spent a disproportionate amount of time in hospitals on account of my day job, and I have never once seen a Dippin’ Dot for sale in a hospital.

It’s like the old mariner’s rhyme: If a Dippin’ Dot you see, a good time having you might be.

Anyway, I feel much the same way about potato salad.¹

You don’t just make potato salad for lunch, y’know? (Do you? If so, I would like to interview you about your life and maybe run a few tests on you.) No, if you’re having potato salad, you’re probably having a good time—it’s a food meant for picnics and potlucks and backyard barbecues, and almost never Sad Desk Lunches.

If Dippin’ Dots are The Ice Cream of the Future, potato salad is the Side Dish of the Here and Now. Today, I’d like to pay it some proper respect.

Friends, it is once again Friday at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.

My ongoing Side Quest continues today with a crowd-pleasing twist on the cookout staple, along with a delightful summer cocktail, some terrific Midwestern indie rock, an endearingly odd book, and more!

The future is now, and the future is Friday.

Are we dining in Toledo, or Toledo?

Over Memorial Day weekend, we had a backyard barbeque—I smoked a 14-pound brisket overnight, we had a dozen kids tearing around the yard, and the dog didn’t move a muscle for 24 hours afterwards. It was a good time.

The meat was the obvious headliner, but I knew that it would need a strong supporting cast, and so I made two versions of potato salad—one, a wholly-traditional version for any purists among us, and the other a Spanish-inflected batch that I’d doctor up off the same basic recipe, adding in some paprika, capers and Spanish chorizo. This isn’t really that a big stretch, considering that Spain has a beloved mayo-based salad of its own (shout out to Ensalada Rusa), but it’d be a melding of Midwestern and Iberian—a trip from Toledo to Toledo.

Spanish-Style Potato Salad

• 3 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2” chunks

• 2 tablespoons salt

• 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

Add the potatoes to a large pot, and cover with water to 1/2” above the top chunk. Add salt and vinegar, and set over high heat. Once it comes to a boil, reduce to a rolling simmer and cook for 10 minutes, or until pieces are easily pierced with a fork but not falling apart. Spread on a sheet pan to cool, and season with additional salt.

• 2 stalks celery, finely chopped

• 3 hard-boiled eggs, finely chopped

• 2-3 tablespoons capers, finely chopped

• 3/4 cup mayonnaise (Kewpee-type preferred, but regular is fine)

• 2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard

• 1-2 tablespoons sweet smoked Spanish paprika

• 4 ounces Spanish (the firm kind) chorizo, sliced thin and crisped in a pan

• 3 scallions, sliced

While the potatoes cool, chop the celery, eggs and capers. Add the mayonnaise, mustard and 1 tablespoon paprika to a large mixing bowl, and whisk together; fold in the celery, eggs and capers after.

Crisp the chorizo in a dry pan to the texture of well-cooked pepperoni, then allow to cool.

Gently fold the cooled potatoes and crisped chorizo into the mayo mixture, then sprinkle with additional paprika and chopped scallions. Allow to cool 2-3 hours before serving, ideally—longer is better.

Absolute scenes.

This was co-headlining a barbecue with a brisket that I’d smoked for 14 hours, and even then, it got at least as many compliments as the meat. (I swear the brisket was good, too.) Potato salad’s always a crowd-pleaser, but when you can add a little flavor pop to it, you can really blow folks away.

Salty Dog Blues

There are certain bottles that I’m always looking for an excuse to grab off my bar, and perhaps none more so than Bénédictine, the classic sweet French herbal liqueur. It’s a mainstay in our household thanks to the B&B, a 1:1 cocktail of Bénédictine and brandy that we make often in the colder months, but it doesn’t get as much time in the spotlight once it’s warm outside.

Well, I was reading through an old issue of fellow Food Fellow Jason Wilson’s excellent

EVERYDAY DRINKING

newsletter, and came across the perfect warm-weather vehicle for my French friend: the Antibes, a cocktail featuring gin, Bénédictine and grapefruit juice.

Salty Dogs, Grapefruit, and that Lame Food Writing Joke We've All Heard a Million Times

I made one exactly as written, then a second tweaked to my particular preferences (a little more Bénédictine, a little less grapefruit juice, and a splash of Topo Chico to fizz it up.) It’s a great drink, and one I’ll be revisiting over the warm months ahead.

Antibes (via Jason Wilson)

• 2 ounces gin

• 3/4 ounce Bénédictine

• 1-1/2 ounces grapefruit juice

• 2 ounces sparkling mineral water (optional)

• orange slice

Stir the gin, Bénédictine, and grapefruit juice in a mixing glass with ice; strain into a brandy glass with a large ice cube, top with sparkling water if using, and garnish with a slice of orange.

Photographed before adding the sparkling water; this photo looked better.

It’s like I’m on the Côte d’Azur and not in a Kentucky backyard!

If You’re Trying to Save Me, Know I Am Trying the Same Thing

The fact that I’ve done nearly 250 Friday newsletters without featuring Cloud Nothings—a band that hails from my beloved hometown of Cleveland—feels like an indictment of my curatorial instincts. Nevertheless! It’s better late than never, and the band has just recently released their eighth studio album, the excellent Final Summer, a taut, 29-minute wall of powerful, melodic and timeless indie-rock.

Off Final Summer, here’s “Running Through The Campus”:

A Penny For Your Thoughts

Thanks to my son, I have spent much of the past year being reminded—often under duress—what it is like to inhabit the mind of a third-grade boy. It is often a place of wide-eyed wonder and pure, simple joys, but also one of uncertainty, confusion and frustration. A third-grade boy’s mind is an attic full of treasured mementoes and also bats, squirrels, spiders and oil-soaked rags ready to explode.

In this light, I very much enjoyed Harold, a newish novel by venerable stand-up comedian Steven Wright.

The story unfolds in the mind of the titular Harold, a seven-year-old attending third grade in Massachusetts in the 1970s. It’s a stream-of-consciousness book, light on plot but rich with detail and observation on the world; there’s shades of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes in this peculiar young boy who pictures his thoughts as individual birds flying through a rectangle in his brain.

Stream-of-consciousness novels aren’t a new idea—heck, just a few weeks ago I shared Nicholson Baker’s 1986 novel The Mezzanine—but in my mind, the strength of Harold is in how viscerally it reminded me of what it feels like to be a kid, full of thoughts that were often simultaneously painfully innocent and frightfully dark.

Revisiting The Eagles of Heart Mountain

In a Friday newsletter several years ago, I enthusiastically recommended The Eagles of Heart Mountain, author Bradford Pearson’s thorough and well-told history of a football team that formed at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, one of the ten major concentration camps used during the United States’ internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. I stand by that recommendation; the book is great, and shines a fresh and necessary light on a shameful episode in American history.

That same story is now being told in a condensed form in a new mini-documentary released by the NFL this week, Fear, Football and the Theft of Freedom. (Apparently I can’t embed YouTube links from the NFL, but it’s linked there.)

Image: National Archives

In the 22-minute film, former NFL linebacker Scott Fujita—whose father was born at Heart Mountain—explores the history of the site and the football team that improbably succeeded there. (Pearson features prominently in the documentary.)

It’s a nice watch, and if 22 minutes feels too brief to tell the story properly, well, I’ve got a great book suggestion to follow it up.

(Reminder, you can find all of my book recommendations at my Bookshop page.)

Fear Factor

Over Memorial Day weekend, the community pool that we attend opened for the summer. It’s been a mainstay for us for the past four years, and it’s been wild to see my kids grow from tentative toddlers in need of multiple floaties and constant adult supervision to Big Kids who spot friends from school the second we’re in the gate and leave me behind to go play.

On this trip, my seven-year-old daughter decided that she was going to go off the diving board for the first time. I supported her, but steeled myself—two years ago, my son made a similar proclamation, and it was a weeks-long effort for him to allow his powerful desire to conquer the diving board overcome his fear of actually doing so:

Flying Over Water

She went out to the edge of the board and back several times, shedding a few stray tears as she realized what it looked like from the edge of the board. I offered some gentle encouragement, and a “here’s what it will feel like” toss into the pool for comparison. (I asked first, I swear.) Finally, after less than an hour of deliberation, she strode out to the edge and jumped. By the end of the day, she’d gone off several dozen more times, and a briefly-insurmountable obstacle shrank in the rearview mirror.

This got me to thinking about childhood milestones, and that leads me to today’s question:

What was something that felt like a big rite of passage when you were a kid?

Was it a diving board? A roller-coaster? Climbing a really tall tree, or swimming in a lake? I’m curious what’s loomed large for others, only to feel small in retrospect.

While you’re mulling on that, I’m going to let the dogs (and/or cats) out:

The ACBN Pets of the Week

First up this week, Judith C. has a good boy who’s extremely happy, and with good reason:

I was going to wait until I actually met this goofball in person, but this photo had to be shared right away. He’s newly adopted by our kids to keep their other 2 dogs company, one of whom is a very senior dog and not up to the antics of his younger housemate. His name is Marley, and seems in this photo to show how absolutely ecstatic he is to be in his great new family.

This photo is pure canine joy. I love Marley, and I’m happy that he’s happy. What a good boy.

Next up, MC has a fighter of a friend:

It's been a minute, but here's a contribution to your pet queue!

Meet Stallone. When he's not lounging on my bed or sneaking around trying to spray somewhere without me seeing him, this battle-hardened fleabag is running the streets, fighting all the time - pretty much wasting away like so many feral cats do. Where I live there is no permanent vet, the tiny shelter doesn't handle feral cats, there is no humane society and the nearest city is over 50 miles away. It's over 100 degrees out half the year. His odds for survival are minimal. The best I can do is boost his quality of life as much as possible with food, love and shelter (when he wants shelter).

Look at this handsome lad. He’s lucky to have you, and I bet he knows it.

(Even if he’d never say it.) Great cat.

Finally this week, Andrew S. has ears with a dog attached:

Hello Mr. Cookbook,

I’m including a couple of pictures of Ms. Gambling Polka Dot Blues aka Polka aka Pokie for PotW. She’s an almost four-month-old Pumi. True to her Hungarian herding dog roots, she loves barking at anything that moves, chasing after a soccer ball, and working on food puzzles. As she grows to about 25 pounds, her ears will fold down more and she’ll turn grey (happens to the best of us). Polka can be a real gremlin of a puppy--she’s still a very good girl in my book.

The ear-to-dog ratio is off the charts here. I love her, and I think she could fly if she wanted to (but only if she wanted to.) Great dog.

That’ll do it for another week here at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.

Thanks for hanging around. I hope that your weekend ahead is happy, restful and safe, and I hope that today’s newsletter helped start it off right.

I’ll see you next week.

—Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)

1. I also believe that potato salad should be sold in souvenir batting helmets.