The next chapter in Home Cooking is about fried chicken, a subject in which I have only a theoretical or academic interest, as I do not like to eat fried chicken.
Call me un-American; I don’t care.
This chapter is, to me, one of the best in the book not because it’s so useful but because it’s actually completely un-useful to me (as someone who has no interest in fried chicken) yet it is a complete pleasure to read. I think I might be able to recite this chapter from memory (though please don’t test me on this.) Definitely the first paragraph anyhow:
As everyone knows, there is only one way to fry chicken correctly. Unfortunately, most people think their method is best, but most people are wrong. Mine is the only right way, and on this subject I feel almost evangelical.
If you are actually interested in making fried chicken at home, by all means, give this chapter more serious attention; the Colwin system may really be the best. I don’t know. (A reader has asked me, after reading this essay, What is so special about Colwin’s fried chicken? My answer is, I don’t really know. She believes that there is only one process that can result in superlative fried chicken, and spells it out in considerable detail. It is a time-consuming, messy process that I would never allow to happen in my kitchen, because the process and the clean-up would cause me to have a nervous breakdown. But it does not involve short-cuts like cutesy fried chicken machines, it does not involve egg, and it does not require deep-frying. According to her. Anyone who has issues with her technique should take it up with the estate of Laurie Colwin, not with me.)
By contrast, I have made potato salad, the subject of the chapter that follows Fried Chicken, about, you know, a million times, what with one thing and another. I never thought much about potato salad, despite liking it very much when served it, until my other half moved in with me, because he is someone who views potatoes more or less as a food group unto themselves. While I resent almost every moment spent cooking potatoes, once in a while it is worthwhile — even to me — to make a huge bowl of potato salad. When I embarked on my potato salad days, the book I turned to was Home Cooking.
Colwin advocates for dill in basic potato salads; I will never prepare anything that involves dill, which I view as hateful stuff.
However, I basically feel she’s got the right attitude, and that her take on potatoes is correct. (Basically, you could use almost any kind of potato you wanted to, except “salad potatoes,” but you need to account for the undeniable fact that waxy potatoes don’t absorb dressing the way mealy ones do. I like a mealy potato potato salad and think waxy potato potato salads tend to be potato salads that veer toward the silly and pretentious and ongepotchket.)
Over the course of a summer, circa 2001, we fell into the habit of making a potato salad that called for relatively few ingredients but was always snarfed down in large quantity. We served it at picnics and dinner parties and we served it to ourselves on hot summer nights. It went like this:
Boil whatever number of Russet potatoes you feel is called for under the circumstances; cool slightly and peel. Chop roughly and return to original cooking pot.
Add dressing mixture, which will include the following: Hellman’s mayonnaise; a slosh of vinegar; minced scallion; one or two roasted red peppers, minced; one or two hard-boiled eggs, chopped finely; salt; pepper; paprika. Optional but occasionally a nice change of pace: throw in a tablespoon or two or three of pickle relish. You mix this up in a small mixing bowl and then dump it all into the pot with the potatoes — which are ideally still warm — and mix mix mix. Once the dish is mixed, it can be served or put in the fridge to chill until it’s time to eat.
Basically this gives you a kind of deviled egg/potato salad combo, which is very filling and very good. It’s not an adventurous potato salad but it’s got enough tricks up its sleeve to keep it from being just mushy and dull.
Colwin’s chapter on potato salad contains two recipes I’ve never made and have no plans to make — one calling for string beans, the other calling for cucumbers and creme fraiche — but I make no apologies. She concludes by telling us how to make her potato salad, and it’s easy and about as simple as potato salads get (potatoes, Hellman’s mayo thinned with lemon juice, black pepper, scallion, dill). Her point is valid. With potato salads, as with so many things, it doesn’t have to be ongepotchket to be good. When in doubt about that potato salad that you’re throwing together, higgledy-piggledy, think of Givenchy and the Little Black Dress and go for the simple, elegant, pared down look.
Maybe it’s ok if you add capers though. If I’m coming to dinner, for sure ditch the dill.
This Old Hausfrau 
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