What We Ate Wednesday--German potato salad and kale

Well, I *was* going to write about what we had Friday night which is a super fast curry because I had come home from work exhausted and needed food right away.

As a Quaker, I try to not use exaggerated speech, I am not STARVING because I have never missed a meal, but let me tell you on Friday night I was RAVENOUS.

Ravenous, I tell you!

As ravenous as the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.

So the curry went straight into my belly without taking the time to take a photo. Luckily, this curry makes a huge amount and so we had it again Saturday night when I came home from work slightly less ravenous. However the camera refused to play ball and kept announcing the batteries were flat, so i gave up and ate my delicious curry.

Basically, this curry is:
1 onion
half a pepper
a tin of chickpeas
a tin of chopped tomatoes
3 TB Balti curry paste
600g cooked potatoes (about 9-10 egg sized potatoes)
2 cups defrosted frozen peas

It is fast and delicious and makes lots. We eat it over rice and the second day I often make it with creamed corn.

But! That is not the recipe I want to share. The recipe I want to share is for German Potato Salad and Kale. I grew up eating German Potato salad from a can and loved it's tangy taste. I hated potato salad with goopy mayonnaise. Blech! Give me German Potato Salad any day.

GPS (as I plan to abbreviate it from now on because I can't be arsed to keep writing German Potato Salad over and over again) is traditionally made with bacon so clearly I am going to veganise it! I like to use mushroom bacon, because mushrooms and cheap and healthy and a whole food.

There are 2 ways to do your mushroom bacon. Both delicious, one slightly less faffy than the other. You can bake them in a super hot oven (220C/425F)  for 12-15 minutes to dry them out and concentrate their flavour or just use as is in the marinade. I had a cake in the oven, so I used  them as is. Still delicious.

GPS with Chickpeas and Kale
To make the bacon mushrooms:
Dice into small bits 100g of cheap button mushrooms (about 6-7 mushrooms) and put them in a bowl to marinate with 1 TB tamari or soy sauce, 1 tsp toasted sesame oil and 1 tsp liquid smoke

To make the sauce:
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
2 TB water
1 TB liquid sweetener
1 tsp dijon mustard like Grey Poupon
2 TB nutritional yeast flakes (to give it a slightly cheesy taste)
1 TB flour
1/2 tsp sea salt

You need:
1 onion, diced
 100g kale, Maybe that's 4-5 cups? we just buy a 200g bag and split it in half.
1 tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
300g potatoes, diced small About 5 egg sized potatoes

1. Put the potatoes in a pot covered with water and bring to the boil. While that is happening, cook the onion in a bit of oil in a large pot.
2.Destem and tear up kale into bite sized pieces.
3. When the potatoes are done, drain them and let them sit in the colander.
4. Put the chickpeas, the marinated bacon mushrooms and their marinade in with the onion and cook until mushrooms are done. Then add the kale and cook until kale has turned bright green and reduced.
5. Add the potatoes and the sauce to the big pot and heat until the sauce thickens and then grind on lots and lots and lots of pepper.

That's it. Really easy and tasty. GPS. The best darned potato salad in the world. If you are a potato salad purist and don't want all the chickpeas and kale mixed in then just double (or triple) the amount of potatoes and double (or triple) the amount of sauce. But if you do it my way you get a shot of good quality low-fat, fibre-filled protein from the chickpeas and a serving of high calcium greens.

Whatever you do, just make some GPS.

Who needs goopy mayonnaise?