Stretch Cooking: Potato salad and still more Perini

This is the only Mashed Potato Salad recipe that I know of. I always believed it was unique to Underwood's a chain of West Texas barbecue restaurants in the 1950s and '60s. Then, in the late '80s, when I was working on a cookbook about Texas cooking, a friend named Gene Ainsworth, a transplanted Texan living in California, gave me the recipe that I am using here. It looked like and tasted like the Underwood's salad.

The featured technique is the mashed potatoes, but the featured ingredient is yellow mustard. It has to do with barbecue. Potato salad is a classic side dish for Texas barbecue, particularly brisket, and most Texas potato salads have a good dollop of mustard in them, and also chopped sweet pickles. The sweet snap of the pickles and the mustard's tart bite (sounds like the rocket's red glare), stirred into the creamy potatoes work to complement the brisket's signature, smoked-savory goodness in what must have been, the first time, an accidental way. You couldn't have planned a partnership so agreeable.

As you eat, a little of the potato salad always gets swirled into the brisket juices and barbecue sauce in the bottom of the plate. I always finish everything else first, leaving a couple of bites of brisket with which to mop up this fabulous liquor.

8 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
Milk
Butter
1 medium purple onion, chopped
5 small sweet pickles, chopped
1 ½ tablespoons vinegar
5 or 6 tablespoons yellow mustard
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
Salt and pepper to taste

Boil the potatoes until tender and mash them in the usual way, with enough milk and butter to make them creamy. Fold in the other ingredients. The salad should be a creamy yellow. If you need to, add more mustard. Refrigerate overnight, and let the salad come back to room temperature before serving.

Late add: Tom Perini was on the "Today" show this morning, competing with two other guys in a hamburger cookoff. All three were named by The Food Network for making the best, and most unusual, hamburgers in their state. It was interesting. One guy wrapped his burger inside pizza dough and grilled that. The second guy breaded his burger and deep-fried it. Perini's burger was routine by comparison: a half-pound of Angus beef, grilled, topped with cheese, mushrooms and onions, and served on a sourdough bun. The "Today" panel voted his hamburger the best. It would go great with Mashed Potato Salad.