Potato Salad in the key of E Flat

This is one of endless variations on the same theme. In principle: hot potato mixed into a salad slightly warms the other ingredients and greedily drinks up a generous dressing.

Serves 3-4 as a meal

* 4 whole potatoes - for this variation, I prefer floury potatoes because I want them to break up a bit more. If you have waxy potatoes, decrease the amount of dressing a little as they won't absorb as much

* 1 whole egg

* 1 Tbsp white wine vinegar

* 3 Tbsp good olive oil

* 2 tsp hot english mustard

* 1 garlic clove

* 4 cups of hard vegetables - Your choice, but some combination of celery, red onion, carrot, celeriac, fennel, cucumber

* 1/2 cup of chopped herbs of choice - I had parsley and oregano to hand

* 1 tin of sardines

* 1 Tbsp capers

* Salad leaves to serve.

Roast the potatoes for 2 hours in a hot oven. Put them straight on the oven rack or put them on a layer of rock salt on a tray. Give yourself about 30 minutes to throw the rest of the salad together before the potatoes are ready.

Rub the inside of a large salad bowl with a cut garlic clove.

Whisk the vinegar, oil, mustard and egg together. Just bung them all in together, we aren't making a mayonaise. Note - you probably don't need salt in this salad because of the capers and sardines, but you should have a pepper grinder at table.

Chop the vegetables into easily manageable pieces for the plate and toss them in the dressing.

Take the potatoes, piping hot, from the oven. Quickly slice them into larger-than-bite-sized pieces and toss them into the dressing. This will partly cook the egg and thicken the dressing. The potatoes should fluff up around the edges during the mixing and absorb more of the dressing.

Add the herbs, capers and sardines and mix well.

Serve with a separate bowl of washed salad leaves. Put some salad leaves on the plate and spoon some of the potato salad on top.