Brazilian Potato Salad: Salada de Batata com Maionese

I got the idea to do this recipe from my friend Gustavo from Brazil. Remember, Brazil is the largest Portuguese speaking country in the world. In doing some research, I found that potato salad is quite popular in Brazil, something I hadn't known. There are some variations in recipes, but "generally" nothing too substantial. For instance, as compared to what I used, Gustavo doesn't care much for carrots, so he doesn't use carrot in his version. No more Bugs Bunny for him! A friend of his adds a can of tuna to the potato salad, and Gustavo gave that a try and liked it; so you might want to try it too. I saw "some" recipes with olives, and I love olives, so I added them to my recipe. This salad is very good, and the apple adds a nice touch, especially if it is of the sweeter kind, to contrast with the varied tartness of the vinegar, lemon juice and mayonnaise. I believe all the Brazilian Potato Salad recipes I checked included apple. I'm not a big fan of "sour," so I tinkered around to find what I consider the best amounts of lemon juice and vinegar. Of course, if you like more of a sour taste, use my suggested amounts, then taste it, and add a little more vinegar until you get the taste you prefer. As you've likely heard many times, "you can always add, but you can't take it back out." If you get too much "sour," adding sugar might solve the problem, but it's likely to leave you with a "gritty" taste. HEY! We just invented "Gritty Brazilian Potato Salad!" Gotta go, it's time for Bugs Bunny.   

Ingredients:

2 to 2 1/4 pounds potatoes 
1 apple (I suggest a somewhat sweet apple like: Red Delicious, Fuji, Honeycrisp or Gala)
1 cup onion, chopped or sliced
1/4 cup peeled and diced carrot (fresh is best, but frozen is fine; I find canned carrots too mushy)
1/2 cup corn (canned/drained, frozen or cut off the cob)
1/2 cup peas (canned/drained or frozen)
2 hard boiled eggs
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 cup mayonnaise (light mayonnaise is fine)
1 teaspoon salt or to taste
10 to 12 olives (green or black or mixed), halved

Boil the potatoes in their jackets, cool, then peel them, then chop or dice them. Boil the eggs and let them cool, then remove the shells and chop the eggs. Cook the diced carrot until softened, but not mushy. Cook the corn and peas. If you're using canned or frozen corn and peas, you can begin cooking the carrot, and then add the peas and corn when the carrot is about half done. Let the vegetables cool down a bit. Peel, core and chop the apple, then mix the lemon juice with the apple to prevent it from turning brown. Now, in a bowl add the potatoes, corn, peas, carrot, apple (with the lemon juice), onion, olives and chopped egg. Add the olive oil, vinegar and salt (if using), mix and then add the mayonnaise and mix well to coat all of the potatoes and vegetables. Let the salad chill in the refrigerator before serving.

WORD HISTORY:

Anchor-This word is distantly related to "angle" and to "ankle." ^ It goes back to Indo European "ang," which had the notion of "to bend, to curve." This gave transliterated Ancient Greek "ankyra" (ánkȳra), meaning, "anchor, hook" (traditionally, anchors have hooks; that is, 'curved' metal or other heavy materials that hook onto underwater ropes or other moorings to help keep a vessel stable). The Greek form was borrowed by Latin as "ancora" in ancient times. The term was then borrowed by Germanic tribes in western Europe, but with no one term in Germanic.^^ The word spread through the old Germanic dialects, which gave Old English "ancor," but why it came to be spelled with the "ch" in the 1500s is puzzling to me, although it perhaps started because of a misspelling of the Latin form.^^^ The meaning expanded beyond nautical terminology to mean anything that provides stability, as in, "anchor store;" that is, "typically a large department store in a shopping center or shopping mall that provides a strong, stable base (anchor) for drawing in customers." "News anchor;" that is, "a person, alone or as part of a team, who regularly broadcasts the main news on radio or television." The verb "seems" to date from the 1200s (?), as "ancoren," then "anchoren," and came from the noun. Relatives in the other Germanic languages: German and Low German "Anker," Dutch "anker," West Frisian "anker" (?), Danish and Norwegian "anker," Swedish "ancare," and Icelandic "akkeri."

^ "Angle," meaning, "to fish" (and "angling," the act of fishing), is from the Germanic roots of English, as is "ankle." "Angle," with the specific meaning, "a corner formed by intersecting lines," is of Latin descent, but it too is from the same Indo European form, so it is also related to "anchor."

^^ There is quite a lot of uncertainty as to WHEN Latin "ancora" was borrowed into Germanic. Some sources don't even give a date or even an assumed date, which tells me, they don't know and they are not confident enough to even venture a guess, although it certainly was many centuries ago, in the times of the Germanic tribes; that is, before these tribes began to unite into something more akin to national groups. The idea is that the West Germanic tribes along the part of the Rhine River (the Lower Rhine) that flows from the present day German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (German: Nordrhein-Westfalen) through part of the present day Netherlands and into the North Sea borrowed the word, and that it eventually spread throughout the Germanic dialects/languages, including into the dialects that became English.    

^^^ "Dictionary of Word Origins," by John Ayto, Arcade Publishing, New York 1990, says it comes from the misspelling of Latin "ancora," as "anchora."