Dilly Potato — Egg Salad — Something Solid to Stand On

January 2021. The new year settles in with rain and resolve. I filed divorce papers this week — the actual paperwork, the legal machinery of ending a marriage. The forms are clinical: "Petitioner" and "Respondent," as if Brian and I are characters in a legal drama rather than two people who once danced at a lavender farm and now divide a child by calendar. I filled them out at the kitchen table while Miya was at school and the mundanity of it — checking boxes, writing dates, reducing seven years of marriage to a series of factual statements — was both anticlimactic and appropriate. The marriage ended quietly. The paperwork should end quietly too.

I made nikujaga — the beef and potato stew — the comfort food that says "sit down, eat, you are cared for." I needed the caring this week. Filing divorce papers is not dramatic. Filing divorce papers is administrative. But the administration carries an emotional weight that the forms do not account for — the weight of signing your name next to the words "dissolution of marriage," the weight of the word "dissolution," which sounds like something dissolving, something losing its form, something becoming liquid that used to be solid. The marriage is dissolving. The miso is dissolving in the dashi. Both dissolutions create something new. The miso creates soup. The marriage creates — what? Freedom. Grief. A woman alone in a kitchen, making stew.

Brian signed the papers without argument. He brought them to the custody handoff, signed them on the hood of his car, and handed them back. "This is the right thing," he said. I said, "I know." The exchange was three sentences and contained more honesty than any conversation we had in the last two years of our marriage. The right thing. The honest thing. The thing that had to happen. The hood of the car was cold. The papers were signed. The rain fell. We stood in a parking lot and ended a marriage in less time than it takes to make dashi.

Miya noticed nothing. Four-year-olds do not notice legal proceedings. Four-year-olds notice that Tuesday is in-person school day and Thursday is daddy's house and Saturday is farmers market with mama. The schedule is her world. The schedule holds. The paperwork is the adults' business, conducted in parking lots and courthouses, invisible to the child who is the reason for all of it and the center of all of it and the only thing that both adults agree is more important than the dissolution.

Nikujaga was what I actually made that week — the stew, the broth, the slow softening of potato in sweet soy — but this dilly potato salad is what I keep coming back to when I think about that season, because potatoes in any form are the food of sitting still, of being grounded, of having something honest beneath you. The dissolution metaphors wrote themselves in the kitchen that January: things softening, losing their edges, becoming something new. This salad is straightforward and unfussy, the way that parking-lot conversation was straightforward and unfussy, and there’s real comfort in that.

Dilly Potato & Egg Salad

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 18 min | Total Time: 38 min + 1 hr chilling | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 2 lbs red or Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into 3/4-inch cubes
• 4 large eggs
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
• 3 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped (or 1 tablespoon dried dill)
• 3 green onions, thinly sliced
• 2 stalks celery, finely diced
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for boiling
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

1. Cook the potatoes. Place cubed potatoes in a large pot and cover with cold salted water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce heat and simmer 12–15 minutes, until just fork-tender. Drain and spread on a baking sheet to cool completely.
2. Hard-boil the eggs. While potatoes cook, place eggs in a small saucepan, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, cover, and let sit 12 minutes. Transfer to an ice bath, peel, and chop roughly.
3. Make the dressing. In a large bowl, whisk together mayonnaise, sour cream, Dijon mustard, and white wine vinegar until smooth. Stir in dill, salt, and pepper.
4. Combine. Add cooled potatoes, chopped eggs, green onions, and celery to the dressing. Fold gently until everything is evenly coated. Taste and adjust salt and pepper.
5. Chill and serve. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour before serving. Garnish with additional fresh dill and a pinch of black pepper if desired. Keeps well refrigerated up to 3 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 220 | Protein: 6g | Fat: 13g | Carbs: 20g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 310mg