“Bringing people together on the neutral ground of [the] potato salad is a beautiful thing,” one commenter wrote about Zack Brown’s endeavour. For somebody with the middle name ‘Danger’ (or so he claims, we haven’t seen his birth certificate to prove or disprove this rather moot point) Brown’s Kickstarter campaign is rather benign: all he wants to do is create a potato salad.

Over 3,000 people have backed his dream, donating anything between $1 and $50 in order to help Brown fulfil his life-long dream of making his first ever batch of potato salad.

The whole campaign is such a big deal that CNET commented on the matter by claiming Brown was ‘challenging the status quo with relish and mustard’, and challenge he is.

$36,000 for a potato salad

 “Basically I’m just making [a] potato salad. I haven’t decided what kind yet,” Brown wrote earlier on this week,

It’s an event so inane it’s amazing, and it’s no surprise to find out that his noble cause has taken the internet by storm and his story has since graced the pages of Buzzfeed, Sky News and The Washington Post amongst others.

Potato salad has captured the imagination of people in a way only Game of Thrones or Tamagotchis ever could.

At the time of writing a smidgen over $36,000 (or £21,000 in real money) had been raised. Once the fundraising ends and the potato salad is made, the whole internet will be invited – though, naturally, backers will get first dibs on the most expensive potato salad tasting session ever.

“I think the thing people are responding to is the opportunity to come together around something equal parts absurd and mundane,” he told Reddit during an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session.

But Brown’s plan has one major drawback; he doesn’t have a recipe sorted. So to help him out – and all the other potato salad aficionados there are out there – we have put together the Ultimate CS Catering Potato Salad of Kings and Queens for you, and here it is:

Ingredients

• Potatoes, diced – your choice on the variety, or maybe go for a mixture.
• Shallots, finely chopped
• Carrots, finely chopped
• 4tbsp of extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp mustard
• 1 clove of garlic
• Lemon zest
• Salt
• Black pepper

Method

• Boil the potatoes in slightly salted water until tender.
• Whilst the potatoes are cooking away make the vinaigrette by crushing the garlic and salt together, before gradually adding in the other ingredients.
• Put the potatoes into a bowl with the shallots and carrots (which can be cooked if preferred)
• Pour over the vinaigrette and serve!

photo: Megan Myers – Flickr, Creative Commons