“From the SCCC Kitchen” offers Daily Gazette readers tastes from Schenectady County Community College’s nationally accredited American Culinary Federation culinary arts program. Recipes selected by SCCC instructors can easily be prepared at home. Today, technical specialist Ellen Heekin offers a different kind of potato dish for backyard cookouts, Mediterranean Potato Salad.

Cheeseburgers are never considered elegant fare.

Ellen Heekin can help change that thinking. Serve a tomato-topped, cheese-heavy burger with a plate of Heekin’s Mediterranean Potato Salad, and the dish becomes worthy of high society.

“It doesn’t have the mayonnaise taste,” Heekin said. “It has just a hint of that anchovy taste and capers. You can taste the olive oil, I think. It has a lighter texture than the heavy mayonnaise.”

Warm weather means mashed potato dishes of late fall and winter go on hiatus, in favor of spring and summer potato salads for cookouts. And that means creamy salad dressing, onions and celery.

But not always. The Mediterranean model is full of different ingredients and different tastes. And while the recipe calls for russet potatoes, Heekin said spring or chef potatoes also can be used. Food fans can serve the salad on a bed of field greens and rejoice that the absence of mayo also means the absence of extra calories.

MEDITERRANEAN POTATO SALAD

21⁄2 pounds russet potatoes

7 ounces extra virgin olive oil

3 ounces red wine vinegar

1 ounce balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon capers

1⁄2 teaspoon chopped anchovy fillets

1⁄2 teaspoon garlic powder or 1 teaspoon chopped fresh garlic

Salt and ground white pepper to taste

Peel and boil the potatoes in salted water just until tender.

Mix all the rest of the ingredients together to make a dressing.

Drain the potatoes. Slice the potatoes while hot and place in a bowl.

Mix the dressing one more time to make sure all the ingredients are well-blended. Pour over the hot potatoes. Rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes so flavors will set up. This salad may be served warm or cold.

Serves 10.