Russian salad - the one half the Balkans knows by heart - looks like a dish everyone knows and no one makes the way it should be. And one Spanish version was recently named the best in the country, which is a good reason to take this seemingly ordinary dish seriously again.

The award was won by Pablo Vicari, head chef at the „Elkano Jiki” restaurant in Getaria, in the Basque Country, at the gastronomy fair in San Sebastián last autumn. The dish has been on his menu for over a decade. It is not a reinvention - it is a perfect execution of something simple.

The secret starts with the potato, and here is the first lesson. Vicari uses two kinds of potato: one more floury, which soaks up the dressing, and one firmer, which holds its shape and stays in pieces. Most of us use just any potato and wonder why the salad turns out mushy. The base is then mixed with cooked carrot, boiled egg, tuna and mayonnaise.

The second secret is the enriched mayonnaise that goes on top. The chef mixes plain mayonnaise with flaked tuna, hot peppers, anchovy fillet and olives, then strains it all until he gets a smooth, homogeneous emulsion. „They enrich the mayonnaise with tuna flakes, hot pepper, anchovy and olives”, the recipe explains - and it is right here that a homemade dish turns into something restaurant-worthy.

At the end comes the garnish: grated egg yolk, Basque peppers and the best part of the tuna, the ventresca. None of this is expensive and none of it demands a special technique. Just attention and respect for a recipe most people underrate because it is too familiar. And it is precisely the familiar dishes that we prepare the least as they deserve.