Barbecue in the Woods: Spicy No-Mayo Cole Slaw, Carrot Salad with Cumin

Last weekend, my friend and coworker Melanie invited me and some other friends to her mother Donna's house in New Hampshire for a barbecue and weekend of relaxation.

Obviously I was going to take this chance to work in a real kitchen (I'd refer to my own kitchen as "fun size") for all it was worth, but Donna had things covered with plans for smoked brisket (pictured above), chicken, and fish. So I brought some veggies to grill with the idea of making some Five Minute Drizzle Sauce, and decided I'd put myself on salad duty. It's often hard at a BBQ to get your fill of veggies, but I always want to. You can only pack your body full of so much delicious meat before you want some salad or a nice grilled zucchini. I settled on the Spicy No-Mayo Cole Slaw and Carrot Salad with Cumin, in addition to some really nice summer squash I got at the greenmarket that would act as the vehicle for the Herbed Five-Minute Drizzle Sauce, as suggested in the chart on page 250 ("How to Grill Vegetables").

The kitchen was a dream come true. Check out Donna's easy access spice drawer:

OK, on to the cooking.

The Carrot Salad with Cumin is a real ace in the hole; you're basically just grating a bunch of carrots, then tossing with cumin, lemon juice, orange juice, and olive oil, plus salt and pepper. The result is sweet and tangy and the cumin lends it a nice complexity.

If you have a food processor, it should take all of ten minutes including cleanup. The flavors intensify the longer you let it sit.

The Spicy No Mayo Cole Slaw should definitely be made ahead of time--it tasted way better the next day, even. I like this recipe; it's not the kind of cole slaw I'm used to, swimming in sugary mayonnaise, but resembles something closer to an actual salad. I wouldn't put it on my hot dog, but for a side at a barbecue it's light and fresh and just what I wanted.

The dressing is mustard and sherry vingegar plus garlic, chile, and olive oil. That goes on top of a lot of cabbage, some scallions (I used a leek instead, as there were no scallions at the farm) and bell pepper. Like I said, this was a delicious salad, but it got a lot better in the fridge overnight. Cabbage is so underrated. Just saying.

Finally, the summer squash (and some onions!) and drizzle sauce. Grilling the veggies was just a matter of a quick brush with olive oil and bit of salt and pepper, then throwing them on the grill til they were sufficiently charred (for me, this is bordering on totally black).

The drizzle sauce is just olive oil, heated up, with shallot and lemon juice and herbs mixed in. It takes, as the recipe states, all of five minutes, and is another one of Bittman's endlessly variable recipes (sub peanut oil or sesame oil for the olive oil, ginger or onion or garlic for the onion, soy sauce or vinegar for the lemon, etc.).

All in all, this was one of the most delicious meals, and relaxing weekends, of my life. Donna's smoking technique, which invlolved getting up at 7am to light the coals, and nearly 12 straight hours of sauna time for the meat, is world class, to say nothing of her homemade barbecue sauce. Many thanks to Donna and Mel's Aunt Lynne. We all had a great time eating, relaxing, and enjoying your beautiful home. Hope we can do it again!

Greater Than the Sum: Penne with Corn, Zucchini, and Tomatoes

This one is another dish that's only as good as the veggies you can get your hands on; last night it was transcendent but if you made it with crappy vegetables (in the winter, say) it might not be much fun. It's also endlessly adaptable--I'm guessing most vegetables would do pretty well in this, although the combination in the original isn't something I'd necessarily want to mess with.

Basically, take the corn off three or so ears--you want about a cup of kernels--and brown them in some olive oil. Then add the zucchini, let it go a few more minutes, and then add the onions and optional garlic. When the onions are softened, you add some diced tomatoes, turn down the heat a bit, and cook the pasta.

When the pasta's just about done (don't overcook it) throw it in the pan with the veggies, mix, add a bit more olive oil and some of the pasta cooking water if you like, and you're done. Serve with parmesan cheese.

It Begins: Classic Lasagna, Italian-American Style + Breaded Fried Zucchini

Let's start at the start. Not at the start of my interest in the work of Mark Bittman, but at the start of the project. "Do you think we could do one while I'm in town?" Emily asked me. I had recently decided, for various reasons, to cook every recipe in the newly revised edition of How to Cook Everything, and having just received the brand new, 80% redder version of the book from Amazon, it was time to get started. Emily was staying with me for the weekend, visiting from Boston. "Pick a recipe or three while I'm at work, make a shopping list, and I'll meet you at the store after work." I know Emily doesn't play around (we'd cooked together before), and I was not disappointed with her choice of Lasagna and Fried Zucchini.

I'd never made a lasagna before. Emily decided on the Classic American Lassagne (check title) variation, which is light on vegetables and heavy on cheese. We left out the meat because a vegetarian friend was coming (would've upped the vegetables, but it was kind of last minute; no one complained in the end).


I got things started by whipping up a batch of tomato sauce, the way I learned from my Bittman training wheels book, HTCE: Quick Cooking. I sauteed onions, carrots, some crushed garlic cloves (I take 'em out at the end) and red pepper flakes in some olive oil til they were nice and soft, then threw in some canned crushed tomatoes and tomato paste, let it simmer away, and was pretty much done. Emily cooked the lasagna noodles til they were al dente, maybe even a half step firmer than al dente. Then it was time to layer. I must say, lasagna is much easier than it looks. Oil the pan, then a noodle layer, then sauce, then cheese (mozzarella/ricotta/parmesan), pepper, more noodle, more sauce, more cheese, etc. til you're out of materials. Then enough parmesan (we used pecorino romano) on top to make it nice and crispy. If you're doing it right, this is the point where you'll start to feel like you're going to have a seriously delicious lasagna. Is there a name for this point in the cooking process? It's not the ultimate "wow" moment that occurs when you take the lasagna out of the oven, it's the moment where you know that "wow" moment is coming, and it is going to feel great. I'll try to think of something catchy for that.


Throw it in the oven til the sauce is bubbling and you're good to go. I think it was about 40 minutes. While it's not the quickest recipe, and the layering makes it seem like it takes more effort than it really does, it is super easy and seems like it'd be pretty hard to mess up.


Meanwhile, we used the recipe for Breaded Fried Any Vegetable. Emily sliced up the zucchini into kind of flat looking shapes, dredged them through flour, egg, then breadcrumbs, then right into the oil. This was easy enough, though I hate frying stuff, and the excess breadcrumbs in the pan cooked to a blackened mess and I wasn't so into it. But DAMN if they weren't totally delicious anyway (fried is fried, after all, right?) and Bittman's suggestion of squeezing some lemon juice down on top of them was perfect.


I whipped up a quick improvised balsamic vinaigrette for the bag salad I bought (sue me, I buy salad in a bag; I don't own a salad spinner). This all fed 7 people quite well, with a little bit of leftover lasagna for lunch the next day. I may only be two recipes in, but so far this culinary expedition is going quite well.