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!

Low and Slow: Braised Anise-Scented Short Ribs

So, this recipe was one of the most full flavored, complex, rich and satisfying ones I have made so far. But overall, I think they're a little too fatty for my taste. I'd like to try the same recipe with a different cut of meat, maybe, because the combination of star anise, ginger, nam pla, carrots, potatoes, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sugar did really magical things.

This recipe is a variation on Short Ribs Braised with Mustard and Potatoes, and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to include the potatoes or not; I decided to use them after all because it seemed like it'd make the dish more substantial, so why not? It didn't say to omit them outright, but the variation does sort of just ignore them. I was glad I included them, but I'm still not sure if I was supposed to.

Served it with the Roasted Red Pepper Vinaigrette from before.

An Excuse to Use Slab Bacon: Beef Daube

Fact: Any recipe that starts by browning slab bacon is going to end well. It's science.

As far as I can tell, I've made seven meals, not sure how many recipes (I should really get a spreadsheet going), but still not a single dish with red meat. I had a feeling this might happen; I am a chicken man and have been for as long as I can remember. Well, after a sale at the store left me with 2 lbs. of boneless chuck roast, I decided it was time. Weather was cold, to say the least, and so I decided a stew of some sort was the way to go. Enter HTCE's Beef Daube, what Bittman says is a Provencal style stew.

So, you start by browning the chopped-up slab bacon (are there two more beautiful words in the English language?) until the fat is rendered and its pretty crispy. Then you remove it, trying not to munch it all up while it sits on the countertop. Brown the beef (cut into chunks) in the bacon fat. Then you remove the beef, set that aside as well, and throw in diced onions, carrots, celery, smashed garlic, rosemary, thyme, and orange peel. I didn't have celery because Fairway in Red Hook did me dirty, and I didn't have thyme, but this wasn't the end of the world; I just upped the carrot/onion and rosemary proportions a bit and carried on. So you sautee those veggies and aromatics (it's gonna smell really REALLY good) 'til they soften and then add a bit of red wine vinegar and a cup or so of red wine, bring it to a boil, put the beef back in, lower the heat and cover it.


Let that go for an hour or so, then throw the bacon back in. At this point, if its drying out, add a little chicken stock or just water. Give it another 15 or so or turn off the heat (it reheats really well) and finish it before serving.

Beef Daube turns out to be exactly what I was looking for. Served over some egg noodles, it was filling, soothing, warming, a delectable Sunday dinner. Time consuming, yes, but super easy. The hardest part was chopping up the veggies. I think my favorite part was that the flavors didn't exactly melt together; they went well, of course, but there was the distinct flavor of orange peel, rosemary, onion, bacon, each waiting to be picked out by the observant eater.


Chicken: who needs it?

Staple: Fast Tomato Sauce

This was the first template recipe of Bittman's that I mastered. I call it a template because, like the Five Minute Drizzle Sauce, once you master the technique, you can mix it up in an infinite number of ways. It's a special recipe to me, because even though it's one of the most ordinary meals known to man, if you can master making your own tomato sauce, your kitchen self confidence will see a tenfold boost. At least. Even more than when you make your own stock.


Originally, I made this out of the HTCE spinoff book, How to Cook Everything: Quick Cooking, which is a fantastic sort of training wheels version of the book. Anyway, basically you sautee some onions and garlic in olive oil, throw in some canned tomatoes, let it cook for a while, throw in a bit more olive oil toward the end to thicken it up, and you have a nice simple tomato sauce. It's not gonna change the world, but it takes no longer than reheating a store bought jar and it tastes a lot better.

From there, it's your call. I like mine with some carrot cooked along with the onions and garlic. This makes it a bit sweeter, and if you grate the carrot in the shreds just sort of melt away into the sauce. I also usually add tomato paste after I add the can tomatoes; it makes it a bit thicker and saucier. You like olives? Throw some in. Anything goes, really. In addition to all the improvisation you can come up with, there's a list following the recipe with something like 20 quick spins on the template. They pretty much all look good.


This week I thought I'd play with it beyond my usual two "variations" of grated carrot and tomato paste. I started with adding lemon zest in the sautee phase (though maybe I shoulda done this when I added the tomatoes. Anyway, I added the zest and skipped the tomato paste. Not on purpose. I just forgot. I also put it through the food processor so it was a little smoother and less chunky.

Then towards the end I added some pitted olives and half a jar of capers. The additions made the sauce a lot tangier than usual. It was pretty good; next time I won't omit the tomato paste (I like it thick!) and my olives, which were the mild green kind, were not optimal. Next time, Kalamata or something nice and salty like that.


Maybe the best part is the quantity; there's always some left over and it keeps pretty well in the freezer. So the next time I want tomato sauce, I'll just defrost, add some tomato paste (it's never too late!) and be good to go.