when your coleslaw disappears

in

We celebrated the 4th of July on the 5th of July because rain was expected and there was too much traffic to go to Long Island on a Friday evening. The Davis/Chases came to Cove Road and we joined Brook's friends from DC who had three kids. So there were 10 adults and 8 kids who needed to be fed and a whole lot of mess to be cleaned up.

Then someone threw out the cabbage. A large ziplock bag of hand-shredded green cabbage and ribboned carrots that I had been marinating in salt and cider vinegar for 12 hours. Despite a passionate search no one could find it and we had to call off the dogs. Actually, Emma, the dog, who is usually all over me when I"m cooking was oddly nowhere to be found.

A note: Colelaw is coleslaw is coleslaw. Except if you live near a deli in Long Island where the coleslaw looks just like the potato salad and the macaroni salad and the shrimp salad because they are all just small plastic containers of mayonnaise. I know someone people love the stuff but for some reason it totally grosses me out so I decided this year to make the salads.

I also made Spanish spice-rubbed grilled chicken which was delicious--even cold the next day-- and easy. It's also a good model for grilled chicken on the bone: brine, rub, grill. I made a few changes to the recipe which was already changed a few times since it started with Bobby Flay. I used multiple chicken parts, not just breasts. Also, when I discovered that the garden was growing spearmint not mint (which may have made it to taste like toothpaste), I skipped the sauce. I just did a quick yogurt sauce--plain whole yogurt, lemon juice, chopped parsley, drop of honey, olive oil, salt and pepper. Then watered it down a bit. It did the trick.

With that I served this  watermelon feta mint salad ...but I added cherry tomatoes cut in half because the watermelon was a little worn out.  (By the way, I love Jacques Pepin. So old school French but increasingly practical for home cooking.)

Back to the cabbage. Since my original was gone, I bought a bag of pre-shredded coleslaw mix and doused it with white vinegar and salt, then tossed it with the sauce I had made earlier: yogurt, mayo, mustard (see below). Despite or perhaps because of the initial cabbage disaster, several people said it was the best coleslaw of their lives. Hmmm...maybe marinating is useless. Maybe everyone was hungry. Maybe everyone was begin nice because they threw away my cabbage? We'll never know.

But just in case the truth was spoken, here's the recipe

Do-over Coleslaw

  1. Mix shredded cabbage mix with 2 tablespoons white vinegar and 1/2 tsp salt and let it sit for one hour.
  2. Then add dressing:
  • 1 cup Greek yogurt
  • 1/2 cup mayonnaise
  • 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
  • 1 tsp Dijon
  • splash of pickle juice
  • one garlic clove grated
  • Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper