Good morning. I’ve taken to throwing a whole head of cabbage onto the grill a few minutes after I’ve lighted the fire, so that by the time the wood’s burned into coals and I’m ready to cook my protein, the vegetable is blackened and charred all over.
It’s a weeknight-friendly no-recipe recipe: Take that scary-looking monster into the kitchen and place it in your sink or a large bowl. After a few minutes you’ll be able to peel away the outer layers of scorched leaves. Get the steaming, smoky interior on a cutting board, cut it in half, cut out the stalk and chop the cabbage into shreds for a slaw. Dressed in a mixture of mayonnaise, sour cream, hot sauce and a healthy splash of red wine vinegar, it makes for a wonderful accompaniment to, say, a beer-can chicken (above).
That’s one option for tonight, anyway. (Please don’t write me an angry note about the perils of cooking with a beer can. You can get a vertical chicken roasting stand on the internet for less than $10.) Another is this stunner of a vegan summer dinner: savory Thai noodles with seared brussels sprouts.
Now, it’s nothing to do with mung beans or fatback, but you should read Patrick Radden Keefe’s new collection of profiles, “Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks.”
I enjoyed Philip Gerard’s look back at the working boats of North Carolina, in Our State magazine.
Here’s a fascinating “Diary” by Iain Sinclair in the London Review of Books, about the geography of wealth in London and its environs.
Finally, there are three new poems by Fahad Al-Amoudi in The White Review. I recommend the first one, “The Old Justice,” but please do read on through the others. And I’ll be back on Wednesday.
