Saturday, another weekend, another cookout.

Sometime Saturday morning, I decided to clean out the fridge. We had a lot of produce that was no longer safe for human consumption that needed to get thrown out. I also had some of my mother's cabbage rolls left, but I was reluctant to throw them out. I decided to give them one last hurrah, even though they'd been in my fridge for over a month now. There were only three left, but a great deal of cabbage and juices, so I reheated them in my everyday pan, allowing lots of time for the water to boil back into the rice. I also through a little fettuccine into the mix just to see how it would come out.
It came out pretty much how you'd expect pasta boiled in the juice of sauerkraut and tomato paste to come out, maybe even better if you don't expect that sort of thing to be edible. The cabbage rolls had seen better days, but still tasted edible. I did start to feel a bit off after a while, though and started to worry that I'd be too sick to attend my friend's birthday barbecue. Never underestimate the powers of a good Saturday nap-and-rally, though.

Birthday cookout at a friend's apt. In this city there isn't a lot of bbq space to go around. I was expecting a circular grill around 18" wide up on an unfinished roof. I love that sort of affair, especially for parties under 6 people. You get the most wonderful sense of isolation and retreat, the sort of thing that's very hard to come by in Manhattan.
This was not that kind of affair, although it was a delightful retreat from the city bustle. My friends' apartment building had the most amazing space in the back yard. "Yard" is actually a pretty poor label for the space. "Terrace" is a little more apt. Imagine a tierd series of decks sporting stone walkways and overhanging trellis running along a meandering country river. The river in question was the edge of where they dug Manhattan away from the basement floor to allow them terrace space of their own. Then spreading up and back a space almost as big as the building out front is a connected series of walkways and tables cradled in ivy-covered fences. It was at the peak of these terraces, in a full-sized grill, that my friend threw down on burgers stuffed with onions and cheddar cheese and some assorted sausages and red hots.
I put down two of the burgers. I also sampled the red hots and a spicy lamb sausage from Whole Foods. There was a whole rainbow of meat that I couldn't even get into since I was saving room for beer and salad.
"SALAD???!?!?!?!" you say? Well, all of this meat and the birthday girl was a vegan, go figure. I wanted to show my appreciation in culinary form, but I had a hard time planning a plate for a barbecue without any meat or cheese. I decided to go for salads, and picked up some interesting and/or versatile things at Trader Joe's on the way down to the barbecue. When I got there, the birthday girl's sister was already planning a salad, so we teamed up to put out a nice pair of salads.
First up was another variation of my Santa Fe meets Korea salad. This time the romaine hearts were dusted with cayenne pepper, adobo, cane sugar and a touch of ancho chile before being doused in lime juice and then tossed with black beans and pan seared sweet peppers. I need to thicken the dressing just a bit and back the lime up with a bit more earnest acidity. I wish I could find wheat vinegar here in the States. I found it in a specialty import shop in Osaka and it led to a fantastically delicate Philipino pork adobo, a story for another day.
The second salad was based more off the designs of the birthday girl's sister. She was planning a spinach salad with strawberries and blueberries. I had some raspberries with me and pecan pieces. We dusted the spinach with adobo seasoning and rubbed sage, then tossed in the berries. Foraging in a kitchen that did not belong to either of us, we managed to put together a dressing of balsamic vinegar, olive oil and grand marnier. Finally, we finished the salad with the pecan pieces after toasting them in a frying pan.
Both salads sat outside for a while without being touched. At first I thought I had made a terrible bbq faux pas, but then I realized that we just had no plates or forks with which to eat the salads. Rather than get forks, though, I incited a bout of salad drinking. The spinach salad worked much better than the Koreanesque salad in this regard. The romaine pieces were just to wide and springy to be effectively dumped into your open mouth from a cup. The spinach and berries seemed to slide down more effectively.
The birthday girl's sister's fiancée also made dolmas (stuffed grape leaves) stuffed with rice, pine nuts and rasins. They helped to polarize the palate of dinner into the strictly carnivorous and strictly vegan, making this one of the most conflicted, although very satisfying barbecues I've ever been to.

After packing in as much meat and salad as I could, I thought I was set for the evening, but the heat managed to change my mind. Later that night I found myself compelled to put down a Hulk popsicle. With summer in the city enveloping me in a haze of my own perspiration trying desperately to escape my body, the prospect of lowering my core temperature with direct application of ice was just too appealing. There is no shame in a grown man eating popsicles inspired by super heroes. None.