You’ve heard of Montreal bagels and the Montreal Express, but what about Montreal Slaw? That’s the style of no-mayonnaise coleslaw our friend Joanne has been making for years, and to everyone’s delight. Lightly pickled, sweet and crunchy, it makes you wonder why mayo ever intruded in the first place. I recently stumbled upon the name “Montreal Slaw” in Sheryl Julian and Julie Riven’s marvelous book, The Way We Cook: Recipes from the New American Kitchen. Coleslaw recipes date back to the 1700s in the Netherlands (koolsla, or “cabbage salad”), before the Era of Mayonnaise. And while Americans gleefully embraced mayo in slaw, Europeans—and apparently our Northern Neighbors as well—chose to stick with a simple, tangy vinaigrette.…
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Charlie the Tuna Salad
For 50 years I have credited my Mom’s olfactory alarm system for saving us from one of the deadliest poisons known to man. She religiously poked her nose into every can before ruling it fit for consumption. But my memory hasn’t kept up with that of my 97-year-old mother. She remembers that she rejected the Tainted Tuna because of how it looked. I was 13 at the time, and eager to make Mom’s sweet and crunchy tuna salad, a task I always relished (pun unavoidable). I opened the only can we had on the shelf and handed it to Mom. She took a whiff. Fine. But then she stopped. “It looked nasty,” she says.…
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Persian Green Olive and Walnut Salad
Some think a good waiter is someone who sneaks an extra shrimp into your cocktail. Me, I prefer a waiter who gives away the chef’s secrets. I got this recipephany many years ago from a waiter at Lala Rokh on Beacon Hill, an elegant Persian restaurant near John Kerry’s townhouse on Louisburg Square. It was my Dad’s birthday, when the kids were home and my folks could still negotiate at least some of the steep walk to the door. We started with this appetizer called zaitun-e parwardeh. It mesmerized me so much that—sort of like the Men in Black’s Neuralizer—it wiped out my entire memory of the rest of the meal. Sweet, tart, salty,…
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A: This tasty “vinaigrette” has no vinegar and less oil. Q: What is lemon vinaigrette?
This post’s title reads a little like something from the TV show Jeopardy in honor of our guest blogger, Leah Greenwald. As if her accomplishments as an architect and mother of triplets aren’t enough, Leah is also a five-time Jeopardy champion. Leah has great kitchen advice – both for designing kitchens and cooking in them. (Her magnificent cakes and cookies look like they’re on loan from the MFA.) So when she sent me this recipephany I couldn’t wait to try it. As someone who buys vinegar by the gallon, I had trouble grasping the concept of substituting precious fresh lemon juice for vinegar. But as a lemon lover, I agree it’s worth it. And…
