Three Things

What to do with all that zucchini, an A-plus summer cookout menu, and reading recs from David Sedaris himself

Greetings eaters and readers! I’d like to begin your weekly missive by thanking everyone who participated in last Friday’s “Ask Me Anything” thread, especially since you gave me some excellent ideas for today’s newsletter. A few topics covered: Fun summer reading recs that don’t “actively kill brain cells;" NYC itineraries for families with young kids, old kids, and no kids; podcast recs; vacation cooking strategies; what cookbooks to give a just-married couple; recipe organization apps; staying sane while cooking for young kids; and what cocktails we should be teeing up for Election Night. (Whoo boy!) In other news, I’m working and cooking from the Berkshires this week, and I think I’ve made the above salad every night since I’ve been here. (More details below.) Look for a Berkshires Vacation Highlight Reel coming soon, covering everything we’ve loved so far in the land of winding country roads and farms and lakeside hiking and swimming holes and charming old New England villages. (Reminder that all Vacation Highlight Reels — London, Oxford, Vermont, Sicily, Maine, Kiawah Island — live permanently in my archive and are always available for paying subscribers.) And now, your Three Things…

1. Summer Menu of the Week, Part 3

One of the best questions on that Ask Me Anything thread came from reader Caroline:

“I would love to see an entertaining post with grilled Italian sausages, peppers and onions. I trust you and Andy sooo much. This is a menu I would love to deliver to company very soon.”

Caroline, you know us well! I immediately turned to Andy when I read that and said, THIS is what we are having for dinner on Saturday night, as is my right and privilege as a Weekday Vegetarian. Plus, it’s exactly the kind of recipe I love — an unfussy street-food classic, but very easy to level-up with quality ingredients. In this case, we procured North Plain Farm hot Italian sausages, plus peppers and onions from various vendors at the Great Barrington farmer’s market. It was just the two of us for dinner, but obviously the whole thing is very scale-able, so below I wrote it to serve 6-8. That is definitely how I’ll be making it next time. Who wants to come over?

Grilled Sausage Rolls with Onions and Peppers

A few notes: I could only find hot dog rolls, but your best bet would be the soft and chewy rolls they sell in the bakery department of your supermarket, the kind with a Feast of San Gennaro vibe. (You don’t want a crusty baguette.) Also, in the photo accompanying this recipe in my newsletter, you can see that we placed the pot of vegetables right on the grill, but obviously you can prepare them on the stovetop. The photo shows enough for two; this recipe below tripled that, which should work just fine. Serves 6-8.

3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more as needed
5 small bell peppers (green, orange, red, or a mix) seeded and thinly sliced
1 Italian long pepper (I didn’t use, but how could it be bad?), seeded and thinly sliced
2 large onions (white or yellow), thinly sliced
2 tablespoons dried oregano
kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
pinch of red pepper flakes or to taste
1 1/2 sausages per diner (any kind: Sweet Italian pork, hot Italian pork, sweet Italian chicken, hot Italian chicken, veggie)
1/3 cup red wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
grinder/hoagie/sub rolls (1 1/2 per diner), see above note
Spicy brown mustard (such as Gulden’s) for serving

Set the grill to medium-high heat, about 400°F if using a gas grill. Add the olive oil to a large non-reactive skillet or pot set over medium heat. (The 400°F heat worked for the vegetable mixture, too.) Add the peppers, onions, oregano, salt, and red pepper flakes, stirring constantly until soft and sweet. (You don’t want these to be caramelized or frizzled, so it’s not important that you have a ton of space in the pot.) Add more olive oil if they look like they are drying out.

While the vegetables cook down, add the sausages to the grill, turning every few minutes until they are charred and cooked through, about 8 minutes. If you like your buns toasted, place them cut-side down on the grill alongside the sausages for 30-45 seconds. Remove to a platter, spread a little mustard on one side of each bun, and stuff with a sausage. Remove the vegetables from the heat and stir in the vinegar. Taste for salt and pepper and adjust the seasoning accordingly. Top the sausage rolls with the onion-and-pepper mix and serve.

Here’s your downloadable PDF with the recipe…

Dals Grilled Sausage Rolls With Onions And Peppers

78.6KB ∙ PDF file

Download

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P.S. I could only find hot dog buns, which is what you see in the photo, but you really want to seek out the soft and chewy rolls they sell in the bakery department of your supermarket, the kind with a Feast of San Gennaro vibe.

Thanks so much for the idea, Caroline!

And on the side…

We also hit High Lawn Farm, the bucolic, family-run creamery and dairy farm in Lee, Massachusetts, where we ate Strawberry-Rhubarb ice cream and tried our hardest not to bring home every cheese they sold in the shop. We landed on High Lawn’s Blue, for its good balance of crumble-to-creaminess and just the right amount of stink. It made an excellent companion to all the salad ingredients we brought home from the market: arugula, nectarines, tomatoes, plus the thinnest shavings of red onion, and lots of freshly ground black pepper. (All tossed with my all-purpose vinaigrette.) If I was having people over, I might add a potato salad to the spread, either a classic Double Mustard or the Sweet-and-Sour German one that will always remind me of my dad.

P.S. Summer Menu of the Week, Part 1: Yogurt-Marinated Grilled Chicken; and Summer Menu of the Week Part 2: A Veggie Burger Feast.

2. The Market Report: Zucchini

It’s summer squash season, which means it’s the season of listening to my husband rattle off alllll the reasons why zucchini is not deserving of any attention. He has somehow raised both of my daughters to be squash-anthropes, too, but fear not, I am standing strong over here, including several summer squash recipes in The Weekday Vegetarians: Get Simple, and just this past weekend giving zucchini the star treatment in a reel devoted to my book’s Buckwheat Crepes with Summer Vegetables. I love this recipe because you can pretty much use it all year long with any combination of cheese and peak-season vegetables. Other ideas for those of you supporting the zucchini ticket this year: Jesse Szewczyk’s very intriguing Pasta with No-Cook Zucchini Sauce, as demo’d on this video by Chris Morocco — who claims right up front that it changed the way he thought about the summer squash. (AHEM!) For a family-friendly option (and by family I mean your family not mine), there are Zucchini Fritters, which freeze beautifully and are as good when served with spicy mayo as they are with a soy-lime dip. For a sweet option: Lukas Volger’s Zucchini-and-Blackberry Muffins, which have been calling me ever since I spied the photo; Lastly, is it even a DALS newsletter if I don’t mention Julius Roberts at least once? Here is his museum-worthy “Courgette” Ricotta Basil Tart. Thoughts? What’s the best thing you’ve made with zucchini this summer? Haters need not apply.

3. What’s David Sedaris Reading?

I’m so happy to introduce the next writer in my “What the Writers are Reading” series. David Sedaris is usually described as a humorist, but he’s always been so much more than that in my family. One of us is always reading or re-reading his essays, or reminding each other of some hilarious story he wrote about his boyfriend Hugh, or his friends and siblings and his, shall-we-say, eccentric father. I also love how generous David is with writers — whenever I see him on tour, he starts by spending a few minutes convincing his sell-out crowd to track down a book he’s loving. So I thought: Who better to include in my reading series? Here’s what David told me:

Best book you’ve read this year? The Art of Dying by Peter Schjeldahl. The title essay ran in The New Yorker in 2019, when he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, and it’s stunning. I read it over and over, enchanted by the language, and by how bluntly he reveals the truth. The essays that follow it are about art and artists, and work even if you don’t know the person he’s talking about.

What book do you always come back to? The book I reread every summer is The Easter Parade, by Richard Yates. It’s a tragic novel about two sisters, but then, isn’t every cradle to grave story a tragedy? I love the line-by-line writing, the way he describes people. The book now seems a bit harsh but at the time it was published you still heard words like “spinster.” On a side note, in Scotland recently I was told that an unmarried woman is only a spinster until the age of twenty-five. After that she becomes a thornback, which is a flat fish—a skate—covered with hard little spikes. Isn’t that so insulting!

What’s on deck? I just got Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner and am on page twelve. I loved Fleishman Is In Trouble. Just loved it. She has such a unique voice, even in her journalism.

What did you have for dinner last night? Hugh is the cook in our house but I was alone in London last night and turned my back on some gnocchi, which was mush by the time I returned to it—just disgusting. I had it with salmon that was right on the line and stunk up the whole neighborhood.

Sounds awesome. Thanks, David!

If you are new to David, start with: Dress Your Family in Corduroy in Denim, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and last year’s Happy Go Lucky. Or check out his upcoming tour schedule.

Have a great week,

Jenny

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