Fourth of July

The potatoes must be parboiled so they will be done at the same time as the chicken.

This salad uses Oven Potatoes rather than fluffy, starchy boiled potatoes. The difference is that the potatoes, browned with the help of a little oil and cooked without water, are crusty, giving the salad a new texture. Dress the salad with either mayonnaise or vinaigrette. A little dry rub on the potatoes will add robust flavor and rusty color to the dressing, a perfect side for lightly seasoned meats and fish. If you’re serving potato salad with peppery rubbed cheater BBQ, season the potatoes only with salt and skip the dry rub. One dry-rubbed menu item per meal is usually plenty.

There are two classic styles of slaw—vinegary and creamy mayonnaise—and probably more than a few hundred variations of each. Our cheater slaw combines the two classic styles, which you can easily push to one side or the other. We go light on the mayo and make it sweet and tangy. If you prefer creamier, add more mayo. If you want a vinegary slaw, simply substitute water for the mayo. See the recipe as a blueprint for your own creative preferences. We redesign it all the time by tossing in an extra ingredient or two. The usual suspects are chopped fresh parsley, fresh cilantro, shredded carrots, chopped bell pepper, bits of fresh jalapeño pepper, chopped chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, green apple chunks, sliced green onion, celery, and blue cheese crumbles.

Stephen Cellar, R. B.’s hungry nephew, asked R. B. where he got that awesome red sauce we had served with burgers at a family picnic. Having grown up in the sophisticated chipotle-buffalo-ranch-bruschetta drive-through era, Stephen didn’t recognize that good old twentieth-century American favorite, “special sauce.” When we grew up, McDonald’s special sauce on a Big Mac was the first condiment other than mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise that anyone considered for a burger. Way before pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, and made-up foreign-sounding food names, even the pedestrian “special sauce” was fancy enough to attract attention. How long did it take us to figure out that it was just like Thousand Island dressing? The mystery ingredient was chili sauce, that misnamed cousin to ketchup shelved beside the cocktail sauces. It looks and tastes like ketchup, but not quite as sweet or silky smooth and without any apparent chili flavor. For a fancy presentation, serve bunless chopped-steak burgers alongside crisp iceberg wedges and ripe tomato slices adorned with thinly sliced red onion, crumbled bacon, and Fridge Door Special Sauce. Or, slather over burgers topped with lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions on a sesame seed bun. It’s so old, it’s new again.

Lemonade and champagne are among our top choices to serve with barbecue, so we mixed them together for an unusual shandy.

If you’re looking for an undemanding tempeh dish that makes a large quantity, here’s a good choice.

If you are fortunate enough to find wild blueberries while they are in season, by all means use them in this recipe; they are smaller than cultivated berries, so you may need an extra cup or two to make up the volume necessary for the pie.

If you have access to a bramble of blackberry bushes, guard it with your life. The price of blackberries makes it more than reasonable to pick your own, besides which nothing is quite so satisfying as picking your own berries. Perhaps it’s knowing where the food came from and taking part in the ancient practice of foraging. If you must use frozen berries, you should measure them while they’re still frozen, because they shrivel as they thaw. Also, it’s important to thaw and drain frozen berries before placing them in the pie shell, otherwise the pie will be watery. Use potato starch in this pie if you can. It gives the filling a clear, jewel-like color, and it has less flavor than cornstarch.

Peach season is fleeting, but this seasonal pie is so delicious that you should slip it into your summer any way you can. If the edges of the crust begin to brown before the rest of the pie, cover them with foil. Enjoy plain or add a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Tiny blue buttercream stars and red-licorice stripes create a patriotic batch of cupcakes to celebrate Independence Day. Festive cupcake liners carry out the theme; see Sources, page 342.

A winning combination of tart and sweet, this county-fair favorite is marked by a tightly woven lattice crust. Sour cherries enjoy a short season—typically a few weeks in late June and early July—so snap them up when you see them, and freeze any extras: Line a baking sheet with parchment and freeze pitted cherries in a single layer. Transfer frozen cherries to a resealable bag; they should keep in the freezer up to one year.

Take all the layers of classic cheesecake—crumbly graham-cracker crust, rich, creamy filling, and fresh fruit topping—and combine them in a modern tart. Sour cream ups the tanginess factor of the filling; almonds round out the cookie crust; and sugar sweetens the plums, which are cooked into a jam. Save some of the cooking syrup for tossing with the blueberries before scattering them over the top.

I serve baked beans with everything from hot dogs to Barbecued Chicken (page 96). They are a great side dish, and the bacon, molasses, and brown sugar in this version make them irresistible.

There are as many varieties of coleslaw as there are shades of pink, especially in the South! A lot of coleslaw recipes have sugar as an ingredient, but this one gets that bit of sweetness from sweet salad pickles, which don’t mask the fresh flavors of the cabbage and carrots. We serve this every Fourth of July with Barbecued Pork Ribs (page 84) and Easy Baked Beans (page 133).

Save this pressed sandwich for the height of summer, when you can get locally grown zucchini, eggplant, and tomatoes. After grilling the zucchini and eggplant, layer them on a roll slathered with romesco, the Spanish tomato and almond sauce. (Refrigerate any unused romesco and use it within a day or two on another sandwich or with grilled fish or shrimp.) The sandwich can be made hours ahead, so it’s a good choice for a backpack lunch or a picnic. Omit the ham to make it vegetarian. Piquillo peppers are small, slightly spicy roasted red peppers sold in jars at shops that specialize in Spanish or Mediterranean foods (see Ingredient Resources, page 193).

A favorite sandwich is updated as a main-course salad, with a tangy buttermilk dressing standing in for the mayonnaise spread.