Starter

Since R. B. has expanded his blade assortment beyond an ax, a maul, and a cleaver to include a few kitchen knives, he’s more than happy to wield the Santoku for diced salad vegetables. This kitchen task is best suited for the detail oriented. Around here, that would be R. B., whose T-shirt collection is always impeccably folded, stacked, and arranged by hobby. Instead of limp baby weeds, we vote for a crisp head of chilled iceberg lettuce that cuts beautifully into bite-size pieces for serving with barbecue.

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.

Next to firing up the smoker, having a catfish fry in the party pot (our name for the turkey fryer) is our preferred all-day patio workout. Then, after hours of fun over the hot cauldron, we’re done with frying for months. Except maybe for an occasional batch of corn tortilla chips. The thing about catfish is that its soft, almost mushy flesh demands a rigid cornmeal exoskeleton forged in hot peanut oil. An oven and a seasoned panko/cornmeal crust mimic the deep-fried crust with a fraction of the mess and without oil recycling in the morning. R. B. confirms that leftover Catfish Sticks reheat like a dream in a toaster oven. He makes a mean cheater po’boy with reheated catfish sticks piled on a hamburger bun slathered with tartar sauce and topped with iceberg lettuce excavated from the crisper drawer.

Fresh briny oysters out of a jar satisfy our periodic oyster craving without the hassle of shucking. To cheat, swap the half shell for a casserole dish and dress the oysters with smoky shallots, butter, and lemon. A few minutes under the broiler and you’ve got a seaside party anywhere, anytime. Slurp them up with saltines. Cold beer, sparkling wine, and dry white wine are what we’re drinking.

We’ve always had a thing for the charred lamb kebabs on flat skewers that the kebab/gyro joints do so well. One place even gave R. B. a couple of swordlike skewers after he bombarded them with questions. We make lamb/beef combo meatballs flavored with cumin to roast in the oven, and sometimes even finish on the grill. The meatballs cook on a baking sheet just like a pan of cookies. We’ve come to appreciate the many lives of a good batch of meatballs. A bag of Q’Balls in the freezer is as prized as a bag of brisket. Toss them with pasta, stuff them into pita pockets and sub sandwiches, serve them as a heavy appetizer or a quick heat-up for kid suppers. Customize the Q’Balls by substituting a couple teaspoons of any of the cheater dry rubs for the salt and seasonings.

Dating back at least to the 1950s is a party classic known as sweet-and-sour meatballs, or smoky sausages in an easy blend of mustard and jelly. We’ve seen signature variations on this theme using just about every flavor of jelly and mustard around. In the end, they all work the same, producing an easy sweet-and-sour sauce for the meat to bathe in. R. B.’s Aunt Kate, a veteran hostess and merrymaking ringleader in Melbourne, Florida, gives particularly high marks to dishes like this that score lowest in effort and highest in empty bowl at cocktail-recipe swap meets. Our somewhat Asian fusion variation calls for broiled fresh pineapple and kielbasa.

These days quality hardwood-smoked salmon and trout in convenient Cryovac packages are easy to find. What we never expected was that even canned tuna, a product that has required little contemplation beyond water- versus oil-packed, would go through a major transformation with the new retort vacuum-packed foil pouch. No can opener, no draining, and new flavors to play with. A pouch or two of hickory-smoked tuna works for this spread. When we say any fish, we mean any fish or any shellfish, like smoked oysters or clams. We usually use a frozen pack of R. B.’s patio-smoked, fresh-caught Rhode Island bluefish courtesy of his friend and neighbor Chappy Pierce. Vary the ratio of seafood to cream cheese to your liking. If things taste fishy, add lemon juice. Serve the spread mounded in a bowl garnished with capers and lemon slices. We prefer plain water crackers for serving.

Have we cheesed you out? Take a cheese break and try this straight vegetable-bean puree with nutty sweet garlic and smoked paprika. It may not be the lead-off dish to a night of Crock Dogs, but it fashionably introduces dressier barbecue dinners. We especially like it with Tandoori BBQ Chicken Thighs (page 96), Cider-Soy Pork Tenderloin (page 79), House Lamb Shanks (page 128), and Ultimate Cheater Oven-Smoked Salmon (page 132).

In spite of his Irish tendencies to worry and brood, R. B. pretends to think of himself as an upbeat guy who genuinely wants to like things. Even so, he’s given up on grilled shrimp-stuffed jalapeño peppers. It’s hard to cook a raw shrimp tucked inside a pepper unless the pepper is roasted to bitter death. Cheesy alligator snouts—broiled and blistered jalapeños with melted cheese—never disappoint. Broil or toaster-oven these treats and all they need as garnish is plenty of cold beer. Serve the broiled snouts as a conversation-starting appetizer, whole and hot from the oven, or sliced and set in little tortilla scoops. Serve them as a side to a Mexican feast paired with Cheater Carne Adovada Alinstante (page 56). Jalapeños are usually tolerably hot, although it’s impossible to know until you take a bite. Satisfy all your guests with a combination of hot green jalapeños and the mild mini red and yellow sweet bell peppers.

Any appetizer spread, even this one of conventional cheese ball ingredients smashed into a spread, becomes much more glamorous when paired with all things pale green—celery sticks, thin green apple wedges, or Belgian endive. Don’t underestimate the allure of a generous pile of green grapes, either.

Deviled eggs can create a fair amount of anxiety. It’s the peeling that’s the problem. Experts say older eggs with more of an air pocket peel more easily, some say leave the cooked eggs in the fridge a couple of days before peeling, some say add a little vinegar to the boiling water. All we know is that when it counts, they don’t peel. Deviled Egg Spread with Smoked Paprika is the happy outcome after a fit of frustration with a bowl of broken hard-cooked eggs. Hey, you’re thinking, that’s just egg salad. So what! The smoked paprika adds the devil and makes a perfectly lovely spread for party rye or crackers.

The Phoenician port of Karalis is Cagliari and, sitting on the island’s southern verges on the Gulf of the Angels, it seems not of Sardegna. The Sards who live away from the port say it is a place doubled-faced and call the Cagliaritani hollow-hearted. They say Cagliari is of the world and not of Sardegna. Sardi falsi—sham Sards—they are called. Surely discordant, as a city, with the Stone Age commonweal of the island’s interior, Cagliari’s most pleasant quarter seems the one raised up in the serene, medieval tracks of the Pisani. There, embraced by walls, new—as measured in Sard antiquity—one senses, still, some sweet press of sympathy. And it is there on its piazzette, where one can sit under broad, blue-striped umbrellas, to sip at cool Nuragus di Cagliari between melting bites of salty bottarga, the Sards’ caviar. Fashioned from eggs harvested from the cefalo—the gray mullet—the roe sacs are taken whole, compressed under thick hefts of marble, rubbed with unpounded crystals of sea salt, then left to dry on grass mats under the Cagliaritano sun. What emerges after several months of patience is a supple, glossy mass that, when shaved or grated gives up an authoritative yet balmy brininess. In the humblest of osterie as it is in the ristoranti, this bottarga, the Sards’ caviar, is presented with simple adornments. Rather easily hunted up in American specialty stores, look, though, for the bottarga di cefalo rather than the more common, far less delectable, bottarga di tonno, made from eggs of the tuna. Here follows a recipe for a most uncommon, sensual sort of overture to lunch.