A Garden of Grilled Vegetables

My 4th of July weekend was a grilling tour de force.

There were more fireworks on my old beat-up kettle grill than in the Macy's light display over New York Harbor. I grilled every land animal, fish and plant I could find. Even my dog Teesha got a little nervous when we ran low on food!

After running through the classics, and after the quail, baby lamb and lobsters came off the grill, I seemed to throw on even more vegetables than protein. A healthy diet is important to me, so I try to eat lots of vegetables -- and it turns out you can grill almost all of them.

You name it: string beans, asparagus, tomatoes, radicchio, Belgian endive, corn and baby leeks were surprisingly great. And of course, the usual suspects, such as red, yellow and green peppers, zucchini, red onions, eggplant and mushrooms delivered like champs, as always.

You see, you could caramelize an old shoe, and it would taste great. Vegetables have sugar in them, just like protein does, and when you convert those sugars into carbon through searing heat, they taste just as delicious as a perfectly charred steak.

There's nothing complicated about it: just prepare a favorite vegetable as you would for a more traditional recipe, and grill it instead of boiling or steaming. ...