I've Been Grilling Seafood

I have to say, I really enjoy grilling. It makes me feel a little like a cave man, you know, "me start fire, me cook meat." I like the flow of a grilled meal, do the prep, start the fire, pour a martini, pour another martini, grill the food, and eat. If you have friends over the grill can be a nice social center too. When I think about a week's worth of grilling I try to plan for a fish, chicken, and a shrimp night. One recipe that I've done inside and out on the grill is Spicy Grilled Shrimp from Mark Bittman's, The Best Recipes in the World. This is highly spiced, not spicy, shrimp and my feeling is that you could half or pass on the tablespoon of salt in the paste. I like to skewer shrimp to grill normally but this time just set them down. Served with rice and lemon wedges it is tasty and a simple weeknight meal.
I find it very hard to resist whole fish when I see it at the supermarket and such was the case when I headed out to buy swordfish steaks and saw whole porgies sitting there. So, I got them both. My plan for the swordfish steaks was to follow Marcella Hazan's Grilled Swordfish Stuffed with Roasted Red Peppers, from her Marcella Says... cookbook. Take a swordfish steak and slice it horizontally into two pieces, a top and a bottom. Put strips of roasted red peppers on the bottom half (Hazan would like us to roast them ourselves; I used prepared ones, you do what you want) and then return the "lid" and secure it with tooth-picks. Mine looked a little like Frankenstein. I brushed the porgy with oil and then hit it with salt and pepper and then both fishes onto the grill. I made a Greek fish sauce with oil, lemon, oregano and salt to put on at the table. I prepared a fennel gratin as a side. While I love whole fish I'm not great at de-boning, you may want to take a look at YouTube for a few ideas; here's one.
I'm not a fan of grilled tuna generally because it seems like there is about a 1 second window in which it's done and if you miss that window, it's overdone and not good. At least that's been my experience. Alas, I was swayed to give it another try by a recipe for Grilled Tuna Salad Nicoise from the 2009 Gourmet Cookbook. This dinner was no small task and were I to do it again I'd cook the green beans, hard-boiled eggs, and potatoes ahead of time. As it was I did it all in "real time" and it really kept me hopping. I grilled the tuna for about 7 minutes total and that was just fine; maybe 6 minutes next time. This recipe makes a mountain of a meal and it would be a show stopper for guests. If I did it again for two I would half the recipe and I'm sure I'd have leftovers.

Still Cool Enough to use the Range

One of the nice things about the spring is that you get a mix of warm and cool weather. In any given week you can cook inside and out. By July, chances are it's regularly too hot to turn on the range so I'm forced outside. Anyway, last week was cool enough to get inside a few times and the results were great.
I did a nice summer meal of poached chicken with tomatoes and olives served with green beans. I took my recipe from the 2009 Gourmet cookbook but found the identical recipe on line here. Poaching chicken breasts, a first for me, tested my nerve and I didn't wait to see if 6 minutes in the boiling water and 15 minutes resting would work. I poached until done, with little adverse impact. It's pretty to look at and would make a great meal for the patio, most of which could be prepared prior to the arrival of guests and served at room temperature. Late in the summer I'd use fresh tomatoes instead of canned but I do like the acidity of canned tomatoes.
A cookbook that is definitely on my "to buy" list is All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking by Molly Stevens. I looked through it in a library and copied the recipe for Chicken Braised with Prunes and Green Olives, among others. The recipes are carefully explained and they are packed with skills that can transfer to other recipes. One in particular is letting your chicken sit undisturbed in the oil to give it a good sear. Patience and faith pay off with a brown textured surface to the chicken that holds up even in 40 minutes of braising. That proved to be a great weeknight meal and I served it with boiled potatoes. If you don't like the word "prunes" call them dried plums. Lemon zest, white wine and vinegar make for some great subtle flavors.
I took the advice of the NY Times Diner's Journal and tried Eggplant and Roast Tomatoes Gratin. Too early for yellow grape tomatoes so they were all red in my version. Basically an eggplant parmigiana but the ingredients are chopped up and mixed together prior to baking. I added half and then half of the cheese and added the other half and cheese. I don't know, it seemed more "gratin" to me. It was tasty and we used it as a side two nights later for company.

Pan Roasted Lobster

This was a killer Tuesday night meal. If I had followed Tom Colicchio's entire recipe from "Think Like a Chef," I would have been at it for hours. I was most interested in trying the technique and opted not to serve the lobster with the spiced lobster sauce which required that I follow two additional recipes not to mention the intricacy of preparing the lobster sauce itself. Let me mention though that one of the ingredients for this sauce was lobster butter which was butter and lobster roe mixed together. Can you imagine how good that sauce must be? I bet it would knock you right on your ear.
I purchased four, four-ounce frozen lobster tails and let them defrost in the fridge for a day. The pan roasting is really a way to finish the lobster and give it a roasted taste. The tails spent 4 minutes in boiling water and then into cold water to cool. I cracked them open and dropped them into a pan with butter and oil, slated and peppered them and added a bay leaf, after a minute a little more butter and I kept them moving. Three minutes and out they came onto plates with sauteed cherry tomatoes and snow peas. Instead of butter we dipped the lobster into a ginger sauce. The lobster had nice butter and oil pan flavor that was a welcome change from boiled lobster. The meal was a treat and it came together quickly; uncomplicated enough that I even cooked a pasta dinner for the kids while preparing it.
I'm still jazzed about this cookbook! Worth noting is that chef Tom Colicchio made a cameo appearance on HBO's "Treme" which if you're not watching, you should.

A Couple Nights of Italian Cooking

I just love Claudia Roden's "The Food of Italy." Spend some time in a "general" cookbook and then switch over to something like "The Food of Italy" and you'll see that it's like cooking without a net. The recipes are so spare; it really comes down to ingredients, combinations, and cooking techniques. I find the simplicity a little unnerving at times. Anyway, between Claudia Roden and Marcella Hazan I pulled together a few Italian meals indoors as the cold weather has returned.
From Claudia Roden's recipes I did stuffed peppers. Her recipe calls for arborio rice, chopped tomatoes, she makes a suggestion of spicing it up with chopped green olives and capers which I added. They came out great; there is a nice mint flavor (I used dried) that made itself known every time I ate one the next few days. If I could do it over I would cook the rice a bit longer in the skillet. We served it with scalloped potatoes...can't get enough of those.
Later in the week I went for a two course dinner starting with Marcella Hazan's Minestrina Tricolore which is a potato soup with onion, carrots and celery. After the potatoes were cooked I used an immersion blender and blended it with the cooking liquid. The additional vegetables were added after a bit of time in a pan with butter and oil. While that was cooking I made Polpettine Fritte and Cipolle al Forno from "The Food of Italy." Breaded fried meatballs (turkey, in this case) they were fantastic, I served this with baked sweet onions. When the onions were done I loosely chopped them and mixed them with a little bit of vinaigrette.

A Word About My Grill

I've enjoyed grilling for about 15 years and I cooked on gas for the first 9 years and now charcoal for the last 6. We live in a house without air conditioning so summer grilling is really a necessity since it's just too hot to cook in the kitchen.

Once you get the hang of lighting the coals (I use a chimney) it can be easily worked into your cooking routine and I'll guess that I can get the grill ready about as fast as a gas grill. I'm a purest so when I light the coals I use a flint and some dry tinder so that the butane or sulphur of a match don't interfere with the true charcoal flavor... NOT! I use charcoal because the fire gets hot, the "fire" flavor is real, and it's fun to cook over hot coals that I started. I'm not particular about my coals. I use Kingsford and that's fine. I've tried hardwood chunk charcoal and it takes some getting used to. If it was easy to buy in my area I might switch for a summer to see what I really think but so far it only shows up in our supermarkets every now and then.
What makes my grilling truly unique is that I have replaced my original metal grate with a custom cast iron grill surface that I purchased from Craycort which as far as I can tell is basically a one-man company. This guy invented an ingenious insert for a Weber grill that completely transforms the experience. If you like to grill and you use a Weber kettle, I strongly suggest that you check this out.
Cast Iron gets very hot and holds the heat. It leaves great grill marks and I have to say it is a real treat. The quarters can be removed so that you can add more fuel. The company sells some additional inserts for these quarters and they too look like great additions.
Here's some swordfish and a red pepper form earlier in the week.

First Night on the Grill this Season

Last night was a great night to grill. It was about 85 degrees outside so no oven use in my plans. I has set out to prepare Fennel-Marinated Halibut with Fennel Tzatziki for mom and dad and some sausage and "speedies" (skewered marinated chicken breast tenders) for the kids. The fish recipe is from Ruth Reichl's 2009 Gourmet Today cookbook; I did spot a version of the recipe at myrecipe.com though, find it here. I've probably cooked 40 recipes out of this book since January! While shopping I ran across some whole Boston Mackerel in the market so grabbed two of those.
Game plan: Marinate the Halibut in lemon juice, oil and crushed, toasted fennel seed. Skewer and marinate the speedies in bottled Teriyaki marinade. Make the Fennel Tzatziki which is fennel bulb chopped and mixed with lemon; crushed, toasted fennel seed; Greek yogurt; lemon juice; chopped fennel fronds. Mix up and refrigerate. Clean the Mackerel (Who knew? Not gutted...seemed to be a scaleless fish.) Marinate in some lemon and oil and then roll in plain breadcrumbs.
Next? Fire up a Martini and then fire up the grill. I started with the sausage and some marinated red peppers that I forgot to mention. Once they had some nice coloring I moved them to the side and put down the speedies. They cooked quickly and I moved all of the cooked food to plates. I oiled the surface (I cook on charcoal in a Weber with a cast iron grill surface, more on that in a later post) and put on the fish. The Halibut cooked up nicely with little fuss, the Mackerel proved a bit tricky and fell apart.
My feelings about the meal are mixed. The Halibut with the sauce was great and I'll do it again. The mix of the grilled fish and the cool, tangy Tzatziki was just great. I didn't like the Mackerel. Next time I'll ask them to clean it and I'll see about really oiling the grill surface to prevent sticking. The speedies were great to pick at as the meal wound down.

Weeknight Roasted Chicken

This was a fun weeknight dinner that prepped quickly and then spent significant time in the oven providing some time to have a martini look at the paper, etc.

A four pound chicken is about the size of a football and cooks in about 90 minutes. Pretty simple stuff here, cut up an onion and stuff it in the cavity with whatever extra fresh herbs I have on hand; olive oil on the outside of the bird followed by liberal amounts of salt and pepper; into the oven for the first half hour, covered with foil, at 450. At 30 minutes, uncover and reduce to 350 for another 50-60 minutes. I check that it's done with an instant read thermometer (160 degrees).

So I was thinking chicken, salad, and couscous but then spotted aging potatoes. Within a few minutes I go from baked to mashed to gratin and arrive at scalloped. I pull out A Passion For Potatoes, by Lydie Marshall. I've had this cookbook for

years and I turn to it regularly for gratin's, roasted potatoes and tonight scalloped. Adjusting a recipe for "scalloped potatoes with blue cheese" to what I have on hand I end up with Scalloped Potatoes with Cheddar Cheese. Pretty easy; thinly slice two peeled pounds of potatoes (Yukon Gold in my case); thinly slice an onion; 2 cups milk (I had a little heavy cream on hand so I mixed that with milk); about a cup or more of shredded sharp cheddar cheese that I had on hand; layer a sprayed 9x13 roasting dish with half of the potatoes; next layer all of the onion; sprinkle half of the cheese; layer of remaining potatoes; sprinkle rest of the cheese; pour in milk. I salt and peppered the top and into the same oven with the chicken at 350 for what ended up to be 60 minutes. You'll want to go light on the portion size as this is rich but heavenly.Chicken and potatoes came out together and I served it with a salad.

Primi e Secondi

When I want to unwind from a long day I mix a drink and lose myself in a recipe, the more complicated the better. Over the last few weeks I've really been enjoying cooking out of Marcella Hazan's The Classic Italian Cookbook.

One thing I particularly like is her paragraph at the end of the recipe on pairing the dish with a "primi" or "secondi". I've never found that to be easy so I welcome having my hand held through it.So on a Wednesday night when I get home at 7:00 PM, I pour a Martini and take on Fettuccine Alfredo followed by Chicken Scaloppine with Lemon Sauce and Carciofini Fritti (fried artichoke hearts). Moving swiftly, we were sitting down for our primi at about 8:00. Eight oz. of fettuccine tossed in about 2 oz. of cream that's been heated until thickened; add another 2 oz. of cream and, 1 Tbsp. butter and 4 oz. Parmesan cheese; continue tossing until mixed, melted, etc. Pinch of nutmeg and onto plates. This might knock your socks off so serve a small portion.

If you're prepped you can get the artichokes done while the fettuccine is boiling. Dip the thawed artichoke hearts in beaten egg, seasoned bread-crumbs then into hot olive oil flipping until browned.

The chicken comes together quickly if you buy breast cutlets. Then it's just a matter of a quick dip in flour and then into a little bit of hot butter and oil, remove them and then add the lemon juice and lemons then return the

chicken and you're good to go.