103 posts tagged “grilling”

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and the wee little donkey, too.

I used to make some really horrible looking meals, way back. But I kinda figured I'd gotten good at this cooking thing, now. Good enough to not make anything that looked this nasty. I stand corrected. Damn. It tasted good, though. The bacon was nice and crispy, and the chicken breast nice and moist. The corn was good also. And the sauce was reasonable — not great, but reasonable.

But holy shit, that is one awful looking meal.

Strips of pork tenderloin sliced thin, marinated in a mixture of Szechuan chili, Hoisin, black bean and soy sauce, toasted sesame seed oil, toasted sesame seeds and Szechuan peppercorns (whole — bad idea), crushed black peppercorns, scallions and a non-seeded Jalapeño. Later, I adjusted the marinade with lemon juice, white wine vinegar and Shiraz sauce and some apricot jam.

This was then grilled on a very high heat coal barbecue, with a bunch of sliced onions. The flavors disappeared completely. I tested some of the pork halfway through the marination process, by sautéing it over very high heat in a non-stick pan, and the result was much better there: I got some brownage, and the flavors were preserved. Over the grill, I mostly got a steaming effect, in spite of having the coals actually touching the griddle.

Served with lettuce, cucumber, Roma tomatoes and bean sprouts, wrapped in a grilled tortilla. The whole thing was basically inspired by that Korean fire beef recipe, Bul Go Ki.

Quite good stuff. But plenty of things to consider, ponder, and improve.

Christ, what a mess... I saw a show — Molto Mario I think — that featured a fish fillet with pancetta, wrapped in parchment or foil, and baked. It also reminded me of a Jamie Oliver salmon with lemon thyme, wrapped in prosciutto. So I sprinkled some lemon thyme over tilapia fillets and wrapped them in thin bacon, and in tinfoil. This was done on the grill along with some pre-cooked potato wedges. Served with a salad. The salad adds to the mess, but obviously, the worst looking thin is the fish and bacon. Not a good idea, that. It could have worked with prosciutto, but with bacon, I shouldn't have wrapped it in tinfoil, but just cooked them as is. Not that that's an easy task on a grill, with thin fish fillets. Oh well, I did learn a few things though.

I'm hooked on bison, as far as burgers go, now. The last time I made one, I had a small burger patty left over, and ended up eating it as a (very) late night snack, with toast. I'd made some pretty nice buns (and I think the bun is the most overlooked part of a burger), but I had too many extras, and didn't taste the bison very much. With plain toast, I really could taste the stuff. So this time around I abandoned my homemade burger buns and just went with toast instead. And that doesn't look very photogenic, so I ended up taking the picture like this.

And the potato wedges, well they turned out so-so. I cut them into quarters (rather than six pieces), and cooked them for what I thought was the perfect amount of time, but I think my earlier, slightly overcooked attempts were better — not just soft and well cooked inside, but with far crispier a texture.

I think I put too much oil on them though. You get flare ups that way. And smoky residue.

"Yeehaw Murghi" — the name of this here fine blog — comes from a grilled beercan chicken with a tandoori style paste. I decided to try it with these Cornish game hens, and the results were quite good. Game hens have a lot more flavor than chicken, so I was a bit worried about how it'd all work out. Especially since I couldn't find the recipe for the tandoori paste I had originally used, and ended up with one made by Gordon Ramsay (for sautéed salmon) and I'm not sure it had the same flavor, nor that it was suited for slow, indirect grilling.

Also, I decided against removing the skin. This was an important part of the chicken recipe, since it allowed the paste to seep into the meat. Game hens are so small that I figured it'd be too much of a hassle, so I left it on. As a result, the paste just didn't penetrate much at all.

I think I'll stick with the original recipe. Balancing a chicken on a beer can is difficult, but it's easy, compared to doing it with a small V8 can and a game hen.

Steak au Poivre is my favorite tenderloin method — with a great sauce made from deglazing the pan with brandy, adding cream and a touch of Dijon mustard. I wanted to try do something similar, but on a grill. That means I couldn't do the traditional sauce of course, so I decided to try a red wine reduction sauce. It worked out pretty good, except it was far too salty. The reason for that was that I reduced a can of beef broth to about 1/3 of a cup. The broth was low sodium, but whatever sodium was in it, never evaporated.

The steaks were only cooked for about 7 minutes in total, over very hot and very close coals. This created a really nicely charred layer of pepper crust, leaving the inside nice and red — rare, not medium rare. Bloody and mooing.

Served on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes (rustic style, with the skin on), and a simple salad tossed in a little Thousand Island dressing, along with some freshly picked tomatoes from the garden.

The last line-caught salmon I cooked, I was too elaborate, so I wanted to go simple on this one. Salt, pepper, and garlic oil. The potatoes were mostly just an experiment, parboiled, tossed in garlic oil and grilled along with the salmon. They were overcooked when par-boiled, which gave them a fluffy texture (but also made them break apart a lot easier), but they were actually quite excellent. These were done over very high, and close heat.

The sauce was a frozen leftover crayfish thing, that I added a little blue cheese to and reduced. This was fantastic in its own right, but in the end it turned out to be overpowering. I never thought salmon was a delicate thing, but compared to crayfish, it certainly is. And in retrospect, I feel just downright dumb to not realize that asparagus would obviously be too delicate in flavor for such a sauce.

Oh yeah, and I overcooked the salmon. I haven't done skinned salmon fillets on a high and close heat very often. I should do something about that.

Still, a good meal, though.

Chicken marinated in tandoori style spices (mixed some commercial stuff I still have, along with my own curry powder) and grilled them on the Weber, over indirect heat. This was done after I made naan, over a tile, over extremely hot coals.

Aloo mutter isn't as well known as aloo gobi, but this version, I like even better. For this one though, I added carrots also. Worked out quite well, in spite of me being a bit nervous about what the sweetness of the carrots might do to the flavor balance of it all.

And the naan... I'm not sure if my naan is all that authentic anymore, because it's been ages since I've been to a restaurant, and I keep using techniques that I'm learning from The Breadmaker's Apprentice — my reasoning is that some of that fancy-pants French methods for breadmaking can't harm it. I use some of that stuff when making pizza, as well as hamburger buns.

But I'm seriously thinking about doing a really bare-bones, no yeast, just chemical leavener style naan one of these days, thought.

This was a bizarre idea — doing breaded fish on the grill. It worked, though. Surprisingly.

The idea itself wasn't all that weird, but it started with a salad called "Insalata Caprece," which is just a basil, mozzarella cheese and tomato salad — an uncooked margherita pizza without bread.

Mind you, I actually forgot the basil. Still, it really tasted great.

Thing isn't very authentic. But I think some of the ideas behind the methods were sound. It's nothing new, of course — fajitas and all. It's just thinly sliced beef, wrapped up in some sort of bread. What got me though is, I kinda felt like some sort of short-order cook, while throwing the beef slices around on the grill.

I will definitely do something like this again.