All for 'grill'

I largely made up a marinade and I should have written down what I used. I was annoyed that all of the ones on the web had so much oil. This was has very little and by marinading in a bag, I didn't need much. I also used some water to add liquid. If I recall correctly, I put

We grilled the chicken thighs. Thankfully thighs are very forgiving because I am pretty sure we over cooked them. We also had cauliflower with curry powder. We did that in aluminum foil so it got more steamed than anything. It was still good but not like when we roasted them in the past

For dessert, I put apples with cinnamon, splenda, nutmeg and cardamom into aluminum foil and grilled that for a while. They were pretty good too.

Grilled extra lean hotdogs and corn. I have never grilled corn still in the husks, but it was very good.

Meredith was here so we tried a bunch of new things for dinner. It was the first time I have ever grilled with charcoal (and I have barely grilled before) and it was my first time shucking oysters.

We bought chesapeake oysters at Whole Foods. We watched a few different videos on how to shuck them. We had a bit of trouble but for the most part, we were able to open them without spilling too much liquid and/or getting too many shells and sand in them. We served them on ice (or sorts) and with cocktail sauce and lemon. We ate them raw and survived to tell the tale. Pictured are only 6 but we bought 12.

And then there was the grilling! I have read a few things on how to work with charcoal but we decided to play it safe and cook hotdogs since they are safe and already cooked.

Well, the grill started out well. It lite like I had expected though I guess it took a bit long. I dumped the coal and started cooking. When I flipped them, they were cooked but the grill felt kind of cool. Everything was cooked well, but the next batch of hot dogs didn't work too well. I had to cook them on the grill pan. I do not know why it went out so quickly but again, thankfully they were precooked so there was no real risk.

As you can see from the picture, we also tried spiral cutting them. See this video for more info on them. However, the hotdogs were really thin since they were the really low fat. I used a steeper angle to not go as deep.

Grilling FAILURE. I tried to grill again. It didn't go as well as last time, which says a lot since it didn't go very well then either. It took three tries to get the light I think I needed to pack it tighter. I also used more coals to get it to be hotter and hopefully stay lit longer.

Well, it started off really hot. I let the grill get a bit warmer, cleaned it, then put the chicken and eggplant on it. I used chicken thighs since it is hard to overcook them. Well, five minutes later, they were barely cooked. The grill went out again. I had the lower vent open so that wasn't the issue.

Anyway, I had to go to plan B. I fired up the broiler for the eggplant and the grill pan for the chicken. I am glad I used thighs since they should have been overcooked by this point but they held up well. Even though I thoroughly trimmed the fat off. I guess the meat itself is fattier.

They turned out fine as did the eggplant, but no thanks to the grill. I guess I need to learn more about how to use a charcoal grill. I just am not getting it so far.

I decided to try grilling again. I made koftas but only roughly followed the recipe. I just chopped up a bunch of mint and then added the other seasonings. I used dried onion since I didn't feel like chopping it. I also added a serving or so of bread crumbs since it was very wet (likely due to using quickly defrosted beef). I also added a whole, finely chopped,jalapeño (including the seeds)

For grilling, I also skewered whole jalapeños, slices of red pepper and broccoli florets. I pammed the veggies and added salt and pepper.

I am still getting the hang of using a charcoal grill. I filled the chimney starter and let it go for a long time since at 20 minutes, all the coals were not yet white. I made sure all vents were open; dumped the coals, and let it sit for another minute or two. I then just added everything. I didn't time it at all or anything, but just flipped it at a certain point. The veggies had a nice char, as did the kofta burgers, but I think that is part of the flavor. I thought the heat was dying, but I think I was wrong since I still felt a lot of it as I took everything off.

I served the koftas open-faced on whole grain english muffins and a za'atar + garlic powder + salt and FF greek yogurt dip/spread.

Surprisingly, eve yt hing came out pretty good. The burgers were probably a bit overdone, but I didn't mind since they weren't dried out. The veggies were somewhat blackened, but not bad. I removed the charred part from the red pepper but kept it on the jalapeños. The jalapeños were very good but very, very hot. The broccoli was okay but the red pepper was out of this world! I was a bit skeptical that the meal would be a success (hence the picture while cooking it, plus I took pictures of it all prepped in case it was a failure).

I think I would still prefer to move to a gas grill (and keep it hush-hush) but at least I don't feel like this was a failure on the charcoal.

I made grilled chicken and salt and vinegar potatoes. For the chicken, I marinated chicken breasts (cut in half) in Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce and then cooked it on the grill. Nothing special. I did overcook them a bit, but I still enjoyed them. The sauce caramelized nicely.

I was originally going to make salt and vinegar butternut squash but my squash had gone bad so I used potatoes. I made lots of changes to the recipe. I used white potatoes instead of waxy, and I used apple cider vinegar since white wine vinegar was expensive. I assumed I could let it boil for less time since the potatoes were different so I only have them 3 minutes at a low boil and then turned off the heat. They were lacking a bit of the vinegar flavor so next time, I'll use a longer boil and maybe white vinegar instead. Since I suck at using a charcoal grill, some were more cooked than others. I had to move them to the center where it was noticeably hotter

I had two pieces of chicken for dinner and I ate the third for lunch on a multi-grain english muffin

We finally got a grill and put it together. We had some friends over to break it in. We also decided to go with a vegetarian meal (just for kicks).

There were lots of food that required various levels of prep. We went with a mix of easy and hard.

Dinner:

Kabocha Squash

Nothing much too it. We just used salt and pepper on them. They were grilled for about 10-15 minutes on each side. As you can see, some got a bit burned, but they all came out okay. Actually, this was surprisingly not dry like most squash is usually. It may have been the grill or the 2 hours (ish) they sat with the salt and pepper. That may have had to do with it too

Other Vegetables

Onions

We just cut them put them in a pouch with a bit of salt, pepper, and oil. I cooked them for a long while but not really long enough. They could have been more caramelized a bit better. Next time, I will use some butter too and then I will also let it go for a good bit longer. Get some real caramelization on them.

Eggplant

Mushrooms

This was the one marinade we really did by our selves. We used the miso-marinated carpaccio recipe. We followed the base marinade pretty closely except that we added a tablespoon of gochujang. We've done Sriracha before, but I figured that given that this was a miso-based marinade, we should use something else super fermented. It worked out well. A bit spicy. We did forget the rest of the recipe including the pistachios, but it still worked out well.

Photos:

Main Meal

Halloumi

We've used this a few times before (see 2015-08-01,2016-05-16). We marinated it in Franks Red Hot. Pretty simple but it also worked well. As you can see in the photos, I burned it a bit. They were kind of dry, but still good. I should be careful next time and use a lower heat. It is still kind of crazy that they don't melt!

Tofu

Another easy prep. We used the Trader Joes "Super Firm Organic Tofu". We cut it into medium-sized slices and marinated it with Soyaki Sauce. Again, marinated for a few hours and then grilled. I really like working with this tofu. Anything else would need to be pressed for a long time but this stuff just works fine. It also came out pretty good. Maybe a bit dry, but still pretty good.

Bread

Photos

Dessert

We made a pretty simple dessert Meredith found on Serious Eats (Local). There wasn't much to it and we forgot to buy the peanut butter chips. But the rest was pretty easy and it was good. We had to use some a toothpick to hold some it together. It was a bit messy as a lot of it fell over on the grill. Lots of chocolate and marshmallows on the plates¹.

I thought they were pretty good. Maybe a bit strange having the warm banana but I did like it. Ours was certainly not as pretty looking as the ones in the original recipe.

Grilled Banana Boats With Peanut Butter, Chocolate, and Marshmallows (from Serious Eats)
Local Copy -- U: guest, P: name of my dog

They carbonized nicely and came off easily after I blasted the heat at the end. ↩

We again used the grill but went on the easy side. We bought the Trader Joe's Genovese Pesto Chicken:

Sure, this was a bit cheating, but it was also a nice compromise between time and prep work. We followed rough the Weber suggested timings and did about 5-6 minutes per side over direct medium heat. (Meredith wouldn't let me use the meat thermometer so we went by feel. Haven't gotten sick yet!... yet...)

We actually didn't love the sauce. It was too lemony and tangy. I do like the idea, but we will try a different one next time. It was easy though.

Meredith also made caprese salad. We used fresh tomatoes and also some she made into "tomato confit". They had been getting super old and shrived but tasted fine. She halved them, added some salt, (maybe pepper), some fresh oregano¹ plus olive oil. She baked it for around 2.5-3 hours at 270°F. They were more like oven dried tomatoes, though they were already pretty dry.

For the caprese, she mixed that plus mini mozzarella balls, salt, pepper, some balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. Finally, she topped it with some (garden) basil and more oregano.

We think it is oregano. It may be marjoram ↩

Meredith and I were having a friend over so ee decided to again try to replicate Torchy's Brushfire Taco (see 2016-04-07 but decided to use a different jerk chicken recipe (and method)

We decided to go (mostly) with the Serious Eats FoodLab (Local ¹) recipe. Kenji, in typical fashion, goes overboard. We just used his original marinade.

The marinade was really good. I was eating some of it with a spoon! I think we could try to thicken this (though it may then not be enough volume to blend) and make it into a sauce. Either way, we would certainly use the marinade again!

I marinated the chicken for 3 days (very long). I then followed 2016-06-28 and did the chicken at 145°F. I did it for about 2 hours with the chicken still in the marinade in the bags.

Flavor wise, I like it a lot. I would certainly scale up using this recipe. Method wise, I was a bit torn. I love sous-vide but finishing on the grill was kind of a waste. It stuck some (since we intentionally not leaving it on long enough to cook) and there wasn't much benefit. Plus, it took a lot of time and propane to grill it. On the plus side, I could do it all at once, I didn't have to heat up the house, and I didn't set off smoke alarms.

I think next time, I will either sous-vide or grill, but not both. If I sous-vide, I will either just shred it or I will sear it and slice it.

Or, I will just grill it. Then you get the (appropriate for the meal) char, etc. And I may consider keeping the skin on, but we'll see.

Also, with the sous-vide, the chicken was almost too moist. It just didn't quite feel right for this. Kind of strange I guess.

Anyway, we just assembled with fat-free greek yogurt, chicken, marinade²,mango, Torchy's Diablo sauce, and cilantro. (I forgot to take a photo of mine. We used my friend's photo but we assembled hers differently and without Diablo sauce so it is missing in the above photo)

Additional Photos

U: guest, P: name of my dog, all lower case ↩
Another advantage of sous-vide is that the marinade cooks too so you can recover it (plus extra liquid) and it is safe ↩

We had yakitori night. We had eaten a big lunch so we decided to go light for this meal (though certainly not really easy).

Teriyaki Sauce

It was really easy to make. Just combine the ingredients and let it simmer. We did add some scallion, ginger, and garlic which seemed to work well.

The sauce itself came out flavorful but super sweet. It kind of makes sense for grilling where you get the caramelization, but I think we could still get that and cut it down.

So, next time, use 1/4-1/3 cups of brown sugar instead of the 1/2 it calls for.

We actually added some extra soy to try to cut down the sweetness a bit. Also, it made a ton extra so we'll use it at some point in the future.

Quail Eggs

We followed the same recipe for quail eggs as 2016-04-20. As we noted then, we let it boil for a bit longer for 3 minutes. The hardest part of this recipe is trying to peel the little eggs. Meredith was able to do it better than I was. The eggs were pretty good. Could probably have used an additional day of marinating to infuse more.

We used the grill for them, but oiled the grates so they wouldn't stick. Also, we put some green onion on the skewers both for ascetics and flavor.

Also, Meredith actually made the sesame seed and salt thing to go along with it. That was very good and we used it for the peppers too!

Shishitos

Again following Serious Eats' lead, we made shishito. (No local copy since I really didn't do much).

We used the grilling basket for them which kind of worked. I do not like that you can't close the lid or that they don't all get to touch the grates, but it did make this easier. We just used salt (not enough) and then glazed it (or tried to) at the end with the teriyaki. These peppers were small and not as good. We haven't had much luck with them in Albuquerque.

Mushroom and Bacon Yakitori

We followed the Serious Eats Recipe (Local) recipe for the mushrooms. We used Whole Foods house-smoked Green Chile Bacon. I think we grilled ours a bit too hot and/or too long since it was a bit charred. I also do not know why our sauce didn't stick as much (should it have been thicker)?

But I do think the mushrooms did a good job absorbing a lot of the flavors from the bacon. Also, the grill did smoke a good bit as the fat dripped off but I think that adds to the flavor.

Experimentation with the grill continues. I tried using falafel dough I had frozen a while ago. I was a bit hesitant since the dough was super, super wet. That is probably from freezing it. Fresh may work differently.

Anyway, I actually tried two different things. I tried right on the plates and also on non-stick aluminum foil. You can see the clear difference in the photos below. For both, I did it on medium-high. The first side was not on long enough and the second was a bit too long.

Then I grilled the tomatoes. I had already pammed them and added salt. I grilled them on high/medium-high for about 2-3 minutes per side. At the same time, I heated the flat bread.

Grilling continues! We marinated some halloumi in Franks Red Hot for an hour or so and then grilled it. I used a more gentle heat than last time. I also coasted it with some more Franks Red Hot while grilling.

We also grilled eggplant and some other stuff. There is seitan there (which I ate while grilling...oops...) and we also tried to make a grilled lettuce salad. That worked ok. Not the most amazing thing, but it helped bulk up the meal. We probably should have made a few more slices of cheese.

We made tacos with the cheese and the eggplant. Again, nothing special, but the cheese was really good.

Simple grilled meal! We had purchased a thing of chicken sausage. They are already cooked so all I really had to do was reheat them. At the same time, we sliced up zucchini and grilled that with some leftover Teriyaki sauce.

Meredith also made a caprese salad with burrata. I liked it a lot with burrata even though it was messy. It had a creamier texture.

We grilled salmon and a bunch of other stuff. The salmon wasn't a big deal. We just put some Indian spices (from Manav's Mom) on the salmon and grilled it on high for a minute on the non-skin side then 5 on the skin. That is what we do when we sear it but it was probably a bit too long.

The real thing for this meal was the brussel sprouts. I put them on a metal skewer and then read some suggestions on how to cook it. Turns out that most thing suggest microwaving it for a little bit before skewering it. Well, I already skewered it and was stubborn so I decided to just steam it. I did about 10 minutes (though the lid was open a bit since the skewers were too long). Anyway, after they were on the skewer, I grilled them around medium to medium-high and I kept coating them in teriyaki from the other day.

At the same time, I was grilling the eggplant. I tried to not overcook them, but as you can see in the pictures, I still went a bit too long.

Overall, everything was good. The salmon was a bit overcooked, but the brussel sprouts were good. I would try it again but hopefully with more homogeneously sized ones so I can cook it better. And again, the eggplant should have cooked a little less hot (and maybe a little less salt).

We made jerk chicken tacos. Actually, we made about 4+ pounds of chicken froze 4 servings.

We used the same recipe as last time with about the same changes. Except this time we went heavy on the peppers. We used 8 peppers and only took out the seeds of some. It was HOT!

I marinated all of it for about 2 hours (there was more than enough sauce for all of the chicken). Then I grilled it on medium / medium-high. Actually, I ran out of propane right around the time I put it on, so I had to pull it off, change the tank, pre-heat, and then I grilled it. I was actually pretty sure I over-cooked it based on the temperatures, but it was super moist. I guess the marinate/brine did the trick!

I also made grilled artichokes mostly following this Simply Recipes] (Local ¹) version. They were smaller ones so we made a bunch. I also did not do anything wit the stems. But I basically followed it otherwise. They were pretty good. I probably didn't get too much "meat" off the them and I barely used the dipping sauce (leftover tzatziki) but I liked the flavor.

This was also just an intense meal since, besides grilling extra chicken, I grilled food for other meals this week. But it was worth it and I was really happy with it.

Additional Photos

2016-08-08 Update

We had frozen a good bit of the chicken. We reheated it in a pan with a little of water to keep it from drying out. It worked out pretty well. Maybe a bit more dry and chewy than when fresh, but still pretty good (and spicy). Also it was super easy to make and cook. If we have mango around, it is a great quick meal.

U: guest, P: name of my dog, all lower case ↩

This was a quick meal we prepped mostly ahead of time. I marinated tofu in Soyaki and grilled it last night when I cooked everything else. Meredith made caprese salad with the rest of the buratta.

Pretty simple meal but it worked well since we didn't want to spend a ton of time. We grilled 4 different types of sausage (listed below) with some broccolini (tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and crushed red pepper), and some Chinese eggplant (just salt and pepper)

We just grilled it all on medium and kind of winged it. I am sure I overcooked it a bit but they are fatty enough that it was fine. The broccolini was pretty good. Maybe a bit overcooked.

This was a really easy and quick meal. We grilled shishitos for about 4-6 minutes on each side. I took the time to skewer them and that seemed to work really well. Some were hard to flip, but it felt like it was easier than the grill basket on 2016-07-24. I would do it that way again for sure.

I also wrapped some leftover brisket in aluminum foil and grilled it on the top rack of the grill.

I had a friend over and we wanted to grill. We sometimes struggle to come up with different meal ideas but this sounded ok.

We made buffalo grilled chicken sandwiches. For the chicken, we marinated it for a while in Franks Red Hot. I then grilled the tenders as I normally would (and tried ot get a bit of a sear on them at the end). I then mixed some more Franks with some butter and tossed them at the end.

We also tried roasting some hatch green chiles. This was my first time trying to do anything with them. I know you usually roast them and peel them but I wanted to see if I could just cook them like I would a bell pepper. Unfortunately, the skin blistered and was also pretty tough. I had already cut them but it was kind of hard to peel them (but I did my best).

Finally, we also had some grilled eggplant because we like it and do it all the time.

We based the Broccolini was based on last Saturday. The idea was pretty good, but I overcooked it. They were a bit charred.

We also had cabbage. It was leftover from lunch we were prepping. I put it in a foil packet and let it heat up on the grill. I then opened it up a bit. This worked ok. It was a bit of an experiment.

Finally, the lobster tail was just like last Thursday. I did it in the toaster oven which had a burner towards the top. Because of that, I think it looked more cooked than it was on the inside. I think it was fine, but next time I would let it go a bit more.

So in the end, the broccolini was overcooked and the lobster was undercooked. Oh well... Hopefully it would be better next time.

We went for a meat-heavy (ish) meal when we had friends over. We decided to again go with a mix of sausage. We had (down the center, then the two sides) from Whole Foods.

I also made pizza-stuffed mushrooms. It was pretty straight-forward. We used a bit of Delallo Vodka Sauce, then some fresh mozzarella and then some Trader Joes soppressata. Really simple and not too much to it. They were also pretty good!

Photos

We had friends over and wanted to make a nice meal. They were bringing sides so we focused on dinner and dessert (and eggplant).

Dinner: Chicken and Sides

We made Chicken Saltimbocca. All of the chicken breasts at the store were too big so we went with chicken tenders. I pounded them out a bit and then made a marinade of:

I let it marinate for a few hours. I then dried them off and laid down a layer of prosciutto and some fresh sage. I closed it up in half, put a toothpick through (the long way from the front to the fold), and dredged it with some flour (with a bit of salt and pepper).

I grilled them for about 6 minuted per side. They worked out pretty well. I think I a toothpick of two¹. But other than that, they were good. I do not know if I really got the wine though.

We also grilled some eggplant. Our friends brought a caprese salad and some cauliflower-broccoli salad. I really liked them both. We didn't make it, but they told us they reduced the balsamic first. I think I would try that in the future! It coated the stuff better and had a nice sweetness.

Dessert: Grilled Strawberry Shortcake

We also added a bunch of chopped lemon thyme from Meredith's garden and the usual heavy on the vanilla.

We planned to reduce the time. I do not know if the oven wasn't hot enough or I forgot convection (really not sure). But it took a lot longer. I eventually had to cover the top to not burn it and let the rest cook through.

After it was cool, I off four slices (8 total). I grilled them with the heat really low and coasted with melted butter (instead of oil). After I flipped them, I turned on the other burners on low and turn off the direct one while Meredith finished the strawberries. She macerated them with some additional lemon thyme and also lemon zest (and just a Tbsp of sugar). We did less sugar for the whipped cream (and a more soft-peak).

I forgot to take the final picture, but it was pretty good. The cake had a bit of crisp. It wasn't as heavy as a normal pound cake but I liked it a lot still. And the lines looked really fancy (even though it didn't make much difference).

It was also nicely moist (a concern for Albuquerque) but pound cake is pretty forgiving.

OOPS!!! ↩
U: guest, P: name of my dog, all lower case ↩

I grilled a bunch of food for Meredith's parents who were visiting. There were two types of sausage, both chicken based and from Sprouts. I think they were green-chile and something else salsa related. I just grilled them, probably for too long. I think you're supposed to par cook sausage so that it doesn't spend so much time on the grill. I should look into that since these were a bit dry.

The real "new" thing was grilled yuca. I had been using yuca a few times, but I decided to grill it. I read a few things and the general consensus was to simmer it for about 30 minutes and then finish it on the grill. I cut up two yucas, but one was really on its way out. I ended up cutting out a lot of chunks that were soft.

While, I do not know for sure, there seemed to be a mix in the resulting yuca of pieces that I thought were good and pieces that I though smelled like feet. YUCK! I really do not know why, but some of it just wasn't very good or enjoyable.

I do not think I would rush to grill it again, though it did seem to work fine in cooking it.

Meredith had keftas in Epcot when she went Disney last fall. We decided to make them since the work fine for Whole 30.

We used this Serious Eats Recipe (local) but with just beef (and just 1 lbs). We also finely chopped the red onion instead of grating it. This worked fine enough.

We liked them, though Meredith would have preferred it without the mint. I didn't have anything to compare it to.

Dinner

My friends Wes and Katie were visiting ABQ and come over for dinner. We made two types of chicken skewers and also teriyaki mushrooms.

The chicken skewers were from Zahav (scanned here). It was part of their "Pargiyot Three Ways" though we only did two. For the "onion marinade" (they both have the same amount of onion but whatever), we followed the recipe pretty directly. For the harissa one, we did follow the recipe but used a tomato-based harissa (see below).

I tried to do a more Japanese style of skewering. I butterflied the chicken and then also pounded it thin. I cut it into smallish pieces and basically folded every piece as I put it on and packed it tight. According to Serious Eats, this helps to keep them from drying out. I also just think it looked good and gave some more texture.

Anyway, the chicken was marinated for a few hours and was really flavorful. I put on more sauce at the end before the last turn. They came out really good. The onion one was a bit lemony but not bad. I liked the harissa one a lot too! And the onions in both smelled really good while it was cooking.

Finally, I also made yakitori mushrooms as we did last time. Except I used regular mushrooms with 4 per skewer and a total of 1 slice of [center cut] bacon per skewer (basically a third). Like the chicken, I tried to also fold them up as I put them on. It worked really well. I was a bit unsure about the teriyaki (which I also made myself with some ginger an garlic) because it came out too thick. But heating it a bit helped. And it did end up giving it enough flavor. The bacon again gave a lot of flavor to the mushrooms.

Harissa

Meredith and I used to really like the Harissa at Cava in Northern Virginia. She was working on it at one at one time but it was complicated and a lot of work.

and this one just calls for tomato paste instead of stewed tomatoes. And it just seemed too easy. But it actually worked really well. It had some crunchiness from the not-fully-ground crushed red pepper but was pretty spot on...at least to our memory. I think we would make this and keep it around. Especially it was so easy! (and the recipe does seem to come right from them!). Maybe next time, I will grind up the crushed red pepper in a spice grinder first.

Photos

Salad and Dessert

When Meredith was in Durham at Burger Bach, she had a very flavorful, herb-centric salad and decided to make something like it.

She was inspired by Good House Keeping's recipe (LOCAL¹) but added a ton of thyme and oregano. We basically did most of it by eye adding more oil, and then some water, as needed.

Our friends made dessert of a strawberry short cake. It was home made whipped cream with macerated strawberries and some Angel's Food Cake

U: guest, P: name of my boston terrier, all lower case ↩↩

This is largely a repeat of last Sunday except we just made koftas and I used Soyaki¹ for the teriyaki sauce.

Meredith made the regular kofta recipe² with turkey. She followed the (now updated) recipe pretty closely. I assembled them and figured out a trick to shaping them onto skewers: do it on a greased plate rather than trying to form it into a log in the air.

I made more harissa (yes, I am obsessed) and also assembled the mushrooms. I grilled everything as per the directions.

It all came out pretty good. The mushrooms were good (as usual) and we liked the koftas, though I think I liked the accidental mixing of koftas and keftas last week more.

I couldn't really tell the different teriyaki sauce but I also didn't really have enough of the Soyaki left either so it is really hard to tell.

Trader Joes version of SoyVay ↩
Updated 2017-03-27 to better reflect what we actually do. ↩

This was a super easy and simple meal. We bought large shrimp at Costco (shell on but deveined) and skewered and grilled it. I used some Old-Bay which gave it some flavor, though most was lost on the shell. I did it on high for 2 minutes on the one side and just one on the other.

Meredith made broccolini like our anniversary (the broccolini) and with tahini sauce like 2017-02-26. She used the recipe from that page but added a bit extra water, lemon, and salt to help thin it.

This was a nice and simple lunch (and also one of the three times we grilled today). We simple got most of the gills out of a portabella mushroom cap and used that for pizza. We used some jarred tomato sauce leftovers, some part-skim cheese, and some salami (under the cheese). Meredith also used ricotta on one pizza and some fresh oregano on others.

I followed the Serious Eats recipe (Local¹) but with a 6.31 lbs chicken (Free range, organic, and on sale!). I watched some videos on how to spatchcocked it which was surprisingly easy!

I liberally spread on olive oil and seasoned it with lots of salt and pepper. Nothing else!.

I tried to also use the smoker boxes. I didn't put them under the grate since I knew I would have to flip it out later, but it should have worked. Maybe I soaked the pecan wood chips too long, or maybe they needed more heat, but I never saw it smoke and I certainly didn't taste it. I will read up on using these boxes later.

You're supposed to cook it on indirect heat for most of the time and then flip it onto the skin and cook on direct heat for the rest. However, it says at the bottom:

Well, two things went wrong here. First, in the actual recipe says to go to 110°F. I was aiming for 140°Fish due to the first instruction.

Well, when I checked on it the first time, it was about 110°F but I didn't realize that was done so I let it go longer. When I check again, it was easily >160°F. Oops! I flipped it to the hot side, reduced the heat, and just did it for 10 minutes.

Actually, being that it was with the skin and bone, it was perfectly fine cooked! Juicy and fairly flavorful. There wasn't much flavor other than chicken, but that is fine for not having brined it or even really seasoned it. However, I didn't taste a single bit of smoke.

I think next time I would be more adventurous with the seasonings. And maybe do some reading on those smoker boxes to get more flavor. And be more careful with the temperatures (though again, it was fine)

Photos

U: guest, P: name of my Boston Terrier ↩

I've been thinking about how I make kabobs and read something about doing it more like a sausage and more ground up.

I started by putting the turkey in the freezer for about 40 minutes to help solidify it for the food processor

This time, I kind of winged it from the basic recipe. The biggest change was that I only had cilantro so no parsley (see also, the cava-style harissa below). I mixed everything but the turkey in the food processor. Once it was well ground, I added the turkey and ground it just enough to mix it all.

Well, it was super messy! It was really sticky and hard to form. I ended up putting the whole thing in the freezer for a while to re-solidify.

It grilled up nicely enough but was probably not worth all of the mess. Also, the texture was a bit chewy and springy. I think I would consider making all of the ingredients into a paste with the food processor but them mix it by hand (or really, I could use the mixer but that is way too much work).

I also made the regular Cava-Style harissa except I just used cilantro instead of parsley. It was pretty good after it rested for a bit as it always seems to need. I think it is better with parsley though.

KitchenKatalog

Dinner:

Kabocha Squash

Other Vegetables

Onions

Eggplant

Mushrooms

Photos:

Main Meal

Halloumi

Tofu

Bread

Photos

Dessert

Additional Photos

Teriyaki Sauce

Quail Eggs

Shishitos

Mushroom and Bacon Yakitori

Additional Photos

2016-08-08 Update

Photos

Dinner: Chicken and Sides

Dessert: Grilled Strawberry Shortcake

Dinner

Harissa

Photos

Salad and Dessert

Photos