Grilled Shrimp (not Maine or Spiny Lobster) with Garlic Sauce (page 500)

Buying lobster in Milwaukee is not quite as easy as in Maine or Boston so we used shrimp.  It was good but if I make it again, I will use a little less oil in the garlic sauce and more salt in the butter glaze.  We also had some mahi mahi and grilled bread which was very good but took longer to cook than I anticipated so we had a lot of "here we sit like birds in the wilderness..." time.  Fortunately, Jack and Andrea were over for dinner so we had fun talking babies, Packers and grilling.  Jack read us the story about the Pack that appeared in the New Yorker Magazine.  He can put the link in a comment.

Can't wait for next weekend when Stephanie will be here for the Super Bowl.  I think we have to grill the brats since the "recipe" is from Wisconsin and he even mentions the Packers.

Go Pack!

WHAT TO GRILL FOR THE SUPER BOWL?

That, indeed, is the question? Should everyone go for the same recipe and compare at the end of the process or go unique? What does our fearless Grillmaster say?

Lomongrass and Curry Grilled Chicken Breast (Page 384)

This is very easy and very good.  We made it last weekend.  It was very good even though we didn't have actual lemongrass.  I used lemon zest instead which worked well.  The recipe calls for either cilantro or dill.  I used cilantro.  Kathie made a peanut sauce which was perfect with the chicken because it had a nice hint of lime.  mmmmm

PACKERS ARE IN THE SUPERBOWL!!!!!!!!!!!

Planked Salmon with Juniper Rub and Berry Glaze

Knowing the Koczela salmon reputation, and having eaten several of their versions of grilled salmon, I approached this recipe with a little trepidation. Not to worry, it was delectable.

We did soak the cedar planks and appreciated the tip to do this on a baking sheet with raised sides. The berries that were available were blackberies and blueberries along with raspberries and we used wild caught Canadian coho.

Grilling outside with the 14 degree temperatures may have changed the cooking times and the amount of charcoal we needed as it seemed it took longer than the 20-30 minutes specified in the recipe. Once cooked, it was clear that we would not again use the plank. Besides the sauce that ran ont0 the plank and eventually caught fire, the entire plank was blackened, although it did hold together to get it off the grill.

The salmon was moist inside and the berry sauce nicely complemented the juniper - piney taste. The only change we would make is to reduce the salt by half.

Along with some roasted asparagus and grilled bread, dinner was yummy.

Jayne

SHRIMP ON THE BARBIE #2

We think we are moving to Australia after this out standing BBQ meal. Shrimp on the Barbie #2 (p. 490) is well worth the minor effort and can be done as a full shrimp entre or a wonderful starter.

I followed the instructions closely, using kosher salt and fresh basil leaves. Also, this recipe may provide the answer to the earlier question about wrapping scallops in bacon and dealing with the difficulty of getting everything done to satisfaction (ie scallops not over done and bacon not under done), since SotB ("Shrimp on the Barbie) calls for thinly sliced prosciutto. Try it on those other recipes and see what you think!

Julie got the rice going as I lit the fire. After it was good and hot, I grilled some asparagus and set it aside. The shrimp, which I admit I bought already peeled and deveined (to save some time and energy), was ready to go after its salt and peppering, and wrapping with a basil leaf followed by a wrap of a quarter piece of prosciutto (the stuff I bought was perfect for carving into four pieces equally wide and long), and then stuck with one or two tooth picks, depending on the wrap job. The oil shrimp was placed directly over the hot fire. By the time I had place the last of about 24 on the grill, the first were ready to turn. Recipe says DO NOT OVER COOK, and that is good advice. Many folks who serve grilled shrimp, in my humble opinion, over cook it. Two minutes a side or less.

Then comes the magic presentation. (And don't forget to get your Pernod to "body temp"--we warmed the Pernod for 20 seconds in the micro at high in a glass measuring cup). Light the Pernod and pour it over the shrimp (make sure the shrimp is in a pan suitable for this and if you do it inside, be very careful of overhead counter lights and DON'T SPILL--whatever you spill will still be on fire!!!). Totally cool presentation. And the anise flavor coupled with the grill/smoky taste is marvelous.

BTW, for those of you who couple wine with your meal, I was in stitches reading the Washington Post wine review yesterday. The columnist--Jimmy you will go nuts over this--got to a wine and said about that particular vintage, "blah blah, blah, is similar--yet strikingly different!" So, enjoy a similar, yet strikingly different wine with your Shrimp Barbie!!! Aye mate.

Australian Lamb Chops on a Shovel(page 285)

The actual recipe is about how to do it on a grill, but there is a little sidebar saying "to be truly authentic, you should do it on a shovel in a wood fire".  Plus Joan has seen it done on Primal Grill and would settle for no less than the full treatment. 

Joan and I got 8 lamb loin chops from Sendik's.  We decided to cook some potatoes in the fire along with it, plus a pasta salad.  Finally, because we were afraid the lamb chops would not be enough, we got a 1 lb Tbone steak.

I started the fire 2 hrs early, but it took a bit to really get rolling.  It was supposed to have burned down to a good bed of coals, but due to technical difficulties it really had not done that by the time we were ready to cook.  I'm sure that could have been done more quickly.  Still, the relatively unburned logs still being there helped for bracing the shovel and shielding it from above.  Joan says the guy in Primal Grill still had logs in his fire.

The potatoes weren't in the book.  They were supposed to be a small amount of olive oil and salt, then wrapped in aluminum foil and "buried in the coals".  I tried to do this, but there weren't enough coals and they immediately burned out, so we moved to plan B and just threw them in the fire.  But they came out fine, not needing extra cooking after about an hour.   

Joan worked a long time on the pasta salad - orzo, feta cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, dill, parsley, red onions, green onions, salt, pepper and lemon juice.  I'll let her comment on it.  I missed out on it due to mean old Dr. Atkins.

The shovel part went very well.  Dad had a nice flat bladed shovel that was perfect for it.  We wedged it under two logs and it heated right up.  We settled on 8 minutes per lamb chop, turning every 2 min, and they came out medium.  Recipe says to season generously, and he means generously.  I am glad we did that because it added a lot to the flavor.  There was some speculation that the shovel business worked out well for the lamb due to the fat immediately running off/being burned off, compared to what would happen if you made lamb chops in a pan.  Obviously the wood smoke made a huge difference too.

Lastly, we cavemanned in the Tbone steak.  It came out fine - a little burned on the outside, of course a bit ash covered, and rare in the middle some places.  It also immediately put out the coals it was resting on, so had to be moved around a lot.  Dad could not stop laughing because, as the steak was sitting there in the coals with ashes flying all around it, Joan speculated that it needed more salt since that had worked so well for the chicken last week.

The shovel will never have the bright and shining blade it did before, but the meal was good.

Saté Kajang (Page 17)

Charlie says this is the best meat I have ever made so you should try it.  Make sure you use thighs.  I did not have lemongrass so I used zest which worked fine.  I also squeezed some lemon juice into the oil that I brushed on the satés when they were grilling.  All in all, it was fantastic.  What really made it though was the peanut sauce that Kathie made.  I will let her describe that.  All I can say is it was the best I have ever had.

By the way, I have seen this saté or something very similar grilling at booths along the streets of Kuala Lumpur.  I was not brave enough to try them but I can tell you they smelled really good!

Dartmouth Grill Fiesta

Rob was in town, the Packers were playing (GO PACK!), it was a long weekend, and it was Dorothee's birthday, so we headed down to Dartmouth for a major grilling extravaganza. The party was Ellie, Jess, Dorothee (not Evan...Abu Dhabi), Brit, Rob, Audrey, Steve, Jack, and Lydia.

Others took pictures, so I will leave it to them to upload.

On the menu on Saturday were Piri-Piri chicken wings in the style of Nando's (p. 20-22). These are delicious and highly recommended, especially for the spice fanatics of the family. We used 7 Scotch Bonnet peppers in the recipe instead of the 3-4 piri-piri chiles the recipe called for. They were not painfully spicy, but did have a significant kick. They are especially tasty when consumed while watching the Packers dominate a favored opponent!

On Sunday, we fired up the grill at 11 in the morning, and kept it going all day. We used entirely chopped wood for cooking on Sunday. Grilling like this left a delicious flavor, but made temperature regulation much more difficult than is the case with charcoal.

1. Armenian Stick Bread (p. 96-97). This was Audrey's creation, and was quite a success. It makes a hearty bread, and is especially delicious when consumed immediately after removing from the grill. There is one trick with cooking this one. When you first put the skewers on the bricks, the dough hangs down off the skewer, which makes the very bottom cook faster than the rest of it. We waited until the bottom had started to brown and thicken, then turned it over, and lightly patted/smushed the part that had been hanging down to make the "stick break" more stick-like once again. The fatter the skewers, the less of a problem this is. After several repetitions of this, we were left with delightfully smoky, substantial, sumptuous loaves, which made a great lunch.

3. KC Style Spare Ribs (p. 227-228). For the rest of the afternoon, we left the fire on the grill, and built a separate one to sit around and drink hot buttered rum. The weather was perfect, the sky was that specific winter blue, and snow had blanketed everything but the partially frozen river. While we sat, the ribs (part of Ellie/Jess' farm pig) roasted on the grill, with the 5-4-3-2-1 rub sinking in slowly. We neglected to baste them with the bourbon/apple cider mixture, which may have made them slightly tougher on the outside than they would otherwise have been. But the taste was fantastic, and they disappeared straight away.

4. Armenian Potato Kabobs (p. 545-6). Rob had made these before, so we did them again. This particular recipe was made more difficult given the logistical challenge of cooking kabobs over a wood fire with many different levels of heat going in different places. So there were some perfectly crisped potatoes with just the right amount of bacon flavor and some barely recognizable lumps of coal. So the moral here is, make a consistent fire that it big enough to put a whole kabob over!

Sadly, we ran out of time before we could grill anything else. But we resolved to come back soon, and keep plowing through the book!

NFL Steak

For all of the Grillin' novices, NFL Steak is not Not Flank Steak, nor is it that football thing. Rather it is Natural Florentine Living! In anticipation of our visit to see Luke later this spring, and on the occasion of the planned victory of the Packers over Atlanta, we decided to go Italian. We tried "The Real Bistecca all Florentina" (p. 145 Planet Barbeque). Of course we made a few minor adjustments that turned out just fantastic.

First of all, re the grill. I used the charcoal that Mark bought for me with the grill. I also added some of the apple wood chips which had been soaked for a couple of hours in water. As everything heated up, I stuck 3 small oak logs (more like sticks) to create an open flame with the grill top off, and lots of smoke with the lid on. The meat--2 Porter House steaks- was about 1.5 to 2 inches thick, perfect for what we were doing. No spice, no pepper even. Only as I put the meat on the grill did I cover it with the rock salt so you could not even see the surface of the meat. After about 3-4 minutes, I turned it and salted the second side in similar fashion. Left the lid on the grill for each side of cooking, with meat 1/2 over direct heat side one, directly over flame side two. As directed, "spanked the meat" when removing from the grill to dislodge any remaining rock salt.

Served the Tuscan Bean Salad, but variations by Chef Julie that added artichoke hearts and pesto. Also had a tomato and mozzarella salad over arugula leaves. Served with warm ciabatta bread and olive oil.

Tracy made the first and best comment: you can really taste the smoky, woody flavor. Everyone agreed that the steak was about the best we ever had. I sliced it so it was technically Tagliata, but it certainly did not need any olive oil dripped over it as the book suggests that some folks do.

Served with a bottle of Ruffino Il Ducale Toscana 2006 to start, and a Zamperino Lazio 2008 to finish. Yummy all around.

What's Grill'n?

Hey Everyone - What's cooking this weekend?  There is a rumor that Roy and Joan are going to do the lamb chops on a shovel!  My only thought on that is whether my shovel is going to get all dirty.  Of course I suppose the lamb chops may get a little garden dirt on them as well, but so what?

If you have not seen the comments on the First Steps in Grilling in Wisconsin post, check them out and pitch in with your verses to the song.

I told Steve (in an earlier Comment that you may have missed) that you can post and load pictures or videos from your phone.  Go to Settings and then to Email and Mobile Devices or something like that - anyway, just click around until you find the place that has you register your mobile device.

Have a great weekend and Go Pack!

Snowy success

In the driving blizzard, we fired up the grill. I used the "ice scraper" method of removing most of the snow, instead of the "by hand" method recommended in the video from Dad's post. I also used the lesser known "melting method" where you put the top of the grill on, once the fire is hot, and let the last 3" of snow melt.

I also discovered, which I share for general knowledge, that Eddy Bauer catalogs do not burn hot enough to start natural charcoals But the Boston Globe works just fine. Plenty of hot air...

We successfully made pork chops (not from the book), without all of the charcoal falling through the grate. Audrey loved the pork chops, and has determined we are going to become the experts on grilled bread.

Rob is coming to town for the weekend, and we are all headed to Dartmouth for a grilling adventure.

Here are two pictures Audrey took from assembling and lighting the grill the 1st day. I can't get the snow pictures off my phone, but if I figure out how, I will add them too.

The First Step in Grilling in Wisconsin

Before Mark made the delicious sliders - he took that first necessary step in grilling in Wisconsin - see the following exciting video for tips on how to: First, Brush Off the Snow.