Grilling For All Reasons

In addition to playing around with my own concoctions for sauces, marinades, and rubs, I am constantly trying out commercially available sources.  It is, however, a rare and welcome event (at least up to now!) that I’m asked to try out and evaluate a product.  Such is the basis of this post.   Say HELLO to PIG OF THE MONTH.

Pig of the Month is a family operated business located in Dayton, Ohio specializing in ribs and sauces delivered to your doorstep.   Not just any ribs and sauces, but fully cooked and sauced Baby Back Ribs and regionally authentic sauces from around the country.   No longer do you have to avoid cooking ribs at home for fear that you’ll under or over-cook them, nor do you have to settle for the shrink-wrapped variety available at the supermarket (processed how long ago?!?).  Pig of the Month ribs are slow-cooked to tender perfection just prior to shipping and freshly sauced.  You don’t have to do anything but heat them up and dig in.

I had the opportunity to evaluate their ribs and the Key West in a Bottle Citrus Grilling Sauce.  The ribs arrived within 2 days, packed in a well insulated box with dry ice.  The ribs were vacu-sealed and sauced with my choice of sauce (Key West).  Pig of the Month leaves nothing to guesswork, or truly being ready to heat and eat.  In the box with the ribs and a bottle of Key West sauce were complete instructions for reheating in your choice of oven or microwave (yes, microwave!), AND two rib-eatin’, sauce catchin’ bibs and packets of moistened hand wipes.  You get the sense that, as they say on their web site – “let us eat with you at your kitchen table tonight” – is more than a catch phrase and that they really mean it.

I took some of the ribs and prepared them precisely per the enclosed instructions – both in the oven, and in the microwave.  I would recommend using the low end of the recommended reheating times and checking them – you can always add more time, but can’t undo them being overdone.  I’m always wary of reheating meats in the microwave, since due to the cooking being done from the inside out, there’s a tendency for meats to dry out and become tough or chewy.  If you follow the directions precisely (keeping them sealed in the plastic vacu-pack with a couple of steam vent holes cut), you’ll get finger-lickin’ moist ribs.  If you do have a bit more time, I found the oven heated ribs a bit better to my tastes, if only because the sauce will caramelize adding to the rich flavors.

Now, I wouldn’t be true to my Grilling For All Reasons mission if I didn’t put these ribs on the grill, now would I?  You bet.  The better part of the rack went right on the grill over natural lump charcoal.  Cover the grill and turn them after a couple of minutes and leave only for a couple of minutes more — remember, you’re just reheating them, not cooking them.  Just enough to heat them through and caramelize the sauce and you’re ready to eat!  FAST!  and EASY!   And, as you’d guess, the open fire and smoke are a great finishing touch to a fantastic rack of baby back ribs.  I’ve tried many of the pre-cooked, pre-sauced ribs that are commercially available (to clarify – when I had a hankering for ribs, but didn’t have the time to do them “right” – just so we’re clear!), and I was impressed with the quality, tenderness, moistness, and flavor – hard to tell that you didn’t just spend hours slow-cooking them yourself.  So, for those “Q” aficionados out there, these are a great option when you just don’t have the time to “do ‘em right” from scratch on your own.

In addition to the ribs, I also had a bottle of “Key West In A Bottle” citrus grilling sauce, so, I decided to use it in several additional recipes.   Given the regional flavorings of the Gulf and the Islands, I chose several regionally authentic recipes to use the sauce with – fresh grilled Gulf shrimp, a rice dish originating in Jamaica, and a barbecue vegetable dish originating in Trinidad and Tobago.  The “Key West” sauce incorporates a variety of fruit juices true to the region – mango, pineapple, orange, lime, grapefruit, and lemon – but make no mistake, it IS a hearty grilling sauce with ketchup and brown sugar, and a solid peppery finish. Not only does it do justice to tender pork ribs (and other meats and seafood), but also works well as a seasoning in other dishes – vegetables and rice in particular.

Here are the recipes:

Key West Grilled Gulf Shrimp

Key West Rice

Key West Barbecue Vegetables

I highly recommend you give Pig of the Month a try – great ribs, regionally authentic sauces, and superb customer service.

As those who know me and as many of you have likely begun gleaning from my posts – I LOVE HOLIDAYS!  The time was when the holidays were my opportunity to blossom as a cook, trying new, different, and challenging recipes that I’d never attempted before – all the while striving for an elegant presentation and meal for family, friends, and guests.  With the advent of Grilling For All Reasons, I am now routinely pushing my culinary envelop with new recipes, new experiences, AND all the while continually pushing the envelop of the possible of preparing any and all heat-cooked foods on the grill.

So, now holidays are even more special as I continue to seek out the new across a holiday menu AND find a way to prepare the dishes on the grill.

This New Year’s Eve was no exception as I planned a menu for an elegant meal at home for the occasion.  The first major decision was to decide on the primary entree protein – would it be meat, fish/shellfish, or vegetable.  Part of my decision was rooted in the presentation – it had to be an elegant presentation.  One of the more elegant presentations in my view is the en croute, whether as an appetizer/dessert as with a Baked Brie, or a main course like Beef Wellington.

On this occasion, I would do an en croute (wrapped in pastry) with one of my favorite fish – salmon.  Many recipes use dill as a savory herb with salmon, and while I enjoy a light lemon-dill sauce with salmon, I was looking for something a bit more earthy, yet complimentary to the salmon and not overpowering, AND different from what others were doing!   The filling – sauteed fresh spinach with freshly roasted sweet red pepper, shallots, bacon (gotta get some smoke on the inside, no?), and bound together with sweet Mascarpone cheese.   With a number of savory ingredients already in play, the only seasoning necessary was sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

An issue when preparing a salmon (or any fish fillet) en croute, is gaining some “height” to the presentation.  My compliments to Chef Gordon Ramsay for his solution to this problem.  The salmon fillet is trimmed to remove the “belly” flesh as well as the tail with the result of a fillet piece relatively uniform in size from side-to-side and along the length.  The height is then attained by cutting the fillet along the center line and placing one piece on top of the other to achieve a rectangular fillet of even height.  While not appealing if prepared alone, this technique works perfectly in an en croute.

The pastry can be a commercially available puff pastry (such as Pepperidge Farm’s puff pastry sheets), or your own butter-rich short pastry.  To a large part, the decision will be based on the amount of preparation time you have available.  There are times I’m the purist and insist on fresh preparation for everything, and times I’m not (though I typically only “cut corners” when the alternative is as good or better than I could prepare – which was the case with the pastry!).

The assembly is relatively simple, but requires some attention to detail.  If you’re using purchased puff pastry sheets, you may or may not need to use both sheets depending on the size of your prepared salmon fillet.   If using two sheets, be sure to fold and press the pastry together at the seam so it doesn’t separate.   Spread your filling on the pastry sheet to the size of your fillet, then place the fillet on top of the filling.  Fold over the long edges, being careful not to stretch the pastry any more than necessary to bring the edges together with at least 1/2 inch overlap.  To ensure a good seam seal, bring the two edges together and press together before folding down and pressing again.  Use an egg wash to help seal the seams.  Pull up the ends and gently press and knead the edges into the surrounding pastry.  You’re looking for a good seal, and a relatively smooth finish, even though this will be the bottom.   Also, you don’t want a lot of excess either along the length or at the ends, so trim as necessary.   I find that it helps to lay the pastry out on a piece of parchment paper to make flipping the sealed en croute easy.   When the seams are closed and sealed, place another piece of parchment paper over the sealed pastry, place a shallow baking pan over, reach under the bottom parchment and flip the en croute over onto the baking pan.  Remove what is now the top piece of parchment.

Now, at this point you have an assembled en croute that’s ready to bake.  But, you can take the presentation a step farther by decorating the top of the pastry package.   Lay out your excess dough (you WILL have some), and cut out some designs of your choice – leaves are easy and look great when baked.   Brush the top of the en croute with an egg wash, then place your decorative pastry elements on the top, brushing each with the egg wash.

The baking pan with the en croute now goes on the grill over indirect and deflected heat (or in the oven if you choose), and baked to golden brown perfection.

The starter was a cucumber dill salad (see, I did work dill into the menu), and sides with the salmon were Haricot Verts Lyonnaise (green beans Lyon style), and Rosemary Leek Smashed Potatoes.

Here are the recipes:

Elegant Salmon en Croute

Haricot Verts Lyonnaise

Enjoy!

I know that many times when I’ve found an interesting new recipe, I’ll have a need to do some type of conversion – cooking temperature, measurements, weights, etc.  I’ve found a great website that makes ANY conversion that I’ve had to do easy and would like to share it with you.

OnlineConversion.com

OnlineConversion.com has links to conversions for almost anything you can imagine in over 5,000 units and 50,000 conversions!   There’s a specific section for cooking with all the common cooking-related conversions you may need to do:

Cooking Conversions

Be sure to bookmark the link, as it’s an invaluable resource.

OK, call me crazy.  Just couldn’t resist the temptation, and no great reason other than “I could”.

In the immediate wake of a blizzard in NJ, I fired up the grill Monday evening Dec 27 – 20 inches of snow on the ground, major drifting, air temp at around 20°F, wind chill temp at around 4°F, and winds steady at 20mph, still gusting to 40mph.  Some will say that this really isn’t extreme and why wasn’t I out in the teeth of the blizzard Sunday night – LOL – there are some limits to insanity! But I easily could have.

The point of this is simple – if you love the taste of food cooked over an open fire, you don’t have to limit yourself to warm, sunny weather.   Your grill WILL work in ANY weather, and, within the limits of your own endurance, you can have savory, grilled/smoked foods at ANY time of the year.

So, what did I grill?   Nothing fancy – just some fat juicy hamburgers – ummm, heaven!

Much as we’ve adopted an Italian food tradition for Christmas Eve, on Christmas Day we’ve settled in with elements of a traditional English Christmas dinner with a beef rib roast as the centerpiece served with some form of potato dish and one or more green vegetables.

I kept the menu relatively simple this year (at least in terms of the number of items):

Sweet Potato Soup w/ a Mascarpone/Chive dollop

Prime Rib Roast with Jus

Potato Gratin with Caramelized Vidalia Onion and Fresh Sage

Ginger Braised Greens

and Fresh Pumpkin and Apple Pie with whipped cream topping for dessert

I will tweak recipes I use repeatedly to move them toward my views of perfection.  I’m getting close to that with this rib roast recipe – dry aging (yes, even a USDA Choice grade can benefit from aging), a marvelously rich jus using onions, tomatoe paste and braised oxtails as the base, and minimalist seasoning on the rib roast – salt, pepper, a dijon mustard rub and some dried thyme.  I also added a brief hit of smoke early in the roasting – I didn’t want to overpower the natural flavors, just to enhance and sharpen them.

This potato gratin recipe is, in my humble opinion, the best you will ever eat.   Paper thin sliced potatoes, fresh heavy cream are the traditional base ingredients.  But add the heavenly sweetness of caramelized Vidalia onions and the aromatics of fresh sage and your taste buds will pop!  Bobby Flay gets the credit for originating this recipe.

OK, so we’ve covered the meat and potatoes.  This rich meal needed some balance, and what better choice for the time of year than a mix of fresh winter greens – kale, red swiss chard, and mustard greens – braised to tender perfection.  Give Ming Tsai credit for putting some zing into a simple basic recipe by adding julienned fresh ginger.

So what about the sweet potato soup, you ask?  Sorry, no recipe to share on this one this time.  I opted for a commercially-prepared soup to round out the menu, adding a dollop of mascarpone cheese mixed with some chopped chives.  I will say though that it was very good and a great opening course for the delicacies to follow!

I should note that all grilling this season was done over natural lump charcoal.  Temperatures in the 20-degrees F range offered some challenges, but regulating the grill temps wasn’t as big a challenge as I thought it might be and simply required closer monitoring.  Regardless the time of year and weather, there is nothing better that food cooked over an open fire!

Our family has adopted the Italian 7 fishes tradition for our Christmas Eve dinner.  Even though I don’t believe there’s a drop of Italian blood in our lineage, the opportunities presented by the cuisine and this tradition offer the promise of spectacular feasts.

This year was no different, and I overdid it just a bit, selecting 8 fish/shellfish to use in a variety of recipes:  Alaskan Halibut, Alaskan Sockeye Salmon, Sea Scallops, Shrimp, Pollock, Squid, Clams, and Mussels.  There are two dishes that are “must-haves”, and then I get to experiment:  bouillabaisse and pasta (usually linguine or angel hair).  I even get to experiment with the bouillabaisse a bit if I vary what fish/shellfish I use, though the five listed have become fairly entrenched with the exception of the white fish which could be baccala, pollock, haddock, whiting, or others.   The bouillabaisse stock varies from year to year depending on how much time I have available to prepare from scratch, or use a commercially available stock.   Commercial stock this year, though if you have the time, I highly recommend Julia Child’s bouillabaisse as the gold standard (pg 52 in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol I)

For the other fish dishes this year, I selected a recipe that I hadn’t tried yet, one that I had prepared before and loved, and another simply from scratch.

The new recipe was for an Alaskan Halibut marinated in a rum/citrus sauce, grilled, then served with more of the warmed marinade.

The old recipe was for Sea Scallops grilled and served with a warmed smoky hot mango chutney sauce.

And the scratch recipe was a simple planked salmon using a quick and easy to throw together 3-ingredient dry rub and using an alderwood grilling plank.

Did a lot of grilling this week – pies, great new recipes for Christmas Eve and grilled favorites for Christmas Day.  But I also had some time on Dec 23 to explore some great Cuban cuisine with a marinated and grilled pork tenderloin, served with traditional black beans and rice, slow cooked to seasoned perfection.

Check out the recipes:

Cuban Pork Tenderloin

Cuban Black Beans with Cumin-Scented Rice

One of the challenges I set for myself for the holidays was to perfect baking fresh homemade pies on the grill — HA!  Mission accomplished.

I started with a pumpkin pie.  Being somewhat anal about using the freshest ingredients, naturally I had to use fresh pumpkin.   So, I found a great pie pumpkin at a local farmers market.   To get to the point of where one would be if they opened a can of pumpkin, I needed to roast and puree the fresh pumpkin.  I cut the pumpkin in half, removed the seeds, then roasted it on the grill to cook the pulp.  I then removed the pulp from the skin, and cooked it some more on the stove to draw out the natural juices. This was an extra step, but ensured the pumpkin was fully cooked AND had a sufficient amount of natural juices to facilitate pureeing without having to add water.   The cooked pumpkin was then pureed in a blender.

Being my first attempt at “grill-baking” a pie, I made enough dough for at least two 10″ pies – the first was going to be the test pie, assuming that there would be some “issues” that I would need to correct in subsequent attempts to get it right.  Great assumption – the “test pie”, though tasting really good, DID have some significant issues — bottom crust was a bit too done (translate that “mostly black on the bottom” and hard, and the filling was overcooked (drier and shrunken more than it should be).   The second pumpkin pie was the “production run” pie — used less water in the crust dough (to avoid it getting too hard), set up the grill for indirect grilling, adjusted the grill ventilation to ensure a more even heat flow around the pie, and made sure to take the pie off the grill when a toothpick inserted came out just a bit wet.   The combination of corrections worked perfectly to produce a precision baked and delicious fresh pumpkin pie.

With the technical kinks worked out, I had enough dough and pumpkin puree left to do another pumpkin pie, and then I tackled a fresh apple pie.

A challenge with apple pies, especially deep-dish pies, is to avoid a soggy bottom crust along with the air gap between the top crust and apple filling.  There are two schools of thought on how to achieve this:  par-cook the apples prior to baking to pre-shrink them, and to macerate the apples in the sugar and pie spices.  Both achieve the same goal of softening and reducing the apple volume before baking.   I prefer macerating the apples (allow the apples to steep in sugar and spices to draw out their natural juices) as the apples are still tender crisp, yet have released juices that are then concentrated and added to the pie filling.   I used the same grilling techniques perfected with the pumpkin pies to achieve a perfectly baked (bottom crust flaky and not soggy; no air gap between crust and filling) deep dish apple pie

Well, its been a busy month, and I’ve fallen a far bit behind in my grilling updates – though, the recipes have been flowing generously across the grill this month.

Here’s an update on pre-holiday activity:

Dec 8:  Grilled Red Snapper with Spicy Salsa, seasoned with an easy Cajun Seasoning rub.

Dec 17:  Moroccan Pork Chops

I finally got to a recipe that I’d been wanting to do on the grill for some time – Smoky Meatloaf, served with a rich prune ketchup.   I found this recipe about a year ago and loved the flavors and textures implemented by award-winning chef Grant Achatz, and have wanted to further enhance the rich smoky flavors further by cooking it over wood.   I had also cut some corners with ingredients earlier for expediency.  This time, I obtained a couple of speciality ingredients online that had eluded me in shopping at my local markets.

This was not your mom’s meatloaf.  Yes, it had ground beef and onion, but that’s about where any similarity ended.  Many meatloaf recipes have a mixture of ground meats – beef, pork, and perhaps veal.   In this case, ground beef was mixed with ground hardwood-smoked bacon in a 4 to 1 ratio. Additionally, the recipe incorporated a peppery spice mix with fennel seed and star anise, sauteed fresh fennel and celery along with the onion, and the addition of imported Spanish paprika and smoked sea salt for a rich smoky flavor, and roasted pistachios for a unique texture.

I took the road less traveled when assembling this meatloaf – I ground my own chuck along with the bacon for a fresher, more evenly distributed mix; I sought out a couple of not-so-readily available specialty ingredients (imported Spanish smoked paprika – Pimentón de la Vera which is available in both sweet (Dulce) and hot (Picante), and smoked sea salt – an applewood-smoked Maine sea salt); and I grill-roasted the meatloaf over a hardwood fire.

The results were spectacular.

While I had the grill fired-up, I had another turkey from local-market Thanksgiving promotions.   Instead of grilling/smoking the whole turkey, I cut it up – breasts, thighs, legs, and wings – and open-fire grilled it.  Great flavor, and more turkey meat to explore some new recipes with.

Until next time – hoping to get to some grill-baking – enjoy the smoke.