186. Grilled Summer Vegetables with Pesto (p. 591)

When you're on vacation at the beach, staying at a rental house with a deck and a grill, you just have to grill something, right? Of course you do!

Before we left, I flipped through The Book, picked out this recipe* and packed up all of the zucchini and squash leftover from the week's CSA box, and looked forward to an easy, tasty dinner.

Well, at least it was easy. Tasty, not so much. And it was probably the least attractive thing I've ever cooked. But, the dish's shortcomings were all my fault. I should have known better than to leave the veggies unattended on an unfamiliar grill. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

This is really a very straightforward and simple way to prepare grilled vegetables. First, I sliced each of the following in half lengthwise: an eggplant, a zuchini, a yellow squash, and for good measure, a cousa squash. I also cored and seeded a red bell pepper and cut it into quarters. I marinated all of these veggies in a simple marinade of garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, oregano, thyme and salt and pepper. Then I put the veggies on a pre-heated gas grill.

The Book says to cook the veggies for a total of 18 to 22 minutes, turning once during the cooking. So, I figured that I could leave them alone for a few minutes while I went back into the house. Big mistake. Apparently, even though I turned down the heat, the grill was still way too hot. By the time I came back, the veggies had a pretty good char on them. The poor red peppers were incinerated beyond recognition. I was able to salvage the situation somewhat by scraping off most of the burned parts, but the veggies were still overcooked.

I cut the eggplan, zuchinni and squash into pieces, and put them in a large bowl and tossed with some store-bought pesto. The Book suggests using homemade pesto, and refers to the recipe on page 889. I have made this pesto before, and it's far superior to store-bought pesto, but for the sake of simplicity and convenience while on vaction, I opted for store-bought.

I served the veggies with some grilled Italian chicken sausage and some potato wedges I cooked on the grill, with a little extra pesto on the side. It tasted fine, even though the veggies were too soft and a bit smoky from the overcooking. If my execution had been better, and if I had used some fresh-tasting homemade pesto, this dish would have been much better. I'm sure that I'll try this one, or some other variation of it again some day when I'm looking for something quick and easy to go with some grilled chicken or steak.

Well, my vacation is over, and it's back to reality. We had a great week of wonderful weather, and I was so glad to have the opportunity to make some great family memories of my son's first trip to the beach.

Date Cooked: August 20, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: B-

*This recipe isn't on epicurious.com.

166. Foolproof Grilled Chicken (p. 363)

I have a little bit of a problem with The Book's use of "foolproof" in the titles of several of its recipes. It's the same problem that I have with the "... For Dummies" and "Idiot's Guide ..." Books. You see, by calling this recipe Foolproof Grilled Chicken, The Book is telling me, "this recipe is so easy, not even a fool like you could botch it." I don't appreciate being called names.

But, after tasting this chicken, I got over myself. It's good enough to endure a little bit of name-calling.

The key to this recipe is brining the chicken. I know, I know, brining sounds like a pain in the neck--and it is--but, in this case, it made some pretty darn good chicken. First, I boiled a whole lot of salt and some sugar in a large pot of water for fifteen minutes. Then I cooled it compltely. Maybe some food scientist (are you out there Harold McGee?) could explain why it was so important to boil salt and sugar for fifteen minutes only to cool it completely. I figured I'd just trust The Book on this one. I put six pounds of chicken parts (I cut up a whole chicken rather than buying pre-cut parts) into the brine, covered it, and put it into the refrigerator for six hours.

Remember how I was saying that brining is a pain in the neck? Yeah, well, The Book says that you can brine the chicken a day in advance, but you still have to remove the chicken from the brine after six hour. I suppose leaving the chicken to soak in a saltwater bath for longer than that would be a bad thing. Well, I finally got the chicken into the brine at 10 o'clock on a Friday night. So, all you need to do is count to six to realized that, when my wife got up at 4 o'clock on Saturday morning to feed Jack, I had to get up, too, to take the chicken out of the brine. The things I do for The Project!

The Book gives instructions for cooking the chicken on either a charcoal grill or a gas grill. I've been wanting a nice Weber charcoal grill for a while, but for the time being, I've been using a gas grill (also a Weber, and we're pretty happy with it). I cranked the heat up all the way to pre-heat the grill for about ten minutes. I seared the meat for a little while, and then turned the heat down just a bit to cook the rest of the way.

There's another thing, besides the brining, that makes this recipe different from other grilled chicken recipes. The Book says to coat the cooked chicken in a Asian-inspired vinaigrette made with cilantro, mint, garlic, red pepper flakes, lime juice and fish sauce. I didn't make the vinaigrette and I didn't coat the cooked chicken with it. To be honest, I just ran out of time and decided to skip it. There may be some sticklers out there who'll say that I don't get to check this recipe off the list because I didn't make the vinaigrette. Well, this is my Project, and I get to say what counts as a recipe. I got out of bed at 4 o'clock in the morning to take the chicken out of the brine, so gosh darn it, I'm counting this one. (But, grilled chicken coated with Asian vinaigrette sounds pretty good, and I'm sure that I'll come back to this recipe some summer day.)

The chicken was excellent. The brining really did make a difference and was worth the extra effort (although I could have timed it better.) The chicken was nice and crispy and grill-makred on the outside, and tender and flavorful on the inside. Even the wings, which are usually the last parts to go after every grabs the drumsticks and breasts, were really good. Since I had no vinaigrette, I served the grilled chicken with the Manchamantal Sauce I made to go with the pork kebabs. Like I said, the Manchamantal Sauce was like a tropical barbecue sauce, so it worked just as well with the chicken as it did with the pork.

Date Cooked: June 13, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-

165. Grilled Pork Kebabs with Manchamantel Sauce (p. 483)

Becky, my good friend from college, and her boyfriend, Brian, came over for lunch a couple of weekends ago to visit with my son, Jack. I haven't seen Becky in months, and I wanted to make something special for her and Brian. That, and I was really excited to have an opportunity to cook for meat-eaters. I've been wanting to make this recipe ever since Teena made it last month. It was not a disappointment.

This recipe was a fair amount of work spanning over two days because it required marinating the pork and making the sauce.

First, the marinade. I started by toasting some dried chilies in a cast iron skillet for about a minute. The Book calls for dried ancho chilies, but I used the dried red chilies that I had leftover from the Shrimp in Adobo Sauce I made a while ago. (That recipe called for anchos, too, but the dried red chilies worked out fine in that dish, so I figured they'd be OK in this dish, too.) It's really amazing how just a few seconds in a hot skillet makes the dry, brittle chilies plump and pliable. I slit the chilies up the middle, removed the seeds and ribs, and covered them in boiling water to soften them up some more. (I prepared enough of the dried chilies for the marinade and for the sauce, which also calls for them.)

I combined the chilies, which I had coarsely chopped, with some water, chopped onion, garlic, thyme, oregano, cumin, salt, crushed peppercorns, olive oil and lemon juice in the blender. I ran out of ground cumin when I made my Green Bean Salad with Pumpkin Seed Dressing, but I was relieved to find some whole cumin seeds kicking around in my spice rack. Since I needed to crush the peppercorns anyway, I pulled out my mortar and pestle and ground up the cumin seeds old-school. Pre-ground spices are a real convenience, but there's nothing like fresh-ground for intense flavor and aroma. I don't know that I'd do it all the time, but there really is a difference.

I poured the marinade in a zip top bag and added the pork kebabs. The Book calls for 2 1/4 pounds of pork tenderloin, cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes. After wandering around somewhat aimlessly in front of the pork case at McKinnon's butcher shop, I asked for some help. The butcher I talked with told me that I wanted to use thick-cut, boneless pork chops and cut them into pieces. Not sure if he sold me a bill of goods, but the pork chops worked out well, and I was satisfied. The Book says that the pork needs to marinate for at least six hours and up to 24. I put the pork in the marinade the day before and left it in the refrigerator overnight.

Next, I moved on to the manchamantal sauce. According to The Book, manchamantel is Spanish for "tablecloth stainer." With its deep rust color, I'm sure that the name is well deserved. We ate outside, however, and the tablecloths were safely tucked away in the linen closet.

The Book suggests making the sauce in advance because it takes a little bit of time. Considering that most of the recipes take me longer than the start-to-finish times listed in The Book, I wasn't going to ignore a suggestion like that, and I made it the night before. First, I cooked some garlic and chopped onion in oil until the onions were golden. I added some sugar and vinegar and cooked it a little while longer. Next I put the onion mixture into the blender with the rest of the chilies, some water, some chopped fresh pineapple (yeah, I cut up a whole fresh pineapple ... it's a little bit of work, but worth it), a banana, and some cinnamon, cloves and a bit more sugar. I blended it up until it was smooth (crossing my fingers the whole time in hopes that the noisy blender wouldn't wake my sleeping son). I put the sauce in the refrigerator.

The next day, I drained the pork and discarded the marinade. I threaded the pork kebabs on bamboo skewers, alternating with large pineapple chunks and wedges of red onion. I put the kebabs on the grill and cooked them until the pork was done.

This wasn't the quickest recipe, but it wasn't hard and it was pretty tasty. I think that I overcooked the pork just a bit ... it was a little tough. But, just the same, it was good. The grilled pineapple was excellent. The red onions, though, didn't cook as quickly as the pork and pineapple, so they were a little underdone. The machamantal sauce was great. I was a little apprehensive about combining chilies, onions, pineapple and banana, but it really works. The sauce was sweet and sour and a little spicy and smoky. The flavors all blended well, but I was still able to sense a hint here and there of the pineapple and banana flavor. It was like a tropical barbecue sauce. It was a perfect match for the pork, but it also worked well with the grilled chicken that I'll post about next.

Date Cooked: June 13, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-