This is exactly the weather you expect in spring, right?

I had made tea smoked chicken before, but this turned out far better. It also took longer, but I think the results justify the extra time. The nice thing about this particular smoking method is that it was a little less intense. The chicken was pre-cooked and so all I needed to do was give it enough time in the smoke to give it flavor, rather than trying to cook it through. The first step will give you a very tasty broth which you could certainly eat if you wanted. I just don’t have space for that at the moment, but I did taste it, and it was very nice.

6 chicken legs quarters, salted and peppered (I broke them down into thighs and legs just to make them a little easier to deal with)

water to cover

1″ piece of ginger peeled and chopped roughly

2 cloves of garlic chopped

4 green onions, sliced into 1″ pieces

3 star anise

Season the chicken and allow it to sit  in the fridge for a couple of hours. Place in a large pot and add the water and all of the other ingredients. Bring up to a boil and then turn down to a simmer. Simmer for about 30 minutes, and then remove the chicken legs from the water. Allow the broth to simmer for another 30 minutes and adjust the seasoning. (If you want to keep it. I didn’t.)

On to the smoking! Here is where you want to make sure you have good ventilation! You can use the method I used in my previous post, or if you have a stove top smoker you can use that. I have a Cameron’s stove top smoker, and it works very well. It also uses less of the wood chips or tea in this case.

Cooked chicken legs

1/2 cup tea leaves (Yes, you can use Lipton)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup raw white rice

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

1 teaspoon whole cloves

2 – 3 star anise crushed

Preheat the oven to 400F. Combine everything but the chicken legs in a bowl, and line a skillet with foil, and add the tea mixture to the bottom if the skillet. Then place a rack on top, and place the chicken on it. Place the lid on the skillet, and turn the heat on high. When you start to hear the sugar crackling and smell the smoke, give it two minutes, and then turn off the burner and place the whole thing in the oven for 10 minutes. Don’t take off the lid to check, or you will lose all of the smoke.

If you’re using a stove top smoker, follow the  manufacturer’s directions for how much wood chips (tea) to use. You can still use the time above.

Tea smoked chicken

Once the chicken was smoked I pulled the meat off the bones, and roughly chopped it into bite sized pieces.

Next I made the ginger lime vinaigrette.

Vinaigrette dressing are very simple to make, and add lots of flavor to a salad. In this case it complimented the chicken very nicely! You can use a whisk to make this dressing, but I almost always use my food processor. It chops up the shallots and ginger for me, and makes quick work of emulsifying the dressing. Mine is a small one, and for doing recipes like this it works perfectly.

1 shallot finely diced

1 garlic clove minced

2 teaspoons finely diced or grated ginger

(I just dropped all three in the food processor, and let it do what it does!)

1 Tablespoon rice vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard (Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?)

1/4 cup neutral oil, canola, grape seed

1 Tablespoon toasted sesame oil

juice of 1/2 lime

I also added about 1 Tablespoon of honey just to balance out the flavors a bit.

If you’re doing this with a whisk, add the shallots, garlic, and ginger to the bowl, and add the lime juice, vinegar, honey, and mustard, and whisk to combine. Slowly whisk in the oils, until combined. If you have a food processor you can use the same order. It will just go a bit more quickly.

Ginger Lime Vinaigrette

To serve your salads, mix a little of the dressing with the chicken, and then place a handful of spring greens on a plate (I drizzled a bit of the dressing on the greens as well.) Place the chicken on top of the greens, and add some sliced cucumber, and finely sliced scallions! Enjoy! It was a nice lunch with my family even if the shower was canceled!

Enjoy the delicious salad!

_

Marishi

Lots of people have pets.  We have a couple of cats, and they are pretty typical for cats. Cute, crazy, and like to sleep when you let them. They also like to eat, and that is where things get tricky. You see, pet foods often contain fillers. Cats in the wild would eat meat, and that is the bulk of it. Dogs eat a more varied diet, but primarily a meat based diet.

What is in your pet’s food? Let’s face it, your pets need to eat. You probably also don’t want to have your pets eating people food. You also don’t want to cook them special food most of the time. On the other hand, you don’t want to be glutened from your pets food. Go look at the package for your pet’s food. What did you find? Wheat? Barley? Oats? Surprised? I was too. Why do your pets need these? I doubt that they do. Of course grains are cheaper than actual meat and meat products. The cheaper the food the more likely it seems that you will have gluten in your pet food. Obviously, when you have a person with Celiac in your home you want to eliminate as much as possible the sources of gluten that they are exposed to.

This is not just an issue in dry food. Wet food also contains gluten.

The other day we were picking up some more food for our cats, and we found some that actually didn’t seem to contain any gluten. It wasn’t even that much more expensive for a similar amount of food as we normally bought. They also had some canned food, and it was actually marked as being gluten-free and grain free. We generally only feed our cats canned food as a treat.

We picked up a bag of the dry food. Right now we are feeding them a mixture of their old food with the new stuff to transition them to the new food. Some of the dry food formulas do contain oats, but the one we got only had rice.

As it turns out, they really do seem to like this new food quite a bit. When we gave them a can of the new wet food, it looked like food. It even smelled less like cat food than most of the canned cat food I have seen. I won’t say it smelled good, but they seemed to like it!

I guess really this post is just something for you to think about, and be aware of. You can’t control what your cats do, and they are going to go where you may not want them. This is just one more little thing that can help you feel better. Obviously, you still need to maintain normal hygiene standards, but it gives you one less thing to worry about. That is never a bad thing.

What you need:

chicken, whole, cut up, or breasts if you prefer.

olive oil

10 – 12 crimini mushrooms sliced thin

garlic, minced how much do you like?

1 onion sliced thinly

1 bell pepper sliced thinly (about the same size as the onion)

1 can diced tomatoes

white wine

salt and pepper

herbes de provence

That is really it. You could add pancetta, red pepper flakes, bay leaves, fresh basil, you know,  that kind of thing.

I decided serve it on top of some gluten-free  noodles, and I picked up a box of Schar tagliatelle.

This is pretty straightforward stuff. Season the chicken with salt, and pepper. Heat the oil in a skillet, and sear the chicken. When it releases from the pan, flip it over, and sear it on the other side. The second side won’t take as long as the first. Remove the chicken and set it on a plate for the time being.

There should be some oil left in the pan. Throw in the mushrooms add a little salt, and saute them until they are tender. Then add the bell pepper, onion and garlic. Again, add a touch of salt, and saute until it is tender.  Add some wine, and bring it to a boil.  Scrape the brown bits up. I can’t really tell you how much, I wanted enough of the liquid to get some with the noodles. Next add the can of tomatoes and stir them in and bring the whole thing up to a boil. Add the black pepper and herbes de provence.  See how much liquid you have, if it looks like enough that you can get the chicken down in it part way.  Put the chicken in with whatever liquid is on the plate, put the lid on the skillet, and turn it down to a simmer.

While the chicken is simmering get the water boiling for your pasta. Cook the pasta according to the directions on the box. Keep in mind that the chicken will be fine if it is done a little before the pasta. The pasta on the other hand will turn into a gummy mess while the chicken finishes cooking.

Put some noodles on the plate, and top it with the chicken, and then veggies, and sauce. Bon appetit!   

I decided to make us kind of an Asian BBQ chicken bowl, maybe something along the lines of a San Sai teriyaki bowl, except with some stir fried veggies too.  As part of going for that kind of dish I also decided I would cut the chicken breasts in half so I would have thinner pieces that would cook more quickly. (This also has the nice benefit of making portion sizes a bit more in line with what we should be eating rather than what we CAN eat.)

I thought about marinating the chicken like I did with the sweet and sour chicken, but in this case I decided to just go with a little salt and pepper.

I decided that I would throw the chicken in the grill pan since it works quite nicely when I don’t feel like dragging out the grill and lighting it and waiting. I can just toss it in the oven for a while and get it nice and hot.

I liked the way the veggies came out in the sweet and sour chicken I made earlier, and decided I would do them that way. They also end up reheating better. (They don’t turn into mush.) We also had some jasmine rice, so I thought that would go nicely in our bowls too.

Cut up whatever veggies you want to stir-fry. I always do the vegetables first. I used an onion, a red bell pepper, and a couple of carrots.  I just cut them up into similar sized pieces. This keeps them cooking at about the same rate.

Then I cut the chicken breasts in half so that they would be thin. This would make them cook faster.

Since I had my grill pan in the oven preheating at 350F for about 30 minutes it was nice and hot when I was ready to go.

Start the rice first since it takes the longest to cook! You could use white or brown. If you do make brown rice just remember it takes a little longer to cook.

Next I got the grill pan out of the oven, and set it on a burner. Place the chicken in the pan at 45 degree angle to the direction of the grill. I find that it can be helpful to use a little cooking spray on the food in cases like this. Using tongs gently life a corner of the first piece. If it comes up easily turn it 90 degrees. If it doesn’t, just leave it there a little longer. After you’ve given it a turn, let the chicken sit there for a couple of minutes. This will give you nice grill marks. Then flip it over, and do pretty much the same thing. Once I had both sides marked I drizzled on a little of the sauce and smeared it around, flipped it over, and put sauce on that side, and then popped the whole thing in the oven.

I had my veggies cut up already so I got a skillet nice and hot with a little bit of oil, and added the veggies to it. I sauted that for a couple of minutes until the carrots got a little tender. The chicken was done. I sliced the chicken into thin pieces across the grain of the breast, and on a bias. This will give you the most tender piece of meat. How tender it is is really your perception of how long the muscle fibers are when you are chewing them. The longer the fibers the more you have to chew them.

This was very tasty, and very easy to do. Also, this was a pretty quick dinner. Next time, I am going to tweak the sauce a bit by adding some Sriracha to it, and might add a little bit more of it.

This was a chance for me to do a few things that I don’t get to do very often. While I understand and know HOW to make an “S” cut in something to make a round food into a flat sheet, I had never done it. I had also never made stuffing like this. I made some cornbread stuffing at Thanksgiving, so I had a general idea of how it would work. I was pretty much going to wing it! The final thing that I had never done, but more or less understood was how to tie a roast!

Equipment you’re going to need:

Sharp knife, boning, non-flexible slicer or utility

Cutting board

Butcher’s twine

Some kind of roaster or sheet tray

An accurate thermometer

I figured the first thing I would do is make my stuffing.

1/2 loaf Scharr baguette cubed (I didn’t end up using all of this, but I was winging it, so just used what I needed.)

1 Jazz apple diced

1/2 cup pistachios after being shelled. Crushed

salt and pepper

6 fresh sage leaves fine chiffonade

1 Tablespoon approximately fresh rosemary chopped

chicken broth

1 pork tenderloin

Follow the directions of the Scharr bread. Or use whatever you have handy. This would be a good place to use up leftover gluten-free bread. I didn’t have any, so I did what I had to. Allow it to cool, and then cut it into small cubes. Combine all of the other dry ingredients of the stuffing, pour in a little bit of the chicken broth at a time to get all of the bread moist. It doesn’t need to be soaking wet.

The stuffing I had left!

Next we need to make an “S” cut in the pork. Using a knife you’re comfortable with, slice about 1/3 of the way from the top almost all of the way through. Then turn it around and cut the lower part the same way. This will give you a flat-ish sheet to stuff, and roll up.

Spread the stuffing on the pork loin. You’ll want to leave a little space at the edge so that you can roll it. Then to keep everything in place you’re going to need to tie it with the butcher’s twine. There are a number of ways this can be done. The easiest is to cut several lengths of string that you can slide under every couple of inches and tie securely. The best knot for this is a fisherman’s knot, (That is what we always called it, but a butcher might call it something else) which is a basic overhand knot with an extra tuck through the open loop . The other way is a little trickier, and involves making loops and tightening them up and making another loop, and only actually making knots at the end. Which is what I did. The one in the foreground is stuffed, and the one in the background is not. I cut it wrong, and tied it back up so that it would cook more evenly!
Season the outside with salt and pepper and roast it at 350 degrees until your thermometer reads 150F if you want medium and 160 if you want it well. Remove it from the oven and allow it to rest for about 10 more minutes. During that time the temperature will continue to rise. Also, the juices in the meat will redistribute during this time. Just let it sit covered with a piece of foil.

This turned out to be pretty tasty, and we all enjoyed it. I even stuffed a chicken breast for Amy with the same stuff. (She didn’t care for it, but she doesn’t really like stuffing, and doesn’t think fruit and meats go together, so…) All told, it was a very nice evening with my family, and that is never a bad thing.

Now, since going gluten-free my options for Chinese food are a lot more limited. That makes me sad, because I always loved it. Realistically, I know that this kind of thing is something I am easily capable of doing, but I never really tried it until today. Next time I might make a few adjustments, but it was good, and pretty close to what I expected. I’m pretty sure it is not particularly a traditional Chinese dish, but it is how I was exposed to Chinese food, and I would imagine I am not the only one.

Dinner!

I found this recipe in a  book called Chinese Cooking The Food and the Lifestyleand, then adjusted it slightly to make it safe and also to use what I had or could buy.

You need to make your sauce, marinate the chicken, and cut up the veggies. First I would cut up and marinate the chicken. You want bite sized pieces. The marinade is very simple. 

2 Tablespoons of soy sauce (I used San-J gluten-free tamari.)

1 Tablespoon of sake (I know, sake is Japanese. Chinese rice wines are harder to find!)

black pepper

1 Tablespoon vegetable oil or sesame oil
Just put the chicken in a bowl and toss with this mixture and allow to sit for 30 minutes or so. The chicken won’t get breaded like we all always had before, but it is fine. You could make a tempura batter with rice flour and deep fry it if you just have to have that element. Trust me though, this is good, and probably healthier! If you do make the tempura you’ll need to drain the chicken and then try to get it as dry as possible. Otherwise the batter won’t stick.

Next make the sauce. It is very quick, and easy.

1/2 cup rice vinegar

1/4 cup sugar

6 Tablespoons ketchup

2 Tablespoons soy sauce (Again, San-J GF tamari)

Heat the vinegar and sugar in a small pot until the sugar is dissolved. Add the ketchup and soy sauce, and mix well.

Next we’ll deal with the veggies.

1 small onion cut in large dice 3/4″ across or so

1 or 2 carrots thinly sliced on the bias

1 bell pepper cut the same size as the onion

In a second bowl

3 green onions finely sliced

1 clove garlic minced

ginger root about the same amount as the garlic also minced

So, now we can put the whole thing together! Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet or if you have a wok use it! Saute the chicken in the large skillet until it is nearly cooked through, and remove from the pan. Wipe it clean and add a little more oil. Then saute the ginger, scallions and garlic until fragrant. This might take a minute. Add the rest of the veggies and saute them until they start getting tender. Return the chicken to the pan, and cook until the chicken is cooked through. Then add the sauce to the pan. Serve over rice and enjoy your trip down memory lane! I know I wish I had some chopsticks!

Today we are going to talk about using your chef’s knife. This is the real workhorse of your kitchen knives. The others are more specialized or really not all that useful. The small serrated utility knife is the worst! The chef’s knife comes in many different shapes and sizes. I have several, all different, and I like them all!

From top to bottom:
French Chef’s knife
Chinese Chef’s knife
Santoku

First lets talk about the parts of a knife. First the obvious, there is a handle and a blade. There are a number of parts within each of these. The point, the tip, the edge, and the heal of the blade are the sharpened side of  the knife. The part of the blade opposite the edge is the spine. The handle will vary depending on the construction of the knife, but it should be comfortable to hold in your hand. The tang is the part of the blade that extends into the handle. The tang can be partial, or full. A full tang will be the full length of the handle, and the sides of the handle will be riveted to it. A partial will only be part of the length of the handle. You can also have a rat tail tang. It is a thin tang that extends into the handle. This is typically in cheaper knives, and you will not see it at all. This is not to say that a knife with a rat tail tang is a bad knife, just less expensive. The other part of a knife handle to know about is the bolster. The bolster is where the blade meets the handle. On some knives there is an actual bolster, and it is part of the blade that is part of the handle. On other knives it is more of a conceptual thing. The area is still there, but the blade just joins the handle.

Now what? Well lets talk about how to hold the knife.  I know what you’re thinking, “Well, there’s a handle. That is what handles are for.” Well, yes, and no. You probably hold the knife with all four fingers on the handle.

This is how I hold a knife.

As you can see I don’t hold a knife the same way you do. The bolster (remember that?) is sort of in the palm of my hand. My index finger is curled over the spine , and the blade is pinched between it and my thumb. The rest of my fingers are on the handle. My grip may shift a little when I’m holding the knife to actually cut something, but you get the idea. As you can see, my fingers are still all out of the way of any cutting parts. What does this grip do for you? By moving your hand closer to the working part of the knife you gain quite a bit more control. It doesn’t really seem like it would make that big of a difference, but once you try it, and stick with it for a bit, you will NEVER go back.

Why do you get more control? I’m not sure I can answer that, but you do. Today while I was at work I tried to slice some onions holding the knife the way I used to, and I just felt like I had no control over anything that was going on at the business end of things. Believe me, you want the control! At least in part this is because you don’t have to work as hard to actually hold the knife. Since you are not working as hard to hold the knife, you can be more accurate with your cuts, you can cut more without getting tired, cut things faster (with time and practice), and be safer overall. That last point is important, and relates to this… A sharp knife is ALWAYS safer. While that may seem counterintuitive, it is true.  A sharp knife requires less effort to make a cut. Then when you are not struggling to hold the knife, and feel more secure holding, cutting becomes effortless. This is important because you are going to cut yourself! The sharp knife in your hand will cut you, but you won’t have been struggling to get the edge to bite into the skin of a tomato, and slip full force into your pinky finger causing a ragged tear of a cut. When you cut yourself, it will have clean smooth edges, and won’t actually be as deep, because there was much less force behind the blade. The nice clean cut will be less painful, and heal much faster. (Yes, it will hurt either way.)

Now that we have your dominant hand sorted out, lets take a look at your other hand. We have a couple of goals for your left hand. The first is to hold the food that you want to cut, and the second is to leave it intact!

As you can see in the picture above my finger tips are curled back from the blade of the knife, and the knife is actually touching the index finger and middle finger. As you can see, my thumb is nowhere near the blade at all. This will allow you to hold the food, and guide the knife as it cuts the food.

Depending on the size and shape of the food you’re cutting there are various techniques you can use.  For items like carrots or celery that are going to be chopped and are not very tall the easiest thing to do is to keep the tip of the knife in contact with the cutting board, and make a circle with your right hand. Starting with the blade of the knife on the cutting board, lift the blade and draw it toward you. Then as you descend push the knife away from your body still leaving the tip on the board. When used in this way you will be able to chop all kinds of things. Similarly you can hold the knife above the food, and slice downward through it. In this case the tip of the knife won’t be on the cutting board, but you will still use a motion similar to the basic chopping above. You can also use the tip of the knife to slice items like tomatoes or pineapples that have been sliced. These two techniques will serve you very well for almost anything you will be doing.

These two videos show me dicing a tomato and chiffonading some basil. In the first, I used the tip of the knife to slice the tomato, and then I used the variation of the basic chopping motion to dice it. When chiffonading the basil I used the basic chopping motion.

VID00009 from Chris Lane on Vimeo.

VID00011 from Chris Lane on Vimeo.

Remember your knife is not something to be scared of. It is actually one of the most useful tools you have in your kitchen!

All of us eat food. (Hopefully, several times a day!) How many of us take the time to actually pay attention to what we are eating?

I pretty much always taste food I am cooking if I can. At work that is not always possible, but I generally get the help I need. When I make a dish the first time I will follow the recipe fairly closely (unless something just doesn’t make sense to me), and the next time I  make adjustments as I see fit. Hopefully, you do something somewhat similar when you’re cooking for yourself.

I decided to enter the contest, more or less on a whim. I decided Thursday night about midnight that I would enter the contest that took place on the following Tuesday. Not a lot of time. Obviously, I had recipes that I felt fairly comfortable with, and figured they would be a good start. If I’m entering a contest like this I want to win! So, I realized that I needed to really make sure that I got my recipes right. (To tell the truth, for my salsa and guacamole there is no actual recipe, more of a concept. I just make them, and taste as I go.)

I wasn’t going to write something down, because then I would be following something that constrains me in these, and I didn’t feel like that would be the right way to go. So, I tried to really pay attention to the flavors in each of the dips. I did decide to take all of the salsa ingredients outside and put them on the grill rather than roasting them in the oven. I figured the charring on the pepper skins and tomatoes skins would give me more depth of flavor, and then since I was making some turkey burgers for dinner, and the grill was lit… Once everything was pureed I added the lime juice and salt and pepper and tasted it. Now, really pay attention… Is there enough salt? Bell pepper? Garlic? Jalapeno? etc., and I tried to really take my time tasting, adjusting until I really felt that I had it exactly how I wanted.

When I made the guacamole I did the same thing. I tried to be very precise with my cuts for each of the ingredients to get them exactly the way I wanted them. When you’re using a knife, you can actually impact the flavor of a dish by cutting things inconsistently. Imagine taking a bite of something only to find a large piece of raw garlic… Probably not what you wanted to go for. And it will certainly affect the flavor of that bite. Of course, if people are judging your food on a single bite, you probably just lost a vote…

Obviously, I was trying to get the flavors just right for the contest, but really we can extend this to almost any time we are cooking or eating.  If you are already gluten-free you’re used to paying attention to labels on EVERYTHING you buy at the grocery store, right? And while that is a very good thing, there is more that you can do. Take a little time and when you taste the food you’re cooking pay attention to what you’re actually experiencing. Food is far more than taste and smell. Really, all of our senses go into cooking and eating. Look at the food, and notice the colors and textures. Do you hear anything? Maybe it is sizzling as you cook it… Touch it! If you’ve ever handled meat that has gone bad (yuck!) you’ll know that it feels different, as well as smelling different! Of course, that is not all you can tell by touching your food. In short, pay as much attention to the food you’re eating, when you’re cooking it as when you buy it. Take the time and really experience it. That was the challenge I gave myself. It didn’t really add a lot of time to the prep, but it may have made a difference in the end result.

Photo by Jody Gorder

When all of the salsa and guacamole had been eaten, and the votes were counted it turned out that I took first place in the guacamole and second in the salsa! It was a lot of fun to try something that was somewhat out of my comfort zone like this, and give myself a challenge. Of course, that means next year I will have to defend my title I suppose!

1 FIRE!

Depending on your choice of fuel this will be easy or a little more complicated. Depending on what you are going to be cooking, and how you are going to be cooking it you will do different things.

I prefer charcoal, personally, but it is up to you. I know some people have grills with a charcoal section and a gas section. That would be nice for quick grilling sessions on a week night  fire up the gas side, and when you have time use the charcoal side. Or if you have people coming over, use both! I have given up lighter fluid, and now use a starter chimney. No more lighter fluid taste! It is easy, and actually pretty fast! You always want to make sure that the coals are ashed over before you start any food. Flames are bad when you are grilling. Flames mean soot, and soot is never good on your food!

Chimney starter loaded with natural chunk charcoal, and lit!

When you grill you have several options for getting heat to your food. You can have direct or indirect heat. Obviously, you can use both in one grilling session, and sometimes that is exactly what is called for. Charcoal grills give you more options, but they can also give you more problems.  With a gas grill you can use the burner or burners to control how much heat and where it is. When you are dealing with charcoal you have to place the fire where you want it. Obviously if you want a nice even heat over the entire grill you need to make sure you spread the coals under the grill evenly.

How you distribute the heat will depend on what you are grilling. Certain things require even heat across the entire grill. This category would include sausages (brats, hot dogs, salsiccia…), burgers, fish (fillets and steaks), veggies, fruits, chicken breasts. In other words, small similar sized items should go over direct heat. Indirect heat would be best for larger items or smoking. So, if you wanted to grill a whole chicken, or smoke a boston butt for example you want indirect heat. In the case of the chicken you could sear the skin over the hot part and move it to the cooler part of the grill to cook through, or cook the bird through and then sear the skin on the hot side.

When you are smoking you generally want a lower temperature, and to use indirect heat.  I do this by piling all of the coals (and soaked wood chips) at one end of the grill, and then putting the smokee at the other end. I am then able to control the temperature by opening the air vent and the chimney. More air flow will give you a higher temperature, but if you close things up too much you starve the fire of oxygen and you end up killing the fire. So you want to find the point where you have enough heat to cook, but you also want to have the fire low so that you can get  nice smoke flavor into the food.

Smoked boston butt after 4 hours in the smoker. That night I used pecan wood chips.

2 Let it warm up!

Before you put food on the grill you want it to get good and hot. This will help the food to not stick. I’m not really sure why this is, but in almost every case you want to put the food on a hot surface rather than a cold one. This will also help keep you from having flames, and it will burn off some crap from the grill.

3 Clean the grill!

Make sure there isn’t a whole bunch of burned crap on the grill. A grill brush will do the trick and it is cheap! This will ensure that all of the crap that was left on the grill the last time and burned on there doesn’t end up in your food.  If you think about it it makes sense.  You don’t want your grilled pineapples to taste like the chipotle marinated pork chops that you had the other night, do you? Clean the grill! (Having said that, chipotle pineapple might be an interesting combo… if you do it right, spicy and sweet almost always works!)

4 Season your food!

This should be a no brainer, but seasoning your food is always a good thing. In grilling, which is a high heat dry method of cooking, if you have a large piece of meat you should consider brining it. This will help you keep your food more moist. You might also want to consider brining things like shrimp which are easy to over cook. Even if all you use is salt and pepper it will make your food taste better when you get through cooking it. I also like to use various marinades and rubs, depending on the meat and the flavor I want.

5 Leave it alone!

Ok, so here is where things get a little more interesting. Whenever you are cooking and add a piece of high protein food to a hot surface it will stick. This is not a problem, just leave it alone! This happens in a non-stick skillet, it happens in a stainless steel skillet, and it happens on the grill. I’ve seen special foil that you can put on your grill to prevent that from happening. I don’t know why you would do that though. A little vegetable oil on the grill before you put the food on it, or a little cooking spray (Make damn sure you don’t get the baking spray that has flour in it, because that would not be gluten-free!) on the food before you place it on the grill will make it not stick. Since you’re leaving it alone you will not tear up the chicken, or steak or burger. What you will end up with is grill marks! (Just like at your favorite restaurant!)

Make sure you have a little oil on the grill, and place your seasoned food on the grill at a 45 degree angle to the direction of the grill grates, and leave it there! After a couple of minutes with your tongs lift the edge of the food very gently, and if it comes up lift it and turn it 90 degrees. If it doesn’t come up easily, let it sit a little longer. Obviously if you are making a burger you should use a spatula, and the angle that you place it is less important. Closing the lid of your grill will help heat the other side of the food, and speed things up a bit. Once you have turned your food and allowed it to sit a little longer you will have nice grill marks on one side of your food.

The second side will go a bit quicker, but with a large piece of meat the grill marks are less important, because it will take longer to finish cooking. If you have a larger piece of meat and you just want the grill marks you can finish it in the oven, and then return it to the grill to essentially remark it. This is fairly common with things like half chickens. You can do them on the grill from start to finish, but it takes a bit of care to not over cook it or burn the skin. It isn’t hard though.

The burger on the right shows what will happen if you try to flip your food too early. I had it over a cold spot on my grill, oops! The one on the left has some nice grill marks though!

6 Eat!

This one is pretty simple! Enjoy the summer, and grilling! There are is almost no limit to what you can grill, and with a little creativity you can really get some great flavors that are much more difficult during the winter, unless you are a serious griller, and then you won’t be hindered by a little snow!

The only real equipment you will need is a blender/food processor and a bowl.

2 cantaloupes

3/4 cup water

1/2 cup sugar

juice and zest of one lime

splash of white wine (optional)

sprig fresh rosemary

The first thing you will want to do is combine the water, sugar and lime in a small pot. Bring to a simmer and cook until the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat, and set aside.

While the liquid is cooling peel your melons, and cut them into pieces that are small enough to fit into your blender. The easiest way to peel a melon is to cut off the stem end and the blossom end. This will give you flat spots to steady the melon while you peel it. Using your chef’s knife slice down the side of the melon following the curve. You want to make sure you get all of the peel. In this case it is pretty easy to know you have it right when you cut off all of the green.

Once you’ve peeled the melons split them in half. Scoop out the seeds, and then cut the melon into pieces. Place the half of the melon in the blender with some of the water mixture, and puree. You’re going to have to taste this to decide if it is too sweet, or not sweet enough. When you blend the second half  you can adjust the sweetness of the soup by adding more or less of the sugar syrup. Hold a little bit back  just in case you need to adjust.  Transfer the soup to a bowl, and taste it again. (Add the wine now if you are using it, the acid will brighten up the flavors a bit.) Once you have the soup as sweet as you would like you can turn your attention to the rosemary. Set the whole sprig on your cutting board and use the back of a skillet to gently smash it. This will leave it intact, but release more of the oil into the soup. Then simply place the rosemary in the bowl with the soup, and make sure it is submerged. Allow the soup to cool in the fridge and serve in chilled bowls. Maybe top it with a dollop of sour cream for garnish? Eat it just like it is.

This is a very simple soup, but it is very tasty, and very refreshing for a hot summer day.