This month’s “On Our Grills, 4 Ingredient Challenge” posed some real challenges.  Some people have gotten the impression these monthly culinary exercises is a contest amongst our little group of BBQ Bloggers.  But the challenge is more about challenging ourselves and not each other.  And this month was an amazing challenge.  The four ingredients we had to work with were: freshwater fish fillet, broccoli, apple and sourdough bread.

As usual I had to try something out of the box.  Way, way out of the box.  The normal process for the challenge, each month, is to search my library of cookbooks and the internet looking for ideas.  From that point I start to develop some ideas.  I didn’t want to just grill some fish fillets so it was essential to find something else to include the fish in.  First I found recipes for broccoli and apple quiche.  Then I found some recipes for a fish and broccoli “pie.”  The second recipe was basically a quiche and the basic quiche recipes were similar.  So why not combine the two.

No recipe this time.  Just a few photos and descriptions for the Fish & Broccoli/Apple Quiche.

(L) The freshest freshwater fresh fillet I could find was farm raised catfish.  One of the things I learned through this process was if you soaked the fish in milk for a few hours it would make the fish “less fishy.”  It seemed to work.

(R) After the milk soak I grilled the fish with a little seasoning until it was done.  I then let the fish cool and flaked it.  I used 2/3 cup of flaked fish.

The broccoli was steamed and rough chopped.  The apples sliced.  I used a couple eggs, milk and some goat cheese to make up the quiche in a beautiful homemade pastry crust.  (Thanks to the family baker…Mrs. Grail for helping me out on this part.)

Now how to bake the quiche outdoors.  I was, at first, a little baffled as to how to get this done, but after some thought I came up with what turned out to be a pretty darn good.  I used my Char-Broil Big Easy and my trusty dutch oven.  After pre-heating the dutch oven I placed the pie inside the dutch oven, raised off the bottom with another pie pan.  After closing the lid the pie baked to a golden brown.

They quiche cooked in about 25 minutes.  Normally I would have expected it to cook in about 15 minutes.  Because it’s difficult to tell what the temperature of this “oven” is I don’t know how close to 350 degrees it was.  I’m not sure viable this technique is for baking other items, but I’m going to give it a try on a fruit pie just so I can say I did it.

I figured the best way to use the sourdough bread was just as bread and butter.  Some sliced apples on the plate for a little color.

No recipe this time.  If you really want the measurements drop me an email and I’ll send them to you.

Additional participants in this month’s Ingredient Challenge include:

Paul Haight of No Excuses BBQ – ENTRY HERE

The No Excuses BBQ website was started in January of 2009 as a way to record the author’s goal of cooking outdoors at least once a week throughout the year and showing the results to the world. Somewhere along the way things got out of control…

Marc Van Der Wouw of Grill Adventures-ENTRY HERE

Grilladventures by broadcastmarc is started on march of 2010.I started the BBQ thing when I was 30,before that we eat a lot outside.have fun,but when the kids came in our life We start serious cooking.Most of it is realy healthy I think;-)The grill has a special place in my heart,We love to do things outside..Everything I make is an adventure,and sometimes we use the books.We try to grill as much as we can year round.

Bob Fukushima of Bob’s Brew & Que – ENTRY HERE

Bob started Bob’s Brew and ‘Que in August of 2009 with the intent of sharing his views on food and drink. Originally focused on BBQ and Homebrew, it was inevitable that the influences of his upbringing in the San Francisco Bay Area and it’s wealth of ingredients as well as his heritage as an American of Japanese ancestry would help focus his blog, as it has his approach to food and drink.

Hanneke Eerden of The Dutchess Cooks – ENTRY HERE

After years of cooking, grilling, baking and reading other people’s blogs, I thought “why not start my own blog??” And I did, in 2010, but already after a short period of time, a blog wasn’t enough, and I started my own website. It’s not my goal to publish or come up with fancy and difficult recipes:  just good and delicious food with an international twist! Straight from my plate to yours!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Larry Gaian

A few months ago I used my charcoal chimney and a small cooking grate to grill some sausages.  Cooking directly on the chimney worked perfectly and I’ve used it a couple of more times to grill small amounts of meat.

The thought came to me that I could use the charcoal chimney to heat the cast iron skillet and fry my catfish.  I lit half a chimney of Kingsford charcoal and let it ash over.  I knew the charcoal would get the cast iron skillet hot, but I wasn’t sure how long it would burn so added five or six unlit briquettes to the already hot charcoal.

This worked well but the one thing I would do differently next time is find something to raise the chimney up off the flat surface it was one.  This will allow more airflow and keep the temperature steady through out the whole fish fry.

Preheating the cast iron skillet.

While the skillet was preheating I breaded the catfish in a little corn meal seasoned with a great seasoned salt I purchased at Granville Market in Vancouver, Canada called “Smoked Garlic Chipotle Salt” from Oddball Organics.

When I was growing up my mom used to fry fish breaded with corn meal and even now after many, many years of eating fish breaded with different methods corn meal is still my favorite way of doing it.

Once the cast iron skillet was heated and the oil up to temperature I was ready to fry some catfish.  It was no problem getting the oil heated to over 350 degrees.  The only real problem with cooking this way is there isn’t any way to control the temp.  There is no higher or lower.  You’ve just got to hope you get the right amount of briquettes.  Trial and error is the best way to learn this method.

The catfish fried without a hitch.

A big baked potato, tartar sauce and corn makes for a great Friday evening meal.  Clean up is simple and I didn’t have to worry about lighting candles or opening windows to air the house out.