I have shelves and shelves of rubs, spices, seasonings and sauces.  There is even a spare refrigerator in the garage where the overflow of previously enjoyed jars/bottles of sauces are kept.  I love all the unique flavors you can come up with, but when it comes to expensive cuts of meat and seafood I prefer to go with a much more simple approach.  And that’s the case with these wonderful halibut filets my sister-in-law dropped off from a recent trip to Alaska.  The last time I checked halibut this good was over $19.00 a pound.  At prices like that I want to taste the fish, not seasoning.

Halibut is a very firm white fish and holds up well to grilling directly on the grates.  It you’ve had trouble with fish sticking to your grates try oiling the fish and NOT the grates.  This is the technique I use with great success.  Also, trying to turn the fish to early will also give you sticking problems.  If your grates are clean and you oil the fish when its time to turn over the flesh of the fish will “release” from the grates.  Making sure you’re not using too hot of a grill also will make sure your life is much easier.

I served the halibut with a some roasted potatoes and a zucchini fritter.  Just a touch of tartare sauce for some added zing and we had a fantastic meal.  The zucchini fritter was super simple.  Shred three or four zucchini and place them in a mesh strainer.  Mix in 1 tablespoon of kosher salt and let it sit for 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes cut the crust off two pieces of white bread.  In a food processor grind the bread into a fine powder.  Squeeze as much liquid as possible out of the zucchini and add the bread crumbs, pepper and a little sliced green onion.  Form into patties and pan fry until crisp and cooked through.

I wanted a little dab of tartare sauce to compliment the fish so I mixed some mayo with a touch of Dijon mustard, pickle relish and grated onion together.  It was a little boring so I chopped up a few candied jalapeno and added them to the sauce and bingo, we had ourselves a winner.

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Because the salmon grills fast you want to have the Tasso Cream Sauce almost done before the salmon hits the grill.  The first thing I did was finely dice all the aromatics and the tasso and get them going on the stove.  Cook them until the bell peppers are done and tasso has started to brown on the edges.

Once you add the cream and start to reduce the mixture (see full recipe below for complete directions) season the salmon and get it on the grill.  I seasoned our salmon with just a little Johnny’s Salmon Seasoning
.

When picking out salmon it’s important to get fillets that are uniform in size and thickness.  This will help you make sure all portions are done at the same time.

Also when grilling salmon or any other fish a good trick to help keep it from sticking to the grates is to spray non-stick cooking spray directly on the fish and not on the grill grates.  I like to season the salmon and then spray the fish with the cooking spray.  This seems to keep the seasoning on the fish better and I have far less sticking this way.

I also grilled up some zucchini.  Very simply done with just a little kosher salt.  After the zucchini was done and just before serving I tossed it with about 2 tablespoons of Italian salad dressing.  This gave it a nice little bit, but wasn’t overpowering.

Once the salmon is grilled to your liking, take it off and plate it.  Let it rest a minute or two.  Top with as much of the tasso cream sauce as you like.  Keep in mind the tasso is strong and drenching the salmon in the cream sauce will cover up the salmon taste.  So, just a little.

The tasso cream sauce worked quite nicely with the Johnny’s and complemented the salmon.  There would be no problem with using the tasso cream sauce on chicken, pork or any other fish that has a stronger flavor.  The cream sauce will overpower most “white” fishes so try and stay away from them.

Tasso Cream Sauce

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons Green Bell Pepper, small dice
• 3 tablespoons Red Bell Pepper, small dice
• 3 tablespoons Shallots, small dice
• 1/4 cup Tasso Ham, small dice
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• Green Onions tops, sliced (For garnish)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions:

In a large saute pan heat olive oil and saute bell peppers, shallots, garlic and Tasso Ham until the aromatics are tender and the ham has started to brown around the edges.  Add cream and reduce heat.  Reduce mixture by 1/2 stirring frequently so the cream doesn’t burn.  Spoon cream sauce over salmon and serve immediately.

Here’s my entry for this months “challenge.”  Pork Chops with Cola Raspberry Balsamic Reduction and grilled zucchini…

Cola Raspberry Balsamic Reduction

Ingredients:

• 1 12 oz bottle GuS Dry Cola*
• 1 6 0z container Fresh Raspberries
• 2 tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar
• Sugar, to taste

Directions:

Pour soda and raspberries into a medium sauce pan and bring to small boil.  Cook until raspberries are soft.  With a mixer, blender or other appliance puree the ingredients.  Strain the liquid, to remove all seeds and any remain pulp.  Return to saucepan and bring to a simmer.  Heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture has reduced to almost a syrup consistency.  Add the Balsamic vinegar and whatever sugar you need to take any tartness away.

*I used the GuS Dry Cola (Grown up Soda) because it is lightly sweetened with cane sugar.  This lightly sweetened cola allowed me to have more control over the sweetness than if I’d used a more readily available cola.

The reduction reduced from all the liquid you see down to about 5 ounces of great tasting sauce.  I think if I were to do it again I would cut the amount of raspberries in half so more of the cola flavor came out.

A few weeks ago I received some amazing products from Bushelle Seasonings.  These all natural seasonings are made from fresh herbs and seasonings.  When I first opened the box and looked at the jars I realized it wasn’t anything like what I was expecting.  When I opened the jars I was greeted with a fantastic aroma.  But what to do with them…

I decided to make a basic brine for the pork chops and add some Bushelle Garlic Seasoning.

BBQ Grail’s Bushelle Seasoning Brine

Ingredients:

• 4 cups water
• 1/2 cup kosher salt
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 heaping tablespoon Bushelle Seasoning

Directions:

Heat water, salt and brown sugar to a boil.  When all the ingredients are dissolved remove from heat and cool to room temperature.  Add Bushelle Seasoning to brine.  Place pork chops and brine in a plastic bag and brine the chops for four to five hours.

Remove the chops from the brine, rinse off the salt and let air dry.

Grill!

I also grilled the zucchini using a little olive oil and “Butter Blast” from Instant Gourmet.  As usual the GrillGrates gave me great grill marks and some fantastic chops and veggies.

The brine for the pork chops was incredible.  The Bushelle Seasonings added a robust herbal flavor.  I’m not sure exactly what is in the there, but it’s also got just a little bite.

Celeste also used the Bushelle Seasoning Original in her rice pilaf.  This is a great product and I can’t wait to come up with other ways to incorporate it into my BBQ dishes.

Besides the rice pilaf Celeste helped with a dessert that fit right in with our ingredient theme.  She used the Dark Chocolate Linguine, we purchased in Seattle on our recent trip, along with a raspberry sauce.  Topped with ice cream and/or whipped cream it made for a good dessert.

The linguine didn’t have nearly enough chocolate flavor but vanilla ice cream and whipped cream more than made up for it.

All and all it was a great meal.  Fantastic, juicy pork chops along with a nice rice side dish and grilled veggies made for a great end for the day.

Additional participants in this month’s Ingredient Challenge include:

Each month three or four of my favorite internet BBQ friends will use the same four or five ingredients to cook a meal.  The only real rule is that the “protein” must be cooked outdoors.  It should be interesting to see what each of these experienced outdoor chefs have up their sleeves each month.  At the end of this post you will find a brief description of their blogs and links to the great creations they’ve come up with.

This month’s challenge was to come up with a meal that contained the following ingredients:

• Fish
• Couscous
• Figs
• Eggplant

When the first ingredients were announced I knew I wanted to do a whole fish.  The main reason was that I have very little experience with grilling whole fish and I knew this would be a good time to give it a try.

One of my favorite markets to shop at when I want the nicest produce and fish is our local Nugget Market.  I know that I can always find something different to cook there.  When I walked into the meat department my eyes were drawn quickly to the bright colors of the (farmed) Golden Trout.

California Golden Trout: Once called the Volcano Creek Golden Trout, this species was designated as the State Fish by the California Legislature in 1947. Their range encompasses approximately 120 miles of stream habitat found mostly within the Golden Trout Wilderness high in the Sierras. The California golden trout is a State Species of Special Concern (Source: Fish Species of Special Concern in California, CA DFG, Second Edition, June 1995.) and a Forest Service classified Sensitive Species. The golden is the most likely California-native species to be federally listed as endangered, due to habitat degradation, primarily by livestock, and planting of non-native trout species. (Courtesy California Trout, Inc.  www.caltrout.org)

Coming up with how to  use Couscous wasn’t all that hard.  I bought a bag of Israeli Couscous and just followed the directions on the package for pilaf type version of Couscous.  I’m not sure if there is any difference between couscous and Israeli Couscous other than the size.  So since I was going to photograph the final plate I chose the much bigger Israeli Couscous.

Very few people in my family like eggplant.  We don’t like the flavor and we don’t like the texture.  So coming up with a way to improve flavor and texture was the biggest goal.  I read a lot about eggplant on the internet and it seems my family is not alone in disliking eggplant.  The first technique I learned was that you could eliminate the bitter taste eggplant sometimes has AND firm it up by slicing and salting it 15 minutes or so before cooking.  (Explanation of how to do this is in the recipe below)

Next up, what to do with figs.  I’ve never eaten a fig, that I know of, other than in a Fig Newton so I had no idea of what do with it.  After considerable reading and searching my cookbooks I decided a Fig Butter would be the best way to go.

Here’s the steps to Maple Planked Grilled Golden Trout:
- Soak your wood plank.  (I use wood planks from Rocky Trail)  Most directions for wood planks state you should soak your planks for 30 minutes.  I have found much better luck soaking them for an extended period of time, no less than 2 hours.

- Pre-heat your wood, charcoal or gas grill to hot.  Although I have all three I think it’s much easier to properly plank cook food on a gas grill than wood or charcoal.  Controlling the heat is key to success and it’s just easier on a gas grill.

- Wash, dry and season your fish with your favorite fish seasoning.  I used just kosher salt.  I wanted to be able to taste all the additional flavors from the lemon and figs.

Mrs. Grail also made some great bread.

- Place wood plank in the middle of your grill.  Once the wood starts to smoke you are ready to put your fish on.

- Place a layer of lemon slices on the wood plank.  To really add flavor to your fish you can also layer some herbs on top of the lemon slices.  Place the fish on top of the lemon slices.  Layer another row of lemon slices on top of the fish.

- Reduce heat to medium and close the lid to your grill.  Don’t open the lid again (if your looking, you ain’t cooking) for about 15 minutes.  Check temperature of your fish.  The recommended internal temperature for properly cooked trout is 145 degrees.  However, I prefer to take my fish off the grill about 10 degrees cooler than that.  Just like every other meat if you cook it to the “recommended” internal temp it’s likely over cooked.

- Let the fish rest for at least five minutes while you plate the couscous.  Lay the whole fish on top of the couscous, spoon the fig butter over the fish and serve immediately.

Recipes:

Fig Compound Butter

• 3 tablespoons fig preserves
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1 pinch cinnamon
• 1/2 inch piece fresh ginger, minced
• 1 teaspoon salt (kosher or sea)
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest

Melt butter in a small skillet.  Add cinnamon, ginger root, salt and zest.  Saute over low heat, just until the ginger is tender.  Add the fig preserves and heat through.  The fig preserves will tak a little coaxing to melt.  Use a whip or hand mixer to completed incorporate all the ingredients.

Grilled Honey Garlic Eggplant

Ingredients:

• 2 baby eggplants
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, mashed
• 1/4 teaspoon Sriracha sauce
• 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

Pre-heat your grill to high.

With a potato peel remove strips of skin off the eggplant. Slice the eggplant, long ways, into 1/2 inch slices. Arrange the eggplant slices on sheets of paper towels.

Season the the eggplant slices with a generous about of salt on both sides. This will cause the eggplant to release most of the liquid they contain, removing the bitterness of the eggplant while causing it to be less watery during grilling. Let the salted eggplant set for about 15 minutes, then pat dry with additional paper towels.

In a bowl mix honey, olive oil, garlic Sriracha, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Dip both sides of each eggplant slice into mixture. Oil grilled. Place eggplant slices on the grill, cover. Grill for about 3 minutes, rotate 90 degrees and grill for an additional 3 minutes. Brush remaining sauce on the slices, flip and repeat process. Adjust heat through the grilling to insure eggplant is not burning.

Serve immediately.

Two more great fish, fig, eggplant and couscous meals:

The No Excuses Website’s entry.   The No Excuses BBQ website was started in January of 2009 as a way to record the author’s goal of barbecuing at least once a week throughout the year and showing the results to the world.  Somewhere along the way things got out of control, and two years later the streak is intact and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.  In the process, No Excuses BBQ has become fairly popular and is listed as one of the top BBQ blogs on Alltop.com.  You can read about Paul’s fish meal

The Into The Flames entry:  Rob launched Into The Flames in the summer of 2010 as a way to share his passion for cooking, eating, and exploring food.

Zucchini Fries

Ingredients:

• 4 zucchini
• 1 1/2 Tbsp “The Rub Co. Santa Maria Style Rub”
• 1/4 cup Canola oil
• 1/8 cup Balsamic vinegar
• 2 tsp Black pepper, ground fresh
• Parmesan cheese, to taste

Directions:

Wash the zucchini under cold water and drain well.

Trim about 1/8″ from the stem of each squash.

Square each zucchini by removing a sliver from each side and

Quarter each zucchini.

Combine the seasoning, oil, vinegar and pepper in a large zip-top bag.

Seal the bag and shake to combine the marinade ingredients.

Add the zucchini to the bag, seal, and set aside for one to two hours.

Prepare your grill for direct cooking at medium heat (about 350º).

Oil the cooking grate lightly with canola oil.

Remove each zucchini from the bag, shake off the excess marinade, and lay them on the grill at a 45º angle. Reserve the marinade left in the bag.

Grill each side until they are nicely browned, about 2-3 minutes.

Lightly brush the zucchini with a small amount of the marinade each time you turn them.

Remove the zucchini to a platter in a single layer and immediately shave the cheese over them to taste.

Serve and enjoy!

One of the “Meatless Monday” challenges I face is coming up with meals that actually appeal to me.  When my copy of the Gordon Ramsey cookbook,  Cooking for Friends, arrived I was glad to find a veggie dish that both sounded good and could be done outdoors on the grill.

So here’s my take on Gordon Ramsey’s Grilled Vegetable Lasagna.  The main different between the recipe below and what I did was the vegetables were all cooked on my Weber kettle.  The original recipe also uses the oven, as I did, but it could be done in the smoker or indirect on your gas or charcoal grill.

The original recipe calls for using the broiler to char the bell peppers, I used my Weber kettle.

I also gut the zucchini into long 1/2 inch thick strips instead of rounds so they were easier to grill.

Topped with a little basil. Added some french bread and a salad for a complete meal.

Grilled Vegetable Lasagna

By Gordon Ramsey in Cooking for Friends. Published in 2008 by HarperCollins

• 10 ounces fresh lasagna sheets (about 12)
• 3/4 cups freshly grated Parmesan Cheese
• 3 buffalo mozzarella, 5 ounces each, thinly sliced
• small handful of fresh basil, leaves only

Tomato and basil sauce:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion chopped
• 2 celery ribs, chopped
• 1 carrot, finely diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• leaves, stripped from a spring of fresh thyme
• 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes in juice
• 1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
• small handful of fresh basil, leaves torn

Grilled Vegetables:

• 1 small eggplant
• 1 large zucchini
• 1 yellow crookneck squash
• Olive oil for drizzling
• leaves stripped from a few sprigs of fresh thyme
• 1 yellow bell pepper
• 1 red bell pepper

First, make the tomato sauce.  Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat.  Add the onion, celery, carrot, garlic, and thyme with some salt and pepper.  Cook, stirring frequently until the vegetables are soft, 6 – 8 minutes.  Tip in the tomatoes and bring to a simmer.  Simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until the sauces has been reduced and thickened slightly about 30 minutes.  Taste and add sugar if the sauce seem acidic.

Meanwhile, prepare the vegetables.  Trim the eggplant, zucchini and squash, then lice into 1/2 inch rounds.  Drizzle the olive oil and season.  Toss with the herbs.  Cook in batches on a hot grill pan until tender and slightly charred, 2 – 3 minutes on each side.  Transfer to a large bowl.

Preheat the broiler to hot,  Cut the bell peppers in half and place them cut-side down on a lightly oiled baking sheet.  Broil until well charred, 10 – 15 minutes.  Remove and let cool slightly before peeling off the skins and discarding the seeds.  Cut the flesh into wedges and add to the bowl of grilled vegetables.

When the tomato sauce is ready, add the basil.  Transfer to a food processor and blitz until smooth.  taste and adjust the seasoning.  Tip into a bowl and let cool.

Prehead the oven to 350 degrees F. Sppon  a thin layer of tomato sauce over the bottom of a deep baking dish.  Put two sheets of lasagne on top, then sprinkle with a little Parmesan.  Arrange a layer of grilled begetables on the pasta, followed by a layer of mozzarella.  Add another layer of tomato sauce.  Repeat the layers until reach the top of the dish.  You want to finish with a layer of lasagna sheets spread generously with tomato sauce, topped with a final layer of mozzarella cheese and a sprinkling of Parmesan.  Bake until the cheese topping is golden brown and the sauce is bubbling around the sides.  30 – 40 minutes

Serves 4 – 6.

]]> http://thebbqgrail.com/2010/grilled-lasagna/feed/ 2 http://thebbqgrail.com/2010/phubar-moink-ball-pie/ http://thebbqgrail.com/2010/phubar-moink-ball-pie/#comments Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:13:42 +0000 Larry http://thebbqgrail.com/?p=2882 I recently had a chance to receive an example of an amazing use of MOINK Balls from Phubar one of my friends ffrom the Dutch BBQ Association. His MOINK Ball pie is a great example of MOINK ingenuity.

Phubar started with a layer of Endive Stampot. Stampot is a traditional Dutch dish made with potatoes

Continue reading ... Phubar MOINK Ball Pie