smitten kitchen » Grilling

grilled lamb kebabs + tzatziki

deb — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:35:40 +0000

What do you do to prepare for a baby? We’ve talked about it endlessly this summer, and I have no doubt you’re out there thinking, “my goodness, has she still not had that baby yet?” Tell me about it. But really, how do you get ready? Do you try to figure out learn how to cook respectable meals in a minimum of time? Do you cook and freeze weeks worth of lasagna and enchiladas to ensure you don’t go hungry when the baby demands all of your attention? Do you use your remaining unscheduled time in the kitchen to bribe labor and delivery nurses?

Among the many slightly absurd ways we’ve been getting ourselves ready, we decided that we needed to clear out our DVR queue last week, to make room for all of the shows we’ll likely be missing the first runs of. And what needed clearing out? Episodes and episodes of Barefoot Contessa, it turned out, and it was some dangerous stuff. All of a sudden I was bookmarking recipes in threes, despite knowing that it might take me months or longer to get to them. And I was totally willing to wait until I hit the episode where she goes Greek.

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light brioche burger buns

deb — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:44:40 +0000

Do you know what this is? This is It. This is the hamburger bun recipe I’d been obsessing, dreaming and fretting over when I had my Incident back in May, which was namely that I’d spent a ridiculous amount of time and ingredients fighting a no-good recipe with a decidedly average finish. Since then, my frustration has faded somewhat, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that perhaps they weren’t the end of the world, they just weren’t the thing I was looking for: they were more of a limp white bread bun — the kind so easily purchased at a store under any generic brand, it made little sense to eek them out at home — and I wanted something a little more moist and rich. I wanted something better, the kind of thing that you knew you weren’t going to get in any plastic bag.

In the six weeks since, I have waded through nearly 100 burger bun recipes, all submitted by you kind folks with promises that they’d be better. I saw white bread buns and challah buns and whole wheat sourdough buns and you-name-it buns and, gah, I barely knew where to begin. And then, just as I was halfway through the early steps of a totally different hamburger bun recipe that, if all goes well, will be a wonderful, unusual complement to these, I dropped that effort completely in the pursuit of the Light Brioche Buns run in the New York Times article this week on the elements of a perfect burger.

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grilled shrimp cocktail

deb — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:07:38 +0000

My friend Alexis smartly concluded this weekend that our new goals in life should be to cultivate as many friends as possible with a) vacation homes, b) access to family vacation homes and c) a strong interest in making elaborate home-cooked meals in their free time. And you know, I think she’s onto something. We spent the holiday weekend back in Highlands, North Carolina, guests of my friend Molly’s parents who were themselves out of town, allowing even more of my friends to pile in. (Remember when having parents out of town meant “kegger!”? Ah, you know you’re in your thirties when it means “mocktails” and “let’s make our own remoulade!”.) It was fantastic.

The weather didn’t much cooperate, so we didn’t get any hiking in which was a bummer, as I suspect I’m wearing every one of those meals around my midsection right now, trying to pass it off as “it’s the baby, swear” because, frankly, it’s never too soon to blame it for everything, right? But the ick weather just left us more time in one of those kitchens with more than one counter and enough cabinets that when you can’t find something, it takes a good few minutes to find where it is hiding. I tried not to get used to it.

We cooked up a storm. Ang fried green tomatoes and okra:

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grilled eggplant with caponata salsa

deb — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:19:04 +0000

I spend a good lot of my spring, summer and fall weekends on my friend Jocelyn’s roof. Not only do we get to catch up with friends, drink an unthinkable amount of pink wine and/or Pimm’s cups, shoot awesome pictures of sunsets, Joc has a consummately awesome grill, allowing us all of the summer deliciousness we’re deprived of in our Manhattan apartment. It’s a good deal if there ever was one.

However, some weekends Jocelyn goes out of town. And occasionally, Alex and I have family or other friends to go see. And sometimes, we go a whole two or three weeks without making it onto Joc’s roof, and it makes us very sad. Because we miss the grill.

Which brings me up to the purchase that broke the Smitten Kitchen’s back: our new grill pan. The history of this is that pretty much any time I ever say to Alex, “ooh, look at this [kitchen item]! We should get it!” his standard response is “That’s great, honey. But where will we put it?” To which I respond, “Blah, blah, blah… We’ll FIND a place.” And you know what? We usually do. (Please don’t ask about the wedding cake pans in Alex’s closet. It’s a best-not-touched-on subject.)

But this grill pan doesn’t fit anywhere. And it weighs a metric ton. And it might literally be the first time in Smitten Kitchen history that I will admit that Alex was right: maybe we should have figured out where it went before I bought it. Right now it lives on the floor under the single cart/counter with god-knows-what and its good friend, I’d-rather-not-think-about-it. This is not an ideal long-term solution.

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garlic-mustard glazed skewers

deb — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:08:54 +0000

Growing up, I couldn’t stand mustard. Hated it. It was spicy and gloppy and it usually looked like a bucket of yellow paint. Even a smidgen on a sandwich, burger or hot dog was enough to make me reject the whole meal. Er, you might have guessed I didn’t just learn how to be “difficult” yesterday!

I still don’t like the yellow shellac in a squeeze bottle, ubiquitous in the U.S. from street carts to beach burger huts. (A Google search points me to a Mustard Museum in Wisconsin, by the way. You’re welcome!) But Dijon and I have struck a perfect harmony in the last couple years as I have realized it has nothing to do with that jaundiced stuff, and everything to do with two of my favorite things on earth: France and wine.

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molly’s dry-rubbed ribs

deb — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:31:04 +0000

[My friend Molly made the most amazing ribs on Memorial Day. Prior to Monday, I thought I liked mopped, or barbecue sauced-up ribs. I am now officially a dry rub convert, and begged her to let us know how she did it. Thanks Molly!--Deb]

I started making these ribs last summer. I got inspired by an amazing BBQ I attended in Bed-Stuy at my friend Antoine’s friend Pete’s house. Pete has six jumbo grills with attached smokers or something ridiculous like that. At that BBQ, I think he smoked so much meat in his backyard that he probably violated some kind of zoning ordinance. The buffet table in the backyard groaned under the weight of at least half a dozen BBQ competition trophies. Pete is a serious BBQ chef. It was the first truly delicious BBQ pork I’d eaten since I had moved to NYC after living in North Carolina for two years.

Now I must provide the obligatory rant on my BBQ predilections/prejudices: I enjoy a tangy red sauce as much as anyone else. I especially love Ina Garten’s Barbecue Sauce that Deb introduced me to: brushed on a chicken thigh over a charcoal fire, it’s wonderful. But in my opinion, tomato-containing sauce of any kind does not belong on pork BBQ. It took just two years in Orange County, NC, home of the Tar Heels and the inimitable Allen & Sons Barbecue, to convince me of this.

There is only one way to do right by pork: cover it with a simple, spicy-sweet dry rub. Let it sit for a while. Slowly cook it in smoky, indirect heat, using a wood fire or natural charcoal, until the meat is tender enough to melt in your mouth. Then go hawg wild. It’s best to enjoy the meat without any sauce, at least at first. Sometimes, if I am in the mood, I will add a hot pepper vinegar to my pulled pork, but only after I eat some of it unsauced. I never add any sauce to ribs.

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hoisin barbecue sauce

deb — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 02:52:01 +0000

If there are any structural flaws to the standard backyard barbecue event (or as we do it in NYC, the standard rooftop barbecue event) it is that plates, forks and standing don’t go well together, especially if you are carrying a beer, or say, a Pimm’s cup, and let’s be honest–when am I not?

Sure, we’ve overcome this issue with various bunnage, from hotdogs to burgers and kielbasa, but outside the meat, veggie burger and salads-that-can-be-scooped departments, you’re still SOOL if you crave vegetables while standing.

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smoke-roasted stuffed bell peppers

deb — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 05:09:03 +0000

Whoops! I hadn’t meant to abandon you like that, we just didn’t have internet connectivity on our last two days of the trip. It was like 1999 or something. I got the shakes. So, where did we leave off?

After Day One at the wineries and Days Two and Three at the grill, we spent our last day on a barely too brief to mention swing into San Francisco where we wandered the Ferry Market Building and lunched at the Slanted Door with friends before heading up to Berkeley. We had dinner with a gorgeous group of food bloggers that evening at Oliveto in Oakland, and on recommendation from the lovely Shuna, breakfast at Mama’s Royal the next morning. In between these gullet-gutting excursions, we found some time on Monday to wander about the Berkeley campus where we wallowed in nostalgia for our unscheduled college days and once wrinkle-free foreheads (fine, that was just me) before jetting back to the land of late dinners, humidity and the daily grind.

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homemade barbecue sauce

deb — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 12:40:36 +0000

If you have never made your own barbecue sauce before, I’m going to have to insist that you try to at least once. And while I’m loath to ensnare myself in the myriad layers of barbecue conviction across this land — from the don’t-come-near-my-sauce-with-those-tomatoes whole-hoggin’ in Carolina to the don’t-you-dare-come-near-my-mesquite with sauce in Texas (and then the small matter of me being from New Jersey where barbecue just meant cooking your hamburgers and hot dogs outdoors) — I might have to insist that you try this one because it’s sacrilegiously good.

My crush on Ina Garten is almost as strong as my Martha-crush, if not stronger as she’s never once failed me and I believe we share an absorption with making typically unremarkable foods remarkable again. Her lemon cake has got to be one of the top five cakes ever made with her orange chocolate chunk version squarely in the top ten; her coleslaw made me like coleslaw and her barbecue sauce is a spectacular Eastern/Asian/Southern mutt.

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