Repurposing Basil, Part II (Basil-infused Sockeye Salmon, Grilled Pattypan Squash & Roasted Beets)

A recent trip to Lexington to spend some quality dude time with my friend The Chad yielded a deliciously unexpected result. The Chad and his lovely wife participate in a Community Sponsored Agriculture program. If you’re unfamiliar, a CSA is a program in which you buy a “share” of the output of a local farm. Each week or two, members pick up a variety of fresh veggies. Like the proverbial Gump box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.

When I was there, The Chad had picked up his share as well as the share of some friends, as they were on vacation. As a result, he had vegetables in every nook and cranny of his kitchen. He so much as begged, “Please...please...free me from this vegetal avalanche!” So I did.

Among other things, I ended up with a bunch of lovely looking beets and the first-ever pattypan squash I’d ever run across. A pattypan squash is a summer squash which looks like...well...a pan. It’s “flying saucer” shaped. It’s got a neutral flavor – like a very firm zucchini.

We were in the mood for some grilled stuff, so I simply sliced the pattypan in half, brushed both sides with olive oil, and sprinkled with salt, pepper, and garlic. The beets we sliced into rounds and put in a foil pack with olive oil, chopped garlic, salt, and pepper. There was some nice-looking sockeye salmon at the supermarket, so I snagged a couple of pieces and gave them the salt/pepper/olive oil treatment. I covered the tops of the filets with basil leaves.

Fired up the grill to medium-high and put the beet pack on there after a couple of minutes while the grill was heating up. After about 10 minutes, I killed the burners on one side of the grill. I’ve been cooking more and more fish over indirect heat. I’ve found that to be a much more forgiving cooking method. I put the fish over the now-off burners.

The squash went over direct heat. I grilled that for 6-7 minutes on a side. Everything finished at more or less the same time. When we dished it up, it looked like this:

 

The basil did infuse the fish with a nice, light herbal flavor – a good counterpoint to the smokiness from the grill and the earthiness of the vegetables. Quite a nice little dinner.

 

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Simple Pleasures (Brined, grilled chicken with garden salsa)

So, it’s the end of the season. You’ve still got tomatoes, peppers, and boatloads of basil. You’re tired of making salsa. You’ve got enough pesto. What to do?

As little as possible. That’s what:

• 1/2 c. salt
• 1/3 c. sugar
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 2 c. water
• boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• a tomato or two, diced
• a green pepper or two, diced
• pine nuts
• basil leaves, chopped
• couscous

Now, if you’re running really short on time, you can skip the brining. But if you have 10 minutes the night before, it’s so worth it. Brining makes anything (other than beef) juicier, more tender, and more flavorful.

Other than the brining ingredients, vary the amount of ingredients to your liking.

Put the water, salt, garlic, and sugar in a pot over high heat. Stir occasionally until all the solids have dissolved. Remove the pot from the heat. Either let cool to lukewarm or add a handful of ice cubes. Put the chicken in a ziploc bag. Add the brine. Seal the bag and put it in the fridge for at least four hours – overnight is better.

When dinnertime gets close, get a grill to medium-high heat. Drain the chicken and pat dry. Rub the chicken with a little olive oil. Sprinkle with ground pepper. Grill the chicken until the juices run clear – usually 6-8 minutes per side.

Meanwhile, heat a skillet over high heat. Add the pine nuts. Toss until lightly toasted. Add the tomato, pepper, and basil leaves. Cook, stirring, for one minute. Remove from heat. Add salt and pepper to taste and set aside.

Also, make your couscous. For this one, we used pearl couscous – but you can really use anything you like here.

When the chicken is done, remove from the grill and let stand for 5-10 minutes. Plate up. Pour a medium bodied, fruity white wine. Torrontes is a great choice. Chow down.

Dig (barbecue-glazed grilled salmon)

Cleaning out the pantry -- an iffy prospect.

I never know what I’ll stumble across while I reach for the back wall. It can be sort of exciting in a way. It’s a culinary archeological dig.

I’ll run into spices that I bought not realizing that I still had a supply (“What? Another bottle of fennel seed? More red curry paste?”), food-related gifts (“Dehydrated bean soup? Who gave me this?”), zippies with half a cup of unused orzo pasta and the like.

This time around, I came up with a bottle of old barbecue sauce. No idea where it came from, but I feel fairly confident that it’s shelf stable. What to do? What to do?

Keep it simple. Pour some of the sauce into a ziploc bag. Thin it a bit with cider vinegar. Put in a piece of salmon filet. Zip it up, slather it around, and throw it in the fridge for a couple of hours.

After that, fire up the grill. When hot, grill the salmon for 3-4 minutes on a side over medium-high heat. When it flakes, it’s done.

For a side, cut the kernels off a couple of ears of corn. Chop up some tomatoes and a green pepper. Heat some olive oil in a skillet. Throw in the veggies with salt, pepper, and a teaspoon of ground cumin. Sauté for just a couple of minutes -- until the pepper just starts to get tender. Plate it up. Pour yourself a glass of pinot noir. Enjoy.



Afterwards, rinse out the bottle of barbecue sauce, recycle it, and try to forget that it was ever there…

Blue Rondo a la Turkey Burger (grilled turkey burgers with guacamole salad)

A bartender friend of mine once told me, “I like making drinks with vodka, because I get to show off. Rum, gin, tequila – they’ve all got flavors of their own, but vodka is the blank canvas where I can create…”

So it is with the humble turkey burger.

I love a good burger. One of my guilty pleasures is the Hardee’s mushroom ‘n’ swiss. Just love me some of that. But there’s a reason that it’s a guilty pleasure…

In the interest of waistlines, we end up cutting back, but that doesn’t mean that we have to eat tasteless, does it? Hell no! But turkey burgers? That almost defeats the purpose, no? There’s not much flavor inherent – especially if you’re getting the really lean stuff (usually 93/7). Doctoring up some ground turkey meat gives you the chance to eat healthy and make something very tasty.

This is another recipe where the Sweet Partner in Crime takes center stage. She’s got the touch with burger making. I handle the grilling part. So, round up:

• 1 lb. or so lean ground turkey
• 1/2 a diced onion
• Worcestershire sauce
• salt & pepper
• diced fresh herbs (we had some great fresh basil from our friend Rachel)
• 2 avocadoes, diced
• juice of a lemon
• tomatoes for slicing, plus a couple more diced
• minced garlic, cumin
• lettuce, mustard, or other desired toppings

Put the turkey meat in a bowl. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Add the onion, salt & pepper to taste, and the herbs. You know, kind of like this: Knead this all together. Then start adding the Worcestershire until it gets, in the SPinC’s words, “kind of meatloafy.” Coat form into patties, coat lightly in olive oil, and put it in the fridge for an hour or more. Make sure you get a chance to take it out to let it sit at room temperature for 20 minutes or so before you start grilling. During that time, slice your tomatoes, get your lettuce ready, toast your buns and whatnot.
Light the grill. When it’s good and hot, toss the burgers on there.
Grill the burgers over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes on a side or until the proverbial juices run clear.
While you’re letting the burgers rest, make the salad. Dice the tomatoes and avocado. Toss with salt, pepper, minced garlic, cumin, and lemon juice (basically, think unmashed guacamole). You’ll get something like this:
Put burgers on buns. Dress appropriately. Put the salad on the plates as a side. Serve it up and call it dinner. We decided to do a taste test with both an inexpensive New Zealand sauvignon blanc and a light red from the Languedoc region of France. Both ended up working out well:

The fun of turkey burgers is that you get to guiltlessly try different combinations of flavors. Grilling season is upon us. Give it a go.

Since you met Jessie Louise the Beagle last night, you should meet Mooch the Magnificent Mutt this evening. It’s only fair…

Thump, Grouper, and Scratch (Grilled Grouper with roasted mushroom & tomato salad)

Something very simple tonight. Both the Sweet Partner in Crime and I had had some draining circumstances and we just wanted something easy. So, not surprisingly, we fired up the grill.

We had grouper filets to work with this evening. They were cut pretty thin (we wondered if people were using them for Lenten fish fries…eek!) but they had some substance. Simply drizzled them with olive oil and sprinkled them with a little Kroger “Peppercorn Spice Rub” that we had, then put the filets in a grill basket.
Meanwhile, oven was heated to 425. We took some pine nuts and put them in a baking pan. In another baking pan, we put some halved grape tomatoes and thinly sliced mushrooms, salt, pepper, olive oil, and basil. Both went in the oven. The nuts came out in 10 minutes, the vegetables in 20.

I took the basket outside and put it on the grill over medium-high heat. Cooked it for 3 minutes on a side and checked for doneness. I think these might have still been frozen in the middle since the cooking was a little uneven, so I cut the heat down a little bit and gave them a couple more minutes. Once the filets flaked easily, I brought them in.

Meanwhile, the SPinC whipped up a dressing out of the juice of a lemon, some white wine, olive oil, salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, and a bunch of garlic. She made a bed of torn Boston lettuce, put the roasted veggies on top, poured a little of the vinaigrette over that, then topped it with feta crumbles and the pine nuts.

It turned out wonderfully. Here it is:
 
Start to finish: half an hour

Crepuscule with Monkfish & Chorizo (Monkfish and Chorizo Kabobs)

I've stumped the fish folk at Kroger twice with monkfish.

Both times, I've seen filets that looked pretty good, and the Krogerman handing it to me has said, "I've never known what to do with that." The answer? Grill it. There are any number of ways you can make it, and I've tried several. I remain a fan of the fire.

You'll sometimes see monkfish called "poor man's lobster." (It's also known as "goosefish.") The flavor and consistency is indeed akin. At under $10 a pound, it's worth thinking about for that kind of flavor -- especially when that flavor is paired with that wonderful Latin-esque sausage, chorizo.

Monkfish and chorizo. Like chocolate and peanut butter. Two great tastes that taste great together. There;s something about the richness of the fish with the spice and fat of the chorizo that just works well together. They're great together in things like paella. but grilling them is best, in my opinion. Since we're still in a surprisingly good patch of weather for early March, we fired up the grill again. My favorite way to pair these two has always been kebabs with some good veggies.

We got the grill fired up and got some yellow rice going. This particular kebab iteration required me to pre-cook a few links of chorizo. Put three links in a skillet with ½ cup of water. Cooked them for 12 minutes, turning once, then cooking uncovered, turning as necessary (brown 'em!) for 3-4 minutes. Set the links aside to cool. Cut up the veggies (tomatoes, peppers, & mushrooms in this case, but you can use whatever you like) and monkfish into good sized chunks:

Skewer the veggies, chorizo, and monkfish pieces. It might look something like this:

The grill should be hot by now, so put the kebabs over fire. Medium to high heat, 5-7 minutes on a side. I like using a grill basket, simply for neatness and ease of use. If you do use one of those, cook more towards the longer time. Then plate up a bed of rice, take the chunks off the skewers and arrange. Top the lot with salt and pepper.

We did a side by side of an inexpensive pinot noir (Lurton, a French pinot noir table wine) and Black Box Sauvignon Blanc.

Both wines worked fine. I liked the pinot, the Sweet Partner in Crime enjoyed the white. Either way, a very easy to cobble together, nice looking dinner, if you don't mind doing a little chopping.

Total time start to finish: just under an hour.




The night was young once we finished, so we decided to enjoy the good weather and the patio-friendly temperatures while we could. We started a fire and got rid of the last of the holiday greenery. Poured some more wine and had some chocolate. A nice way to end a fairly crazy day...