Grilled Lemon-Oregano Chicken



  Here's a quick grilling dish and an excuse to use some of those fresh herbs from the garden. I make this up earlier in the day and let it sit for a few hours in the fridge before tossing it on the grill. 10 minutes on the grill and this tasty chicken can be sitting on your plate

Grilled Lemon-Oregano Chicken

4 chicken breast, de-boned without skin

2 lemons juiced

1 tsp grated lemon zest

2 tsp sea salt

1 tsp black pepper, ground

1 tbsp olive oil

1/4 c fresh oregano, chopped

1/4 c fresh parsley, chopped

3 cloves garlic, pressed

  Flatten the chicken breasts to a uniform thickness. I find it helpful to put the chicken breasts in a gallon ziplock bag and beat it with the flat side of a meat tenderizer. I can do two breast at a time this way and then I use the bag to marinate the meat as well. A food processor makes quick work out of the marinade and it can save you a little chopping to boot. Combine all the ingedients except the chicken either by hand or in a food processor and then dump the marinade in a gallon ziplock bag with the chicken . Let the meat marinate for a couple of hours and then grill. I would not recommend marinating the meat more than a few hours in advance because the lemon flavor can become very strong and over-power the other flavors. Optionally you can change this recipe up a bit by swapping out the oregano for 1/2 c of fresh cilantro. Enjoy!

TTFN
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Mild Italian Link Sausage

 

  Who doesn't like sausage? The only thing I dislike about store bought sausage is most of it contains MSG (or natural salt if you want to be evasive). An allergy to MSG prevents some of our family from partaking in MSG laden foods, so we have to take matters in to our own hands when it comes to things like sausage. Preparing this sausage is a little extra work, but very satisfying in the end. I recommend doing as much sausage making as you can while all the sausage making gear is out. It isn't hard and maybe this entry will push you over the edge to try it yourself.

Mild Italian Link Sausage

2 lbs pork butt (with fat)

2 tsp kosher salt (or sea salt)

1 1/2 tsp black pepper, ground

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1 tbsp dried parsley

1 1/2 tsp fennel seed, ground

5 ft natural casing

For Hot Sausage Add:

2 1/2 tsp paprika, ground

1/4 tsp anise seed, ground

2 tsp red pepper flakes

  Mix all seasoning ingredients together. Cut the pork into chunks. Mix the pork and seasonings together. Grind the pork mixture with your choice of meat grinding hardware.

  Our choice of sausage stuffing and grinding hardware was the sausage attachments for our KitchenAid mixer. We used the fine die on the mixer for grinding, but recommend using the course or large die. The next time we do this we will definitely use the larger die for grinding. Once the pork is ground, refrigerate the mixture for at least an hour while preparing the casings. The mixture should be cold while stuffing the sausage.

  We used natural casings obtained from a local kitchen store. The package is fairly small and could easily be ordered from the internet if you cannot find it locally. You may want to consider using collagen casings instead of the natural casings if that is more to your liking. There is a lot of information on the internet about the different kinds of sausage casings and plenty of places to order them from. Any leftover casings can easily be stored either in your pantry or refrigerator depending on the type you choose. To prepare our casings we had to soak them in warm water and rinse them thoroughly.

  When the ground pork mixture was chilled for an hour, I tied one end of a prepared casing into a knot and slid the other end on to the sausage making tip all the way up to the knotted end. I turned on the mixer and started stuffing the ground pork mixture into the hopper which feeds an auger which eventually pushes the pork in to the casing. Continue until the casing is completely full or you run out of meat.

This particular batch was grilled with sweet onions and peppers and served on a soft italian roll.

A few things we learned along the way:

- Any left over natural casings can be stored in your refrigerator, sealed in the original bag completely covered in salt for up to a year.

- To clean out the auger after making the sausage, send a few pieces of bread through the system to push out any left over meat. This greatly simplified the cleanup.

Enjoy!

TTFN

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Grilled Breakfast Pizza

  This is fun to do and super yummy. It is common for us to go through the fridge on a Saturday or Sunday morning and use whatever is in there to make omelettes and the like. Seems fairly natural (to me) to do a pizza like this too. :-) This version really was conceived about an hour before we made it based on what we had lying around. Like omelettes, there are no hard and fast rules.

Grilled Breakfast Pizza

21 oz pizza dough ball (store bought or homemade)

3-4 oz thick sausage gravy, prepared

4 oz shredded cheddar 

4 small leftover potatoes, roughly cubed

1 medium onion, roughly sliced

2 Tbsp olive oil

6 eggs

1/2 lb browned sausage (recipe)

12 stalks barely cooked asparagus

  Saute onions in olive oil until caramelized. Add potatoes and cook for another 5 minutes. Set aside. Preheat grill and pizza stone for 10 minutes with burners set at about medium. A more in depth discussion on cooking pizza on a grill can be found here. I built the pizza on a 16" pizza screen. The dough is stretched in to a 16" circle and layed on the screen. Cover with sausage gravy. Spread onion and potato mixture evenly. Spread cheese evenly. Spread sausage evenly. Use you fingers to make 6, evenly distributed, egg wells in the toppings. Don't press too hard or the screen will cut through the dough, just sorta move the toppings aside. Place an asparagus stalk on either side of each egg well, tips pointing in.

  Set a timer for 2 minutes and place the screen (and pizza) on the pre-heated pizza stone and close the grill lid. After two minutes, remove the screen (with pizza), and crack the 6 eggs into the prepared wells as quickly as you can and return to the grill. I turn on my sear burner at this point too. Set your timer for another 2 minutes. About every 20 seconds rotate the pizza 1/6 rotation so the sear burner doesn't burn your crust. Remove the pizza when the crust has a good char and the eggs are just barely cooked, about 4 minutes total. Cut the pizza into 6 pieces so that each piece has 1 egg and two asparagus stalks. Enjoy.

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Grilled Margherita Pizza

You haven't tasted pizza until you've tasted a real Margherita pizza. Wow ....

".... the classic story of the pizza Margherita. Modern pizza history was made in 1889 when Queen Margherita Teresa Giovanni, the consort of Umberto I, visited Naples with her king. Don Raffaele Esposito, who owned Pietro Il Pizzaiolo, was asked to prepare a special dish in honour of the Queen's visit. Esposito consulted his wife who was the real pizza expert and together they developed a pizza featuring tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and basil. He named it the Margherita Pizza, after the city's guest of honor. " (recipepizza.com)

  Today, the cassic Margherita pizza is a simple pizza dough covered with crushed tomatoes, a sprinkle of sea salt, pinched pieces of fresh mozzarella cheese, fresh basil leaves, a sprinkle of grated parmesan cheese and a drizzle of olive oil. Traditionally the pizza is then baked in a wood fired oven at around 700 degrees F for about 90 seconds. Most of us can't touch those temperatures unless we have our own wood fired ovens, but I can get close enough with my outdoor grill to enjoy this classic pizza.

 

Grilled Margherita Pizza

21 oz pizza dough ball (store bought or homemade)

3-4 oz crushed tomatoes

8 oz fresh mozzerella

6-10 fresh basil leaves

generous pinch of sea salt

small handful grated parmesan cheese

  I heat my grill up with the 16 inch stone in the center (lid closed). I set the burner dials at about half. After 10 minutes the thermometer in the lid of my grill measures about 400 degrees F. I don't have an infrared thermometer, but I am pretty sure the stone is at least 600 degrees F.

 Recently I have discovered the pizza screen. While the grill is heating up, I build the pizza right on the screen. (I discuss the technique for stretching the dough here.)

  The screen goes right on the stone for 2 minutes. After 2 minutes, I slide the peel in between the screen and the pizza so I can remove the screen and put the pizza directly on the stone. I also turn on the sear burner at the back of my grill and rotate the pizza over the next 2 minutes making sure all the edges have been cooked properly. With a little practice I have been able to get a good char on the bottom of the finished pizza.

  The whole cooking process takes about 4 minutes. You may want to use a timer because it doesn't take long to turn the pizza into a cinder at these temperatures. If you like NY style pizza, I guarantee you will love this pizza.

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Drago's Charbroiled Oysters

    If you ever get to New Orleans, I highly recommend you stop in at Drago's for some charbroiled oysters. Several months ago I was in New Orleans on business and I ate these every night I was there. Lately I have been jonesing for them again and when my aunt offered to bring a bushel of oysters back from the Carolinas, I knew exactly what to do with them.

Drago's Charbroiled Oysters (Makes 8 servings or if you are me, just 1 serving)

32 oysters on the half shell

1 c butter

2 lg cloves garlic, pressed

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1/4 c grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 c grated Pecorino Ramano cheese

1/2 c fresh parsley, finely chopped

  Heat your grill to medium high heat. Melt butter in a sauce pan. Add garlic and pepper to butter. Mix cheeses together in a bowl. Spoon melted butter mixture into each oyster. Add a pinch of cheese mixture. Add a pinch of parsley. Grill for 8 minutes until hot and bubbly. Enjoy! :-)

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Grilled Sourdough and Eggplant Sandwich

  I saw a great recipe on another blog that I like to read and it inspired me to make this sandwich. I wanted to put a link on this entry to that recipe, but after searching through the contents I couldn't find it. However, the blog has a lot of good stuff on it and here is a link to it, http://www.eatdrink onewoman.com/.

  This was a natural evolution for me. I really like all the components to this sandwich, so it was inevitable. I prepared it the same way I would a grilled cheese sandwich. Butter two slices of sourdough bread. Put them butter side down in a pan on medium heat, pile a little shredded mozzarell cheese on each slice, put a slice of grilled eggplant on each slice of bread and put a little red sauce on one side. When the cheese has melted a little, invert one slice on to the other and brown each side until done. Enjoy!

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Country Ribs with Plum BBQ Sauce

  I knew this was coming when I posted the plum jam recipe and it worked out well. I had a general recipe in mind. So, after confirming a few of the proportions on the internet this is what I came up with:

Plum BBQ Sauce (about 1 1/2 cups)

1 c plum jam, recipe

1 clove garlic, pressed

1/4 c vinegar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground pepper

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp hot pepper flakes

1/4 c brown sugar

1 tbsp cornstarch

3 tbsp cool water

  Place the plum jam in a sauce pan. Combine water and corn starch, mix until smooth. Add cornstarch mixture to the plum jam and mix well. Add the remaining ingredients to the sauce pan. Mix well. Bring to a boil and immediately lower the heat to medium. Stir often. Continue simmering until the sauce is thick enough to cling to your meat, about 5-10 minutes. We applied the sauce 3 or 4 times during the grilling process and reserved a small amount for plating. I probably don't have to mention this would work well on chicken too. Enjoy!

TTFN

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Fire Roasted Eggplant With Garlic

  This is a pretty versatile preparation. I was driven to try this because we had some eggplant lying around getting soft and roasting it on the grill sounded like a great idea. You can see I cut couple of slits in each half lengthwise and stuffed whole cloves of garlic in there to roast along with the eggplant. The picture above is the eggplant right off the grill. The following pics are prior to and during grilling:

  To prepare the eggplant for grilling, I simply sliced it in half, made four or five slits for the garlic cloves, drizzled a little olive oil on top and finished with a little sea salt and cracked black pepper. Each side was grilled for about 5 minutes and then I shut half the grill off and placed the eggplant on the 'cold' side and closed the lid for about 20 minutes. All the grilling was done on the lowest flame.

  After roasting, the eggplant can be scooped out and placed in a bowl. It is now ready for several wonderful dishes including a rustic mixture of feta, roasted tomatoes and herbs served over rice, quinoa or couscous as well as roasted eggplant pesto. These particular beauties ended up mashed together with roasted red peppers and olive oil and served on thin slices of toasted sourdough bread. Use your imagination. I am sure there must be at least a dozen excellent ways to use roasted eggplant. Enjoy! :-)

TTFN
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Grilled Mediterranean Pizza

  Fresh basil and warm weather bring grilling and pesto to mind , so grilling a Mediterranean pizza isn't that far of a stretch. I haven't tried grilling pizza before, but it seemed a natural next step from making pizza in an oven not to mention it sounded like a whole bunch of fun. The following recipe turned out very well and will definitely be on the menu for this summer's entertaining.

Grilled Mediterranean Pizza

1/2 store bought pizza dough

1/2 c pesto sauce

1 c grated mozzarella cheese

1/2 c crumbled feta cheese

10 pitted Kalamata olives

1 sliced Roma tomato

Warm your grill on a low flame for about 5 minutes before starting to cook your pizza. I use gas. If you use charcoal you will have less control over the end product and the learning curve will be a bit longer, but friends tell me they prefer the taste they get from charcoal. Either way I am sure you will have fun.

I use a similar technique as explained here for managing the pizza dough. Since this is one half of a regular sized dough, the stretching process is a little different. I spread it as best I can with my hands and fingers and get roughly a football shaped pizza dough when finished.

When the grill is warmed and set on the lowest flame, flop the stretched dough on the center of the grilling surface. This process varies from grill to grill and the best term I can think of to explain it is flame management. You don't want to burn it, but you don't want raw dough either. Watch it and when you think the bottom has a nice color to it, spray the top of the dough with cooking spray and flip the entire pizza dough over by whatever means you see fit. I grab an end and flip it by hand.

Start spreading the pesto sauce and then evenly spread the mozzarella cheese on top. Next sprinkle the feta cheese and lay the tomatoes and olives on. While performing this step if I feel the dough is getting too well done I will shut the flame off until I am done putting the toppings on and then I will start the grill up again for the final step.

With all the toppings loaded, close the grill lid so the cheese can melt. This usually takes a few minutes. If burning the dough is a concern, shut the flame off and leave the lid closed until the pizza is done. If you have room on your grill, you can shut part of it off and put the pizza on that 'cool' part and shut the lid. It will act like an oven and heat the top without burning the bottom.

Enjoy!

TTFN

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