When it comes to outdoor cooking, Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby are among the very best, as witnessed by their award-winning “The Thrill of the Grill.” Now they have produced a worthy successor, “License to Grill” (Morrow, $27.50).
Schlesinger, a Cambridge, Mass., chef and restaurant owner who created the recipes, is out to have a blast each time he approaches a grill. “The main question I’ll be asking when you’re finished cooking something from this book is, `Was it fun?’ Because to me, that’s the most crucial part of any food experience.”
The authors make it clear at the outset that grilling is not barbecuing, which was the subject of the first book. In a nutshell, barbecuing is “cooking tough cuts of meat. . .for a very long time.” Grilling “is a high-heat method in which rather tender foods are cooked quickly over the flame of a very hot fire.” A further exploration of grilling gets the book off to a good start.
What follow are 200 recipes, beginning with grilled corn chowder with bacon and thyme and ending with mai tai pie (the latter not a grilled dish at all). Several recipes are prepared in the kitchen instead of on the deck.
Grill recipes that surprise include grilled plums with spicy hoisin glaze, grilled eggplant and bread salad for a crowd, grilled monkfish and apricot skewers with sweet jalapeno dressing, peach and chicken skewers with Middle Eastern shake (their version of a spice rub) and simple raisin sauce. A couple of real challenges include grilled lamb and red onion in grape leaves, and quixotic mixed grill with vegetable skewers and four sauces. The quixotic recipe requires the assembly of 39 ingredients!
Not everyone will want to tackle something so laborious, but there is much more from which to choose that is simple or relatively so. The text accompanying each recipe is usually extensive, providing the reader with helpful guidelines.
Chapters cover much more than red meats, including pasta, fish, spicy fare and hobo pack cookery, which requires only that you wrap the ingredients in heavy foil and stick the packet into the ashes of the fire.
Another cookbook worth a look is “Outdoor Cooking,” edited by Chuck Williams, with recipes by John Phillip Carroll (Time-Life Books, $18.95).
“Outdoor Cooking” is another in the 35-volume set of minibooks from the Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library. Here are “kitchen-tested” recipes for more than 50 dishes for the outdoor grill. The tea-smoked shrimp with sweet-and-hot pepper relish requires that moist tea bags be tossed on the coals, while others call for water-soaked wood chips or herbs.
“Outdoor Cooking” won’t sweep you off your feet; it has too few recipes. But if you have the 34 other cookbooks in this series, you will have to have this one too.
GRILLED PORK AND APPLE SKEWERS WITH ORANGE-BALSAMIC GLAZE
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 5-7 minutes
Yield: 2 servings as an entree, 4 as an appetizer
“Pork and apples have a long history as a happy couple,” Schlesinger and Willoughby write in “License to Grill,” but they warn readers to watch the glaze carefully. “Any time you add a sweet sauce or glaze to something on the grill, it can go from a golden brown treat to a blackened cinder in a heartbeat.”
For glaze:
2 cups orange juice
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons freshly cracked black pepper
For skewers:
1 pound boneless pork loin, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 Granny Smith apples, cored and cut into
8 wedges each
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
1. Make the glaze: In a small saucepan, combine all the ingredients and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer vigorously until the liquid is reduced by half, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the pork cubes, apples, olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste, and toss well. Thread the pork and apples alternately onto skewers and grill over a medium-hot fire for 5 to 7 minutes, turning several times.
3. To check for doneness, cut into one of the pieces of pork; it should be just pink in the center. During the last 30 seconds of cooking, brush the skewers with some of the glaze. Remove the skewers from the fire, drizzle with the remaining glaze, and serve.
Nutrition information per serving (based on 4):
Calories …… 300 Fat ………… 13 g Cholesterol .. 55 mg
Sodium ….. 635 mg Carbohydrates .. 23 g Protein ……. 24 g
STEAK SANDWICHES WITH CHIVE BUTTER
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 8-10 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
Melting chive butter on any kind of grilled steaks creates a tasty herb sauce. This recipe is from “Outdoor Cooking.”
For the chive butter:
1/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives or 2 teaspoons dried chives
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
For the steaks:
4 beef tenderloin fillet steaks, about 6 ounces each
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 slices firm-textured white sandwich bread
1 to 1 1/2 cups watercress sprigs, large stems removed
1. To prepare the chive butter, in a small bowl, combine the butter, chives, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Using a fork or wooden spoon, beat vigorously until blended. Transfer to a sheet of plastic wrap and shape into a log about 2 inches long and 1 inch in diameter. Wrap in the plastic wrap and chill until firm, about 1 hour, or for up to 3 days.
2. Prepare fire for direct-heat cooking on a grill. Position the grill rack 4 to 6 inches above the fire.
3. To prepare the steaks, sprinkle them lightly with salt and pepper and place them on the rack. Grill, turning every 2 minutes until done to your liking, about 8 minutes total for rare, about 10 minutes total for medium. About 4 minutes before steaks are done, arrange the bread slices on the rack and grill, turning once, until lightly browned, about 2 minutes on each side.
4. To serve, transfer the bread to individual plates. Place a small handful of watercress on each slice of bread and place a steak on the watercress. Cut the chive butter into 4 equal slices and place a slice on each steak. Serve at once.
Nutrition information per serving:
Calories ……. 460 Fat ………… 25 g Cholesterol .. 140 mg
Sodium …… 540 mg Carbohydrates .. 17 g Protein …….. 39 g
