Thrill of the Grill 3

Last year, we started a series on relatively quick grilling recipes, such as grilled sardines and Thai grilled pork skewers.  As I wrote at the time, there are times when you want to get fully invested in "slow and low"-style barbecue, in making use of smoke's considerable powers as both a tenderizer and a flavour enhancer.  But there are other times when,

you just want the pure thrill of the grill. You want the slight blackening, the light smokiness, the caramelized flavors, and the primal pleasures of cooking directly over flames. You want the payoff to come sooner rather than later. You want to take full advantage of the fact that cooking over a hot grill can be quick and easy. 

Well, it's that time of year again.  Our fully winterized balcony is a thing of the past, the barbecue is back in its place of honour, and our 2012 smoking and grilling season is well underway.  And one of the best recipes I've tested out in recent weeks is another relatively quick grilling recipe that takes us to an entirely different region of the world:  Iran.

 fig. a:  land of bread & spice

The recipe appeared in an article on the cuisine of Iran in the March 2012 issue of Saveur by Anissa Helou ("The Land of Bread and Spice").  The article begins with a rather unexpected anecdote about a meal at Ava Gardner's house in London in 1982, but it proceeds to make a case for the centrality of Iran's "complex and captivating" cuisine to the world's foodways (both geographically and culturally)--at least those of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia.  And it's a pretty convincing case.

Helou's account of modern-day Iranian cuisine in Tehran, Isfahan, and beyond, encompasses everything from home cooking, to restaurants, bakeries, and cafés, and, as the title suggests, it focuses on Iranian staples like spices and herbs, bread, and rice, of which she writes, "I've never seen so many different ways of cooking rice as I did in Iran," before describing the care which goes into making their revered polows.  Her text had me pretty hooked on the idea of cooking Iranian already, but Ali Farboud's photographs really clinched things.  Sometimes the anti-aesthetics of some of Saveur's food photography leaves me a bit cold, but, here, the article came with a photo-essay that lived up to the scope of Helou's article, and that I found positively enchanting.  That said, the photographs that I gravitated to on the afternoon that I read the article were among the least exotic and the most familiar:  Farboud's photographs of sabzi, the herb salad that's a staple of the Iranian table, and of jujeh kabab, spiced chicken and tomato kebabs.  I was looking for a quick grilling recipe at the time, and that was exactly what I found.

   fig. b:  land of sabzi & kebabs

Actually, the recipe itself didn't hurt, either.  When I flipped to page 76 and found the recipe for jujeh kabab, its intoxicating blend of yogurt, citrus, and spices leapt off the page.  I felt like I had a pretty clear idea of just how succulent these kebabs were going to be, and the recipe didn't disappoint in the least.  A few hours later, when Michelle came home to a spread of jujeh kabab, sabzi, a garlicky yogurt spread, fresh limes, and grilled flatbreads, she couldn't believe her luck.

 fig. c:  Iranian-style chicken kebabs

 fig. d:  lightly charred tomatoes

Jujeh Kabab (Spiced Chicken and Tomato Kebabs)

1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp orange zest
1 tbsp ground cumin (preferably toasted and freshly ground)
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tbsp ground black pepper
2 tsp crushed saffron
1 tsp ground coriander
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 large yellow onion, sliced
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cubed
4 plum tomatoes
ground sumac, to garnish
2 limes, halved
grilled flatbreads, for serving 

Stir together the yogurt, lime juice, olive oil, zest, cumin, salt, pepper, saffron, coriander, garlic, and onions in a bowl.  Chop the thighs into large cubes, roughly 1-1 1/2" x 1 1/2-2".   Add the chicken to the yogurt mixture, and toss to coat.  Chill for 4 hours (you can "chill," too, but make sure you've placed the chicken in the fridge at least four hours before you intend to grill).   

When the chicken has been properly marinated, build a medium-hot fire in a charcoal grill.  Skewer the chicken on flat metal skewers (Iranian-style), or on wooden skewers that you've had the foresight to pre-soak.  Add the tomatoes to another skewer.  Grill the chicken and tomatoes, turning often, until tomatoes are soft and charred, about 7 minutes, and the chicken is cooked through and slightly charred, about 10-15 minutes. (I recommend starting the chicken directly over the medium-hot fire, charring the meat on all sides, and then moving the skewers to indirect heat for the remaining time.)  Sprinkle the skewers with sumac.   Brush the flatbreads lightly with olive and grill quickly.

Serve with the limes and the hot flatbreads.  

Serves 4. 

 fig. e:  herbs & radishes

Sabzi 

watercress
mint leaves
parsley leaves
radishes

If you've been slow to kick off this year's grill & barbecue season, let the flames begin.

aj

Crunchy Granola Suite

fig. a: fresh batch

Push it / Push it good / Push it / P-Push it real good
--"Push It," Salt-n-Pepa

For years, my breakfast of champions involved a toasted Montreal bagel and a schmear of cream cheese. Mostly poppy seed, often sesame, and from time to time, when I'd been good, I might treat myself to an "everything." Usually, I'd eat these bagels with just the cream cheese, but on special occasions they might get gussied up with some capers, a slice of fresh tomato (in season), a razor thin slice of red onion, and/or some smoked fish.

That's still my breakfast of champions.  I'll choose it over other options nine times out of ten.  But in the last year or two, as my latent hippieness has become more and more apparent, my morning routine has expanded slightly: it now concludes with a small cup of yogurt topped with some homemade granola and drizzled with a splash of maple syrup.

fig. b: crunchy granola suite*

Truth be told, I've had a taste for that kind of thing for years, but it only became ritual recently, when I started to make my granola myself.

Granola became a more regular part of our homelife right around the time we started "...an endless banquet." Michelle had made granola before, but she experienced a granola epiphany not long after she began working for Patrice Demers.

You wouldn't necessarily expect Patrice to be a granola guru--he doesn't exactly fit the description of a hippie ("a person of unconventional appearance, typically having long hair and wearing beads, associated with a subculture involving a rejection of conventional values and the taking of hallucinogenic drugs," is how my dictionary characterizes the type), and his desserts are so refined, so sophisticated, so artful--not exactly "crunchy." They're hallucinant, but not necessarily hallucinogenic.

Yet those who've been paying attention will know that he's not averse to the idea of using a little bit of granola as a textural and flavorsome counterpoint in some of his desserts. So Michelle was regularly making granola à la Patrice, and what she learned is that she'd never cooked her granola long enough. Patrice's granola transcended, and his secret was that he baked his granola slow & low. What she learned was that if you wanted to take granola to a higher realm, you had to push it.

When Michelle made her deeply flavorful granola, things were good; but even though she was the one who'd had the epiphany, I was the one who was the serious convert.  I went through batches in the space of a couple of weeks, and there were times when Michelle couldn't keep up.  I was happy to make it myself, and I kept asking for the recipe, but Michelle can be cagey about her methods from time to time, even with me (professional discretion, and all that jazz).  Anyway, it took six or seven years, but, finally, after years of pleading, she let me in on the secret formula.

First off, like I said, it's more about the method than it is about the ingredients.  It's about taking your time, baking the oats and nuts at a relatively low temperature, attending to them carefully, and achieving a deep golden brown colour, at which point, not only will the granola be fully cooked through and through, but it will have a greatly expanded flavour profile.  Secondly, you can be creative with your fruit/nut/seed combinations, but we like to stick to a palette that's fairly regional: oats, pumpkin seeds, cranberries, cherries.  (If you want to get all exotic with your granola, that's up to you.)  Thirdly, feel free to adjust the sweetness, but keep in mind that when I serve the granola, the ratio of granola to yogurt is fairly small, and I only ever serve it with a premium full-fat, unsweetened yogurt.  And, lastly, people have asked me if my granola is fat free--the short answer is "no."

AEB Crunchy Granola

3 cups rolled oats, preferably organic
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup 100% pure maple syrup
1/2 cup sliced, blanched almonds
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
1 scant pinch kosher salt
1/4 - 1/2 cup raisins
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup dried cherries (optional, adjusting the amount of raisins accordingly)

Preheat your oven to 300º F.

Pour the oats into a large mixing bowl.  Add oil and mix well.  Add the honey, the maple syrup, the almonds, the pumpkin seeds, and the salt, and mix thoroughly.

Place the mixture in a 11" x 17" baking dish (there's no need to grease it--you've already added oil to the mix).  Bake, uncovered, for 1 1/2 - 2 hours (possibly a bit more), making sure to remove the baking dish every 30 minutes in order to stir the mixture thoroughly.  Bake until the mixture has the desired deep golden brown hue.

Remove the baking dish from the oven and use a spatula to transfer the granola back into your large mixing bowl (cleaned, of course).  Add the dried fruit, stir thoroughly, and let the granola cool.

Transfer granola to clean 1-liter jars.

Makes two 1-liter jars of granola.  

Get it? Got it? Good!

Now you're all ready to have some hippie yogurt for breakfast, or go on a hippie hike. Whatever, man. If it feels good, do it!

aj

* The reference, of course, is to Neil Diamond's song of the same name.  The definitive version, in my humble opinion, is on Hot August Night.

fig. c: Hippie Neil