Queezle_Sister's Reviews
10 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 10Sort by: Title 
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Let the Flames Begin: Tips, Techniques, and Recipes for Real Live Fire Cooking
By Chris Schlesinger, John Willoughby
W. W. Norton & Company - 2002
EZ Grill Bread with Personality : page 99
A fine grilled bread - very similar to naan.
The recipe is a very standard bread recipe, I aged it 24 hours before cooking. The recipe instructs you to roll it very thin (1/8 inch), brush it with olive oil, and sprinkle kosher salt, then grill.
First, 1/8 inch is very thin, and I found the bread to be very difficult to manage. I kneaded a bit more flour into the dough, which helped.
Grilling a large flat piece of bread is a great way to discover the locations of your grill's hot spots!
I prepared this bread to accompany grilled ribs (reviewed here), and to be fair, this would be much better as an appetizer. The cookbook offers many different flavored oil recipes, and I can imagine it would be very fun as a patio party with several oils to compare.
useful (1)
This was only OK. It was interesting to prepare - bananas (in their skin) are grilled till goopy. Then they are squeezed over vanilla ice cream, and raisins, rum and butter added.
None of us liked the butter (but for us it didn't melt). The banana/rum combination, though, is a classic, and I found it interesting prepared this way, and paired with ice cream. I had to use white rum - no dark in the house - but it would have been much better with dark (e.g. blackstrap rum).
I had a bit of trouble grilling the bananas - I think they would have benefit from longer cooking time (they would have gotten goopier), but the skin split, and they were leaking. It took about 7 minutes to get them to this point, and they were definitely very soft. But they smelled heavenly!
This is NOT a kid-friendly dish. Tried to serve it, no love from the young'uns.
useful (3)
Moist, flavorful, and the figs add a lot!
Chicken breast can be dry, and I only had boneless skinless to work with - so I modified the recipe a bit. I beat the breasts to make their thickness more uniform. I cooked them over a medium flame, and took them off when my thermometer registered 158.
Moistness is then reintroduced - the grilled breasts are dunked into a lovely lemon/olive oil/parsley vinaigrette.
After the breasts are done, you grill the figs. This is essentially the same as the grilled fig appetizer - the figs have a bit of EVOO, salt and pepper.
The combination of moist chicken and figs was awesome.
useful (2)
Grilled Figs with Blue Cheese : page 33
Fresh figs become an entirely new beast on the grill. This recipe marinates fresh figs in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Five minutes on the grill produced nice sear marks by about 5 minutes. I used a gorgonzola for the blue cheese garnish - placed on the cooked figs after they were off the grill.
I really loved the way a fresh fig, when grilled becomes something in between jammy and crunchy. Amazing. My favorite part was the salty crunch of salt against the soft sweetness of the fig. Be sure to use nice large crystals of salt to give those concentrated zings, and be generous with the pepper.
The gorgonzola - it definitely added to the dish - but I felt that there might be a cheese type that would be better.
Finding fresh figs in Utah is rare - but this is a dish worth remembering about - it would be a stunning party appetizer. And 12 daughter, who normally dislikes figs - really loved it!
useful (4)
Lovely peach - after the grill its very soft and super juicy. I didn't think the vanilla ice cream or strawberries added much, though.
useful (1)
Delicious thick slices of mushroom - but uneven with the dressing.
Large portobello caps (about 5 inches across), rubbed with olive oil, then salted and peppered, were then grilled till tender. It was hard to tell how much olive oil to use - and whether it should go just on the top or also be spread on the gills. I found that the mushroom cap soaked up quite a bit of oil, and not wanting to load them up too much, I only added about 1 1/2 T per mushroom - this seems consistent with the suggested 1/3 C for 2 lbs suggested by the recipe.
Next, you are instructed to salt and pepper the mushrooms - but I could not get any to stick. Grilling took longer than the 6-8 minutes per side - but probably my grill was not hot enough. I cut into them several times to see if they were cooked, and they still might have benefited from longer heat.
After cooking, we are instructed to slice, and dress with an olive oil-red wine vinegar - Parmesan cheese dressing. It tasted pretty good - some bites were amazing - but it made the dish look terrible! Soggy bits of cheese - it would look, and maybe even taste much better to dress the mushrooms in the olive oil and vinegar - and then grate the cheese on top.
useful (2)
Delicious!
Grilled mushrooms, roasted red bell potatoes, and goat cheese on pasta. The recipe also called for parsley, but lacking parsley, I used basil.
The mushrooms were a bit over-cooked, but I actually liked the smokiness they gave this dish.
Don't forget to add the salt and pepper.
useful (0)
Grilled zucchini is a summer staple around my house, and this recipe offered a nice change of pace. The zucchini are first brushed with sesame oil, then grilled, and toward the end brushed with a honey-soy sauce mix. After that, you dredge them in toasted sesame seeds.
The result was an asian-inspired slightly crunchy vegetable that still had some of that smokey grill goodness. Two of us found this to be "WOW", and two thought it no better than the au naturale plain grilled zucchini. Because I really like sesame seeds. this was a delight.
I will note that a glaze does not take well to a vegetable as wet as a zucchini. I brushed it on as best I could, but it would just bead up. I did two layers each side, and the flavor was still very modest. The glaze might stick better to something more porous.
useful (1)
Perfectly cooked salmon with an amazing cilantro-mint-lime sauce.
The grilling portion of this recipe is very straight forward - simply cook the salmon with minimal doctoring. However, the sauce that is recommended is amazing. Cilantro, garlic, mint, grainy mustard, tobasco, olive oil - blended in the blender or the foor processor. We didn't have any parsley, and substituted lime for the lemon, and it was still great.
Some of us tend to have a sensitive palate, and don't do well with spicy food. Although the sauce is fully flavored, it didn't register as "hot", and all of us enjoyed it.
useful (1)
A very interesting take on cole slaw!
Cabbage, carrots, hearts of palm are all shredded - the recipe called for green and red cabbage. We only had green, but added a raw beet for a bit of red color. The dressing includes tomatoes, orange juice (reduced), cilantro, and lots of cumin seeds.
The result was very good, but the dressing is too strong. The cilantro and cumin (both flavors that I like) dominated the flavors of the vegetables. If I were to make this again, I would use half the cumin (1T not 2T) and less cilantro.
useful (1)