Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Yummy dinner recap

I love to grill. I grill all year long, but now that it's getting warm, it becomes even more frequent.
It just gets too warm in the house to cook there and I am trying to limit the time I use the A/C.
I do a lot of simple things like fish and steaks and chicken breasts. All good stuff.
Usually for steaks I just use a little salt and pepper and garlic to season and grill that baby.
With fish or chicken I use a light marinade of olive or grapeseed oil with some lemon juice and dried herbs. I like grapeseed oil because it has a light flavor that is virtually undetectable, but provides the oil needed in a good marinade.
But on Monday I wanted to try something different.
I did some skewers of cherry tomatoes, zucchini and mushrooms that I basted with an olive oil, vinegar and herb mix. Nothing too fancy or different there. Just tasty veggies.
I threw some pineapple quarters on the grill, no marinade. I just let the sugar in the fruit caramelize over the flames.
My carb was sourdough bread that I sliced thick and brushed with olive oil. I sprinkled on a touch of the Mediterranean dried herbs and some sea salt and grilled that, too.
Oh and I had white corn wrapped in foil with season salt and black pepper with a tiny bit of butter. Grilled those up, too.
But the truly great part of the meal was the protein. I decided to do a pork tenderloin.
I have only grilled a pork tenderloin once before. It came out nice, but I wanted to jazz up the flavor a bit.
My marinade consisted of:
--grapeseed oil
--ponzu sauce (a sort of lemony, soy sauce type thing. Most major markets have it in the ethnic food section.)
--soy sauce
--red chili paste
--brown mustard
--brown sugar

Of course I didn't measure any of it. With stuff like that, I just go by taste. Initially I had it all mixed without the mustard but thought it needed more zip.
Anyway, I whisked it all together then soaked the tenderloin for about 90 minutes.
I seared it over high heat to get all sides nice and browned. Then I lowered the heat and cooked it through to just done. It was fabulous.
The flavor was there, but not too strong.
I think I want to try that marinade on some flank steaks or even some chicken.
It was perfect with the pineapple.
But next time I grill, I might have to do pizzas. I have not done that since last summer and it sounds so tasty right now.
I'll let you know how they turn out.

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