My dear wife caught a great sale on these monstrous 10/12 count JUMBO shrimp. I knew I had to do these babies proud, so I went with my version of the chili lime marinade that we first had at Wish Willy’s in Belize.
1 pound jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
4 tablespoons fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon hot sauce (preferably Marie Sharp’s)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon honey
Juice of 1 lime, about 1/4 cup
Put the salt and garlic in a food processor and pulse until the garlic is minced. Add the remaining ingredients, except the shrimp, and give them a whirl until they are well-combined.
Put the shrimp in a freezer bag and cover with the marinade. Squeeze the air out of the bag and seal. Marinate in the refrigerator for as long as it takes to get the grill going.
Set your grill up for a direct cook over high (500°F) heat.
Put a veggie tray or grill pan on the grate and let it heat up for about 10 minutes.
Use a slotted spoon to remove the shrimp from the marinade and put them into the pan. Reserve the marinade.
Grill the shrimp until they are pink and curly – about 3 to 5 minutes a side. Remove to a bowl and top with the reserved marinade.
The Verdict: The shrimp really took on that lovely Caribbean blend of tangy/sweet/hot/salty/spicy. Each bite was a big burst of flavor, but nothing got overwhelmed.
The only change I would have made was to cook them just a little more – they were so big that even though the outsides had picked up a bit of char, the insides were a little underdone. If I get a bunch this big again I might skewer them together tightly so they cook more like one big piece of meat.
I am pretty much forbidden from visiting my dear wife’s family without a sizable tub of this dip in tow. Call it a hostess gift. Call it a bribe. Call it a get-out-of-jail-free card. It always gets us in (and generally safely back out of ) the door.
As smoked salmon can be awfully pricey, the only way I can afford to keep the outin-laws happy is to buy fresh salmon when it goes on sale and smoke cure it myself.
The Salmon
1 salmon fillet (1-1/2 to 2 pounds), preferably wild-caught
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup kosher salt
1 tablespoon Chesapeake Bay seasoning (I use Penzey’s, which is a blend of paprika, salt, mustard, celery, ancho, black pepper, red pepper, dill, caraway, allspice, horseradish, cardamom, thyme, ginger, bay, mace, cinnamon, savory and cloves)
Combine all of the dry ingredients in bowl, mixing well. This is the dry cure.
Put the fillet flat in a large zip-top bag. Cover one side of the fillet with half of the cure, working it in with your hands to cover. Flip the fish and repeat on the other side. Squeeze as much air out of the bag as possible, seal, and lay flat in fridge for at least 12 hours, but no more than 24. Turn the fillet over every 3-4 hours.
Remove the fish from cure and rinse it well in cold water. Let soak in fresh water for 30 minutes. Remove from water and pat dry. Place the fish skin-side down on a rack (I use a small baker’s cooling rack). Move the fillet to the fridge until surface is dry but slightly sticky to the touch – 1 to 3 hours.
This semi-gloss finish is called the pellicle, and it helps the fish hold both moisture and smoke.
Set up your grill for a 3 hour indirect cook at 225°F. Add your smoking wood (I used guava) and smoke until the fillet starts to flake – about 2 hours. Remove from the grill and let cool to room temp. Package and store in the fridge overnight so the flesh gets a little firmer and the flavors get to know each other.
I’ll often smoke several fillets up in advance, vacuum seal them, and freeze them for later. I’ve not noticed much loss in quality and it’s a ton cheaper than buying store-bought smoked salmon.
The Dip
1 smoked salmon fillet (1-1/2 to 2 pounds), skinned and de-boned
24 ounces cream cheese, softened
8 ounces sour cream
4 ounces mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon fresh ground horseradish
1 teaspoon Chesapeake Bay seasoning
1 (3.5-ounce) jar capers, undrained
Fresh ground back pepper to taste
In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine everything but the black pepper. Blend until smooth and almost paté-like (you can add more mayo or sour cream if the mixture is too dry). Season with black pepper. Store in a sealed container in the fridge. Top with more capers and/or a few pomegranate seeds scattered on top before serving. It goes great with almost any dipper – crackers, pita chips, corn chips, baguette slices, even sliced veggies.
The Verdict:
This dip is always a monster hit – smoky and rich with just enough tang from the capers to keep everything in balance. This recipe will make a good 2 quarts and we can finish it off during the course of a long weekend just hanging with my brother-in-laws and their families. Sometimes I’ll just make the smoked salmon and serve it as an appetizer with a fancy cheese log.
I would no more go out to eat on Valentine’s Day than I would go out celebrating on New Year’s Eve. It’s amateur night – too many packed restaurants with uninspired food and iffy service. Plus, since we’d both been sick, I didn’t want to be out with a whole bunch of people. I just wanted to be home with something tasty – oh, and a good meal too.
Earlier in the week I had gotten a couple of really nice ribeyes out of the freezer and my dear wife had caught a deal on a some king crab legs, so we were set.
I fired up the Big Green Egg and set the oven to 350°F. I seasoned up the steaks with a little sea salt and fresh ground black pepper. When the Egg got up to 600°F, I put the crab legs on a jelly roll pan in the oven and headed out to the grill.
The ribeyes went on for 90 seconds of undisturbed searing. Then I rotated the steaks 90 degrees and gave them another 30 seconds on that side. I flipped the meat and repeated the process on the other side. I flipped them back over and checked for doneness. I gave them another minute on the grill and pulled them when the big one had hit 130°F.
I pulled the steaks off to a plate, covered them with another plate and let them rest for 10 minutes. By then the crab was heated through and my dear wife had bowl of roasted brussels sprouts ready.
A better-than-going-out Valentine’s dinner on the table by 7pm. Not too shabby.
Tired of holiday leftovers yet? I sure am, and this dish was a quick and spicy cure for the post-holiday blues.
1 pound raw shrimp (36-40 count) peeled and deveined
1 medium onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes
1 (4-ounce) can tomato sauce
1-2 tablespoons cajun seasoning
1 tablespoon bacon fat
Salt and pepper
In a large chef’s pan, melt the bacon fat over medium heat. Add the chopped onion, celery, pepper, and garlic and sweat until soft (about 5 minutes). Add the diced tomatoes and tomato sauce. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes until the veggies are tender.
Add the cajun seasoning. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Add the shrimp and cook just until they turn pink and start to curl.
The Verdict:
I served this over some brown rice and it was great – spicy with plenty of veggies and shrimp. This dish is better if you take the time to make a roux and add some andouille sausage, but I’ll give it 4 stars for being a quick way to get something on our weeknight table that didn’t have a spec of leftover ham or turkey in it.
Being about as far from either coast as you can get, fresh oysters are a real treat around here. This year we got some fresh-shucked, farm-raised MONSTERS, so I had to make our usual oyster stew and a new (for us) treat – fried oysters.
Fried Oysters
6 large fresh oysters, shucked
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup bread crumbs (I used Ener-G Gluten Free crumbs)
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup peanut oil
Hot sauce
Drain shucked oysters in a colander.
In a shallow dish, combine the bread crumbs and spices. Pour the beaten egg into another shallow dish. Dip oysters in the beaten egg, and then into the bread crumb mix, coating each oyster thoroughly.
Heat oil in frying pan over medium-high heat until it just starts to shimmer. Add oysters a couple at a time and fry until they are golden brown on one side, about 3 minutes. Turn and brown the other side for another 3 minutes, or until they are golden brown and edges are curled. Remove from frying pan and serve immediately with some hot sauce on the side.
Oyster Stew
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups whole milk
1 pint oysters and liquor
4 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon celery salt
1 teaspoon Chesapeake Bay seasoning
1 1/2 teaspoons hot sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon dried parsley
Salt and pepper
Melt the butter in a 4-quart saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, and celery and sweat until translucent, about 4 to 5 minutes. Add celery salt, Bay seasoning, and hot pepper sauce. Add the cream, milk and bring to a simmer. Do not let boil. Add the oysters, lemon juice, and parsley and simmer until the oysters start to curl, about 3 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with crusty bread and more hot sauce.
The Verdict:
For as rich and elegant as these two dishes are, they took no time to make. I wanted to serve the fried oysters as an appetizer, so I got a little over a pound of oysters and separated out a few of the biggest ones for frying. I got the oyster stew done to the point of adding the oysters and just set the heat to low while I fried up the reserved ones. When we’d finished with the appetizer, I add the rest of the oysters to the pot, raised the heat, and the stew came together in minutes.
The fried oysters were briny and sweet, with a crunchy coating – wonderful. And the oyster stew was rich and savory. The oysters were so big this year that they really stood out in the dish. Of course, I used hunks of gluten-free baguettes to soak up all the broth.
My dear wife and I used to get this dish at a little palapa-covered restaurant that sat right on the Caribbean. We’d order the Ceviche de Camaron, a couple of margaritas, and just sit there staring at the incredibly blue water and sighing. Since we’re looking at up to a foot of snow and single-digit highs this coming weekend, it seemed like a fine time to make this dish.
This is an Acapulco-style version, so it has some Spanish and American influences. The shrimp is pre-cooked, not cured in lime juice, and there are some odd ingredients like ketchup, olives, and horseradish that aren’t found in traditional ceviche, but it has a great taste and is always a big hit as an appetizer.
1 pound cooked large (26-30) shrimp, shelled and deveined
Juice of 2 limes (about 1/2 cup)
1 medium white onion, chopped
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro, chopped
1/2 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons pickled jalapeños, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon fresh horseradish
1 to 2 tablespoons Mexican hot sauce (Búfalo Clasica if you can find it))
16 – 24 pimento-stuffed green olives, chopped
1 teaspoon kosher salt
For garnish:
Lime slices
1 avocado, peeled, pitted and cubed
Chop shrimp into 1/2 inch chunks. In a large, non-reactive bowl, combine the shrimp, salt, and lime juice. Let sit for about 5 minutes. Add the onion, cilantro, ketchup, jalapeños, oil, Worcestershire, horseradish, hot sauce, and olives. Mix well and let sit in the fridge for about an hour so the flavors can develop.
Check seasoning and top with avocado cubes. Serve with lime wedges, tortilla chips or (strangely traditional) saltine crackers.
The Verdict:
Spicy, tangy, and sweet with a good fresh shellfish flavor. This was so good I could almost feel the sand between my toes!
Whenever I ask what I can bring for holiday parties, everybody asks for smoked salmon. Usually I’ll blend it with cream cheese and serve it as a dip, but this time I just chunked it up into bite-sized pieces and served it with a store-bought cheese spread and crackers.
1 salmon fillet (1-1/2 to 2 pounds), preferably wild-caught
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup kosher salt
1 tablespoon Chesapeake Bay seasoning
Combine all of the dry ingredients in bowl, mixing well. This is the cure.
Put the fillet flat in a zip-top bag. Cover both sides of the fillet with the cure mixture. Seal the bag and place in fridge for at least 12 hours, but no more than 24 hours. Turn the fillet over every 3-4 hours.
Remove the fish from cure, rinse well in cold water and pat dry. Place the fish skin-side down on a rack. Move to the fridge to dry until surface is dry but slightly sticky to the touch – 1 to 3 hours.
Set up your grill for a 3 hour indirect cook at 225°F. Add your smoking wood (I used apple for this batch) and smoke until the fillet starts to flake – about 2 hours.
The Verdict: Sweet and salty and smoky – everything a holiday appetizer should be. I really like the complex flavors that the Chesapeake Bay seasoning adds. Next time I might even give it a light dusting of extra seasoning before smoking it.
This recipe is a pure product of the internet. It started off as an email from my dear wife asking if scallops sounded good for dinner. Sure thing. I figured I’d just grill them up on skewers, but I wanted a new recipe for a side dish.
Googled grilled scallops – 291,000 results. On about the third page of search results I hit a scallops with roasted red pepper sauce recipe. Looks good, but not quite it. Wait a minute, didn’t one of the food bloggers I read do a red pepper sauce that had cheese in it?
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
3 medium red bell peppers, cut in half, cored and seeded
1 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup fresh goat cheese
8 ounces spaghetti noodles (gluten-free in this case)
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
Set your grill up for a direct cook over high (500°F) heat.
Put the peppers on the grill skin side down and roast until most of the skin has blackened (about 5 minutes). Flip and roast the other side until the flesh start to soften (about 3 minutes). Remove the peppers to a large zip-top bag and seal. Let them steam in the bag and cool while you get the rest of the ingredients cooking. Leave the grill up and running because you’ll do the scallops on it after the sauce is ready.
Start the water boiling for the pasta. Heat the oil in a 3 or 4 quart saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and onions and cook until they start to soften (about 3 minutes). Remove from the heat and set aside.
Remove the peppers from the bag and peel off the charred skin. Give the peppers a rough chop and add to the onions and garlic. Add the stock, salt, pepper, and paprika and bring the stock to a boil. Cover and reduce the heat. Simmer for 5 minutes.
Remove from heat and, using an immersion blender or food processor, blend everything until it’s pureed. Return puree to the stove and bring to a simmer. Add the cheese and stir to combine. It should form a thick sauce, but feel free to add more stock to thin it or let it simmer for a bit to thicken.
When the sauce is to the right consistency, put a lid on it and turn the heat to low just to keep it warm.
Your pasta water should be boiling by now. Add the spaghetti and prepare according to the directions on the package.
While the pasta is cooking, prepare the scallops.
Scallop Skewers
1 1/2 pounds sea scallops
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
6-8 bamboo skewers, soaked in water for at least 30 minutes
Rinse off the scallops and pat dry. In a medium bowl, combine the scallops, oil, salt, and paprika. Mix well to coat.
Thread the scallops on the skewers, making sure to leave some space between them.
When the pasta is ready, put the scallops on grill. Cook on high heat for about 2 minutes. flip and cook for another 2 minutes, or just until they turn opaque. Scallops get tough if you over cook them, so pull them off a little early and let them finish cooking on the plate.
I served the scallops with the pasta covered in the red pepper sauce and a side of brussels sprouts.
The Verdict:
The scallops were pretty much perfect – just a little browned on the outside and still very tender. The minimal seasoning really enhanced the flavor.
The red sauce was another story. It was good – sweet and smoky and robust, but it lacked zing. The goat cheese gave it a nice rich taste, but Chris’s recipe called for feta and I think that would have been a better pick.
BTW – brussels sprouts covered in red pepper sauce are almost edible!
This is another rub courtesy of Fred’s Music & BBQ Supply. Fred helpfully included some recipes and suggestions to use as a starting point. His salmon recipe looks like a real winner.
1 salmon fillet (Alaskan wild in this case)
1-2 teaspoons of Signore Bernardo’s Salmon Seasoning
Olive oil
Use a food-grade plank that’s been soaked in water for at least an hour. Set your grill up for a direct cook over medium-high heat (about 400°F).
Oil both sides of the salmon and season with Signore Bernardo’s Salmon Seasoning.
Put the plank on the grill by itself for about 5 minutes, just until you can smell the smoke coming off the plank. Put the salmon on the plank, close the lid, and let it cook for 10-15 minutes, or until the fish hits 130°F internal and the flesh just starts to flake.
The plank almost wasn't wide enough for this lovely fillet.
Serve hot off the grill. If you’re being fancy schmancy, cover a serving platter with a bed of damp lettuce leaves and set the plank (with the fillet still on it) on the platter. The lettuce makes sure the plank is extinguished and serving off the plank makes for a nice presentation.
The Verdict:
When Fred sent this rub to me he said that it was “something special” and I have to agree with him. I’m a big salmon fan, and I really don’t like to overwhelm its natural flavor too much. Fred’s salmon seasoning does a great job of accenting without covering anything up. The garlic and black pepper in the rub are nicely balanced with sugar and citrus. You taste the salmon, but you also taste all of these other flavors at the same time. Outstanding rub!
Bayfield, Wisconsin is one of our favorite places to vacation. When we are there we often take the ferry over for a day trip to Madeline Island. We love to kayak the lagoon at Big Bay Town Park, tour the island for a bit, and then hang out at Tom’s Burned Down Cafe.
So I was very excited to learn about Superior Planks on Madeline. The grilling planks come from trees that are sustainably-harvested, hauled out by draft horses, run by hand through their bio-diesel saw-mill, and shipped in 100% bio-degradable packaging. These guys are so green they make Kermit jealous.
I ordered up a 3-pack of their maple planks to give them a try. First up – wild Alaskan salmon!
I soaked the plank in water for 2 hours, then set the Big Green Egg up for direct cooking at medium-high heat (about 450°F).
I oiled the skin side of the salmon and seasoned both sides with a just little sea salt and a grind or two of black pepper.
I put the plank on the grill by itself for about 5 minutes, just until I could smell the wood smoke coming off the plank. I put the salmon on the plank, closed the lid, and let it cook for 10-15 minutes. I like salmon when it’s on the medium rare side, so I took the fillet off when it started to flake, but was still a little translucent red inside – about 130°F internal.
The verdict? While cedar is traditional for salmon, I also liked the sweeter, more subtle taste that the maple brought to the party. It enhanced the flavor of the salmon without masking it. I think it would be great for a variety of foods, particularly pork. The planks themselves are very nice (and at $4 a plank, they had better be). They’re a good 1/2 inch thick and tightly grained. Twenty minutes on the grill barely charred the back side. I ought to get plenty of use out of these and it’s fun to be able to cook with something from a place we enjoy so much.
