Rooftop Gourmet

 I’ve said it a million times, there’s nothing I enjoy more on a warm summer night than grilled steak and corn on the cob. Something about the charred meat and the buttery, sweet corn kernels popping in my teeth as I typewriter through cob after cob. It reinforces that spring and summer are my favorite times of the year, spending time outdoors with friends and family around great food.

This past Sunday was a perfect night to fire up the grill, especially because I couldn’t run the dishwasher due to the water ban in Boston. Washing my knife, and cutting board with boiled water was frustrating enough, so I tried to cook the majority of the meal outdoors. I wanted to combine my favorite combination of steak and corn on the cob into something that I could hold in my hands. Forget the steak knife and fork, I wanted to create a sandwich that was packed with all of the flavors I was craving.

Skirt steak is perfect for sandwiches because it’s thin, and you have to slice it against the grain to maximize its tenderness; perfect for layering in between bread.

I seasoned the skirt with salt, chile powder, and enough freshly cracked black pepper to send you into a sneezing fit. Because it’s not very thick, I only flash grill it for a few minutes each side until its medium rare before slicing it. While I was out on the deck, I also grilled a couple ears of fresh corn.

This takes a little bit longer, because you want the kernels to brown and take on some of that amazing grill essence. You’ll know that the ears are starting to cook because they start popping loudly underneath the hood of your grill. When the corn was grilled, I took a knife to them and shaved off all of the grilled corn kernels and set them aside for the sauce. I made a classic aioli from scratch, which is basically a garlic-infused mayonnaise.

You start by whisking egg yolks and finely minced garlic while constantly drizzling in the oil. It’s quite the workout, especially if you don’t have a helper to hold the bowl for you. When my aioli was nice and thick, I seasoned it with salt, pepper, and fresh lemon juice before I spooned it into the blender. I tossed in all of the grilled corn kernels and pulsed it a few times to infuse the fresh corn flavor, but not too much to keep some of the whole kernels in tact.

I dipped my finger in to taste it and was blown away at how “corny” it was! One small, creamy bite was packed with so much sweet corn flavor, tangy garlic,  zesty lemon, and underlying char that made you realize it was grilled.

I could have taken out a spoon and devoured an entire bowl. Instead, I quickly grilled a chewy, French baguette and spread the grilled corn aioli all over it. Then I layered slabs of sliced skirt steak, some baby arugula, and shaved red onions, before topping it off with another drizzleof the corn sauce. I really had to clamp down on the sandwich in order to fit it into my mouth but it was worth the stretch. The juicy steak was so tender with that fiery black pepper crust that burned your lips just for a second before it was cooled down by the sweet and creamy aioli.

These would be great to serve at parties or barbecues because they’re small and handheld. You can hold a sandwich and a beer at the same time, whereas with corn on the cob and steak, it requires two hands, a forkand knife, and a lot of napkins. On the side, I made a grilled fingerling potato salad. Fingerlings are those small golden potatoes that look like fingers and are rich and buttery. I simply tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper and dumped them onto the grill.

When they had a nice crust on them, I tossed them into a bowl with sliced haricot vert (thin French green beans), shaved red onions, and a few dollops of creamy Roquefort cheese.

The steam from the grilled potatoes slowly melted the creamy blue cheese and brought the whole potato salad together. I served these sandwiches on the deck with a bottle of 2006 Thomas Cusine Vilosell from Spain. I love this wine, not only because of its wicked cool label, but it’s a great wine for grilling. It’s a blend of primarily Tempranillo, with a touch of Cabernet, Merlot, Syrah, and Garnacha.

The wine is perfect for grilled meats because of its rich, smoky flavor. The grapes are grown at high altitude in chalky, clay soil which gives the wine this peppery, earthiness to it. When those flavors combine with the ripe, fruit from the Syrah and Garnacha, the combination is your Weber’s match made in heaven.

On scorching hot days, like this one, you can even throw it in the fridge for 15 minutes before serving it to give it a slight chill which surprisingly enhances certain red wines. The Vilosell had tons of blackberry and cocoa flavors followed by a smoky, black pepper finish. The only problem was putting down my sandwich to take another sip.

Spring is finally here, and it has clearly made its point by coming in like a lion; more like a pack of lions. Only a few more days of torrential downpour and flooding before Easter brings us some nice weather. Last night I was optimistic and tried to bring the lamb a few days sooner to send out the season the right way.

 I picked up two racks of lamb from Whole Foods and brought them home to start Frenching them.

Frenching is a term used to describe cutting the meat and fat off from around the bones, making them nice and clean looking; there was no tongue kissing involved.

 I liberally seasoned the racks with salt, pepper and lots of fresh rosemary before I seared them off in a screaming hot roasting pan. I wasn’t in the mood for the typical roasted potatoes or rice pilaf to accompany my lamb so I went to the dry pantry for some ideas. I found a couple of cans of Garbanzo beans, otherwise known as chick peas, and decided to make a puree.

 I tossed the chick peas in the food processor with the juice and zest of two whole lemons which gave it a nice burst of acidity and fresh flavor. I warmed the puree on the back burner while I got everything else prepped but couldn’t help dunking some old pita chips into the “hummus” while I cooked.

As well as rosemary, fresh mint is another classic herb that goes great with lamb. I wanted to serve the lamb with a fresh Spring salad to emphasize the lightness of this Easter feast.

I tossed together some pea tendrils, fresh mint leaves, parsley, and some wafer thin radishes to create a rather interesting salad. It almost looked like something the Easter Bunny would snack on. The combination of herbs and pea shoots with the spicy radishes were very pleasing. I made a quick vinaigrette in the blender with green olives, garlic, white anchovies, Dijon mustard, and more mint.

The briny, and salty olives would be a perfect topping for the gamey lamb chops, which I threw into the oven to roast.

April showers supposedly bring May flowers so I opened up a bottle of the 2006 Flowers Perennial Red Blend from Sonoma. This magnificent wine is a blend of 75% Pinot Noir, 13% Syrah, 10% Pinot Menuier, and 1% Chardonnay. It’s fruit forward and has stunning aromas of cherry and… you guessed it… flowers. Hints of dark coffee appear in between the bursting plum and strawberry fruit. Not only was the name “Flowers Perennial Red” perfect for my Spring feast, it paired perfectly with the medium rare lamb. 

The grassy notes in the meat played well with the lemony chick pea puree and the texture of the salad was fresh and crunchy. I spooned the green olive vinagriette over the warm chops and lightly tossed the Spring mix of herbs on top of the lamb’s crown. The unique blend of grapes in the Flowers Red had plenty of acidity and is a great food wine in general, especially for an Easter feast. Hopefully the rain will cease, the flowers will bloom, and we’ll send Spring out with some lamb.

Seth Kunin has been making wine in California since 1998, and he pays tribute to the Old World Chateauneauf-du-Pape with his 2007 Pape Star from the Central Coast. This wine is a blend of Grenache, Mourvedre, and Syrah just like in the northern Rhone Valley, France except it’s expressive of the Central Coast of California; which gives it a slightly modern twist.

 Most of the time, I pair a wine with whatever I’m making for dinner, but tonight I picked the wine first. I had some extra time, so I walked through Whole Foods with no concrete plans, just an idea of the style and character of the Pape Star.

I strolled past the meat counter and these beautiful, pink veal chops immediately caught my eye. Veal is slightly more delicate than beef and would be a match made in heaven for the medium bodied red.

The Pape Star has smooth tannins and tons of cherry, raspberry and currant flavors with a hint of spice in the finish from the Mourvedre. It’s extremely smooth and gentle on the palate and has some bright acidity, reminiscent of blood oranges.

I wanted to showcase the plump veal chops by limiting the other ingredients I put on the plate, so I stuck with roasted yams to add an element of sweetness to the dish. I made a rich Dijon Mustard sauce freshened up by a fine chiffonade of fresh basil.

The combination of basil and mustard is something new that I had never tried but it worked very nicely with the succulent veal and the char from the grill. It reminded me of Dijon mustard sloshed on a charred Italian sausage from a cart outside of Fenway, only slightly more elegant.

On my way to checkout, I walked past a basket of heirloom tomatoes that were all different sizes, shapes and colors and I just couldn’t resist. I grabbed a bunch of them along with some blood oranges to make a salad.

There are millions of different varieties of heirloom tomatoes (too many to keep track of) with all sorts of funny names that sound like CareBear characters; I think I grabbed some Green Zebras and Big Rainbows.

I sliced the multi-colored orbs nice and thin, and showered them with blood orange zest, blood orange supremes, extra virgin olive oil, and a sprinkle of fancy sea salt crystals. The essential oils in the zest brought the juicy tomatoes to life and added an interesting flavor to the salad. I seasoned the chops and headed out into the cold to throw them on the grill.

They only took about 5 minutes on each side before they were medium in temperature, and I brought them in to rest. The chops were very well marbled for such a young animal and they were loaded with flavor, giving the Pape Star a run for its money as the star of the night.

 Maybe it’s because I don’t have a huge sweet tooth, or maybe my tastebuds are all out of whack, but I love bitter foods. I love hoppy, bitter beers, I drink double espresso straight and iced coffee black. One of my favorite leafy vegetables is radicchio, and I love eathing it raw. Radicchio is an Italian vegetable that comes in a few different varieties, all of which are extremely bitter.

It looks like a purple cabbage and is usually about the size of a softball. One of the most simple ways to eat radicchio (and one of my favorites) is to split the head in half and grill it with a little extra virgin olive oil.

The grilling or roasting does reduce the bitterness level quite a bit, and most chefs usually balance the bitterness with something sweet (like balsamic vinegar). I made a sweet vinaigrette that I served warm over the raw radicchio salad because the heat doesn’t really wilt the vegetable like most leafy greens would succumb to. I started off by sauteing some shallots and golden raisins in pancetta fat.

 Once everything was soft, I transferred the entire mixture to a blender where I then added some whole grain mustard and extra virgin olive oil. The vinaigrette is a perfect balance of rich, tangy, and sweet…perfect for the raw bitter greens. I simply pan roasted the salmon until is was crispy on the top and pink and moist in the center.

 I consider salmon to be a more oily, denser, meatier fish that has a sort of woodsy quality to it depending on how it’s prepared. This quality makes it extremely versatile when it comes to pairing with wine or other foods. I love the combination of earthy mushrooms and salmon because they play so nicely with each other. I grilled some meaty portabello mushroom caps and stuffed them with some minted peas; fresh peas that I simply sauteed with chopped, fresh mint.

Both side dishes to my salmon had impeccable balance which really brought the dish together as a whole. The peas and mint, freshened up the earthy mushrooms, and the sweet vinaigrette balanced out the bitter radicchio. It was a great, wintery fish dish with loads of complexity.

I served an Oregon Pinot Noir with the salmon because I feel that unless it is poached, salmon needs a red wine. The 2008 Forefront Pinot Noir is made by Pine Ridge Winery and uses 100% Pinot Noir grapes from the Willamette Valley, Oregon. Oregon is a great place to grow Pinot because of the warm days and cool nights, which produce tons of overly ripe, generous fruit; a major characteristic of great Pinot Noir.

The fruit in the Forefront bottle is finished for ten months in French Oak barrels which gives it a little more structure and spicyness. The wine has silky tannins, and bundles of fresh ripe, red fruit such as raspberry and pomegranate followed by a spicy, star anise finish. There’s plenty of acidity too which is a reason why it works so well with seafood.

It’s a good thing that I got another healthy dish under my belt before this weekend, because more playoff football and friends from college coming to town equals lots of unhealthy party food.

I am always looking for ways to save money when it comes to food shopping. One way that I have been exploring this summer is buying and cooking whole fish. Even though this is very common in Europe and other parts of the world, this isn’t for everybody. You need to get over the fact that the head (and eyeballs) is still sitting on the plate looking up at you. From a cooking point of view, it is much harder to overcook the fish when it is left whole, and it is extremely cost efficient. You will be surprised at how much meat one whole fish yields. The only downside (other than the fact that it’s whole if you have a weak stomach) is that it takes patience and time to eat. Personally, I enjoy sitting on the deck on a nice summer night and slowly picking the succulent, moist and flaky pieces of a grilled, whole fish out from in between the bones. It gives you more time to enjoy your wine; I would reccomend any crisp, dry white. I chose a Viognier from the South of France: 2008 Domaine Massiac Viognier. I served the whole grilled black bass with an Asian style salad that I came up with, which worked perfectly with the fruity, floral Viognier. The wine had great acidity and minerality probably coming from the region’s limestone hills. As noted in our PostScript, this wine is very versitle and can be enjoyed by itself or with a number of different dishes. Seafood especially, and even a salad with Asian ingredients and flavors. Try this wine with spicy dishes as well. My Asian salad had seared shiitake mushroom caps which were then thinly julienned. Extremely thin julienne of raw, flat sugar snap peas vertically almost to the point where they looked like green noodles or string. Then I added some Japanese noodles which could be substituted for bean sprouts for a lighter version, chopped peanuts and some sesame seeds. I dressed the salad with sesame oil and rice wine vinegar; I served it cold but it would be nice warm as well, especially if you use the noodles. Try serving a bottle of Domaine Massiac Viognier  with your next meal, and if you’re daring and want to save some money on seafood, buy a whole fish. (*Make sure to examine the fish before you buy it. The gills should be moist and red, the eyes should be clear and not cloudy, and it should have very little to no fishy smell to it. Tell the fish monger that you will be grilling it whole and he or she will prepare it for you). This picture is the Asian salad that I made except it’s paired with seared scallops and clams.