No. 12: Hitting the Grill
Seasonal reflections, grilling seafood and an herb-olive salad topping for grilled trout (or pretty much any fish)
Casual, time outside, friends & family, sunshine, vacations, no-frills, long days making the most of all those extra daylight hours. That covers at least some of the essence of summer. One of the simplest of summer’s pleasures for me is getting to spend as much time as I can on our cozy little back patio—whether tending the grill, watering plants, or unwinding with a cool drink and crossword puzzle or podcast before dinner. When it gets extra-hot, I relish the warm early mornings back there with coffee and newspapers, and lingering after dinner under the stars.
Seafood fits into the season—namely grilling season—beautifully. Almost without exception (can’t think of one right now), seafood works great on the grill, the quintessential easy-going cooking method of summer. Maybe you’re grilling in your back yard. Or at a campsite, the beach, a grill in a park, or on the deck of that cabin you rent for a couple weeks this summer. Grilling’s portability is among its charms.
My trusty Weber grill has supplied some delicious meals in the past few months, particularly during an unseasonably warm stretch before Seattle’s traditional “June gloom” (AKA “Juneuary”) set in. And there will be much more to come over the next few months, now that the gloom has passed and summer has settled in.
I’m wholly devoted to charcoal grilling, so the briquette supply is restocked and ready for action. I love the sensory connection made with the whole process: lighting of the coals and watching them come to vivid, glowing life; variations on arranging the coals for the project at hand; keeping an eye on the heat levels to manage vents and/or add coals along the way. The best part is watching, hearing, smelling the transformation of the food over the fire, senses engaged and maximizing our anticipation.
From among the various grill-related photos I’ve saved in recent years, I picked this random collection that includes a Niçoise-meets-mixed-grill. I may need to recreate that striking summertime centerpiece soon.
Here's to summer. Here’s to grilling. Here’s to taking advantage of all opportunities to be outside enjoying food cooked in wide open spaces. Nothing quite compares.
** In the next issue or two, I’ll dive into the other major food group of summertime: salads. Another seasonal staple that helps avoid heating up the kitchen while taking full advantage of produce from our gardens and farmers markets. If you have a favorite seafood-based or -accented salad, let me know in the comments!
At the Grill
There are so many potential approaches to grilling seafood, so many seafoods to play around with, countless options for imbuing flavor—or simply celebrating the seafoods in their purest form. It’s a really fun technique to explore. And it makes sitting down to write just a few paragraphs for now particularly challenging. I’ll include links to more detail on a couple of options that I wrote a while back.
For some seafoods—such as oysters, whole fish, larger fish fillets, portions of Dungeness crab—grilling truly couldn’t be simpler. A heat source with a grate on which to set the seafood is all you need. Well, a set of long tongs, other appropriate tools to help along the way. Skewers can do the trick to make other grilling much easier (scallops, shrimp, cubes of meaty fish), or a piece of foil in which you can enclose, say, clams or mussels to be grill-steamed in a pouch. I did so with clams, butter, and fresh bay leaves in Shellfish, one of the easiest and most aromatic of recipes in that book. Among other recipes included there are scallops grilled alongside radicchio served with a Caesar sauce, grilled lobster tails topped with gremolata butter, and cooked Dungeness portions tossed with a soy-garlic mixture before going on the grill.
Summer’s wild salmon showing up just as we’re firing up the grill more, that’s such beautiful timing. Options abound: with smoke chips or without, maybe on a cedar plank now and then, whole or fillets or steaks, various temps and lengths of cooking, any number of seasonings to incorporate before or after cooking. Of all those delicious possibilities, one I love most for sentimental reasons is salmon grilled whole, with onion and citrus in the cavity. Easy-breezy, the way my dad grilled his salmon countless times over the years, on the kamado pot we’d brought back from Japan. The preparation’s simple enough: sliced onion, lemon, lime, salt and pepper in the cavity of the fish. I often grill as is, direct on the grates. In Dad’s version, the fish is wrapped loosely in foil and topped with some melted butter and lemon juice. I offer my take on his recipe at the end of this post from over a dozen years ago (nostalgia alert). In the last issue of this newsletter I referenced a fillet variation we cooked at a family gathering in May. It’s simple and wonderful, either version.
Oysters on the grill is another exercise in supreme simplicity. There are two basic approaches: pre-shucked or not. For the former, you shuck the oyster and set it on the grill to cook until you see juices bubbling a bit around the edges and the meat plumped. You can grill the oysters as is, or with a bit of sauce or condiment added to meld flavors as they cook. A few options I included in Oysters were arugula-almond pesto, smokey tomato-bacon relish, and garlic-sage butter. For the other option, not shucked, simply place the oyster cupped-side down on the grill and cook until the shell pops open a bit. I’ve not experienced this first-hand, but have heard about whole oysters popping a tad explosively on the grill; avoid an overly-hot fire, cover the grill, or opt for pre-shucked instead. I covered more on grilling oysters here.
Keep in mind that (aside from larger whole fish) seafood cooks rather quickly. It’ll be good to have other items on hand to grill while the fire’s hot. That can be any number of grill-loving vegetables—direct on the grates (zucchini sliced lengthwise is one of my favorite quick-grill accompaniments), on skewers or cooked in a grilling basket or partly enclosed in a foil pouch. Consider grilling extra vegetables to cut up for using in a salad the next night (I especially love sliced onions for this). Maybe grill, too, some thick slices of rustic bread to serve alongside.
Random grilling side note: I love my rotisserie attachment for the Weber, have used it for many turkeys, ducks, and chickens in the 6-ish years that I’ve had it. When my brain got around to wondering about putting a whole fish on the rotisserie, my initial reaction was that it sounded like a silly idea. I wasn’t sure if the spinning would have much value for smaller, quicker cooking fish relative to simpler on-grate grilling. Now I’m intrigued about finding out… I’ll let you know how it goes.
Out and About: PEI Shellfish Festival
If time and money were no object, I’d be heading here myself to join what looks like a seriously seafood-focused good time on Prince Edward Island September 14 to 17. As often happens when events like this cross my radar, I spend a few minutes checking my calendar, looking at the map to see geographic context in case something else comes to mind that I could do while in the area. You know: one flight, multiple valid work-related reasons to be there…that can work, right? It doesn’t work out very often, but it’s fun to contemplate for a moment. Going through that exercise this time I realized that PEI is not all that long a drive from Maine, which I’ve been daydreaming about visiting these past couple of weeks.
The Prince Edward Island International Shellfish Festival schedule covers a lot of delicious, fun and even technical territory—from chowder cook-off and shucking competitions to the competitive art of tying buoys. There’s a high-level chef’s cook-off testing their creative seafood chops, and one for the bartenders, too, showcasing their prowess with the Caesar (akin to a Bloody Mary, using tomato-clam juice, i.e. Clamato).
Everything kicks off with a multi-course dinner called Feast & Frolic that looks wonderfully relaxed and festive. Clearly a highlight, it’s apparently already sold out for this year’s event—and easy to see why given the promise of all those PEI oysters, mussels and lobster on the menu.
Recipe Box: Grilled Trout with Herb-Green Olive Salad
Grilling these fillets with skin on is important for a couple of reasons: it’ll hold the flesh together (a great plan for most fish, aside from firmer-textured such as tuna and swordfish) and the skin ensures the flesh stays moist in that dry high heat of the grill. I don’t turn the fillets; they’re thin enough to cook rather quickly and less moving around means less worry about the fish falling apart. Sometimes the skin gets too charred to enjoy, other times it may be an ideal lightly browned and crisp. Not everyone likes the skin anyway, it’s optional and specific outcomes can vary from one grill to the next.
Using a range of tender herbs will provide an interesting array of flavor, color, and texture for the salad. If you’ve got a good selection in your garden, that’s perfect. And if your chives have blossoms, even better, add some to the mix too. But no need to buy 3 or 4 herb bundles at the market—particularly if you’re not sure you’d use up the rest. The topping is quite good with just a couple types, or even just with tender flat-leaf parsley leaves, too. Of course this would be ideal with salmon, halibut, swordfish…I can’t think of a fish for which this wouldn’t be an ideal finishing touch before serving. The fish can be baked instead of grilled, for year-round appeal. If you’re lucky, the trout fillets you buy will have had the pin bones removed.
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
Pinch finely grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 cups lightly packed mixed tender herbs (flat-leaf parsley, basil, chives, bronze fennel and/or chervil), rinsed and well dried
4 skin-on trout fillets, about 6-7 ounces each
1/3 cup sliced or coarsely chopped pitted green olives, such as Castelvetrano
Preheat an outdoor grill for medium-high heat. If using coals, be sure the grate has time to be well heated after laying out the hot coals, a good 5 minutes before adding the fish.
Combine the lemon juice, lemon zest, and olive oil in a medium bowl. Add a good pinch each of salt and pepper, and whisk to blend. Tear or coarsely chop any larger herb leaves and cut chives in about 1-inch pieces. Set aside the dressing and herbs while grilling the fish; they’ll be tossed together just before serving.
Season the trout fillets lightly with salt and pepper. Carefully lay them on the heated grill*, cover with the lid, and grill until just opaque through the thickest part, 6 to 8 minutes.
To serve, arrange the trout fillets on individual plates. Add the herbs and olives to the dressing and toss to mix, topping each fillet with a mound of the herb salad.
Makes 4 servings
* I often don’t bother with oiling the grill grate or the fish, particularly with skin-on fish. Cooked on a clean, well-preheated grate and left undisturbed for at least a few minutes, the fish generally lifts easily with a long-handled spatula, as it did for this fillet below. Should the skin of the fillet stick, you can slide the spatula between the flesh and the skin, leaving the skin behind to remove later. If you’re a fan of lightly oiling the grate and/or the fish, feel free to do so.
