Grilling, Sophisticated and Easy
As a general rule, I'm a terrible cook. Unlike Charity, it's not one of my talents. Although I'm capable of making decent-tasting food, usually I'm too bloody lazy to bother. Most times, if my food tastes good, I'm content. I don't insist on a lot of variety, either; 3lbs. of spaghetti or taco meat or catchatori will last me for a week and I'm content to eat it for three meals a day. I can't eat TV dinners, but I'm totally fine with pot pies, pre-made bbq ribs (they only take 10 minutes in the oven!), and other frozen foods that go into the oven.
Despite this, I love to grill. Most of my parties are outside, where my family has a big, elevated fireplace that we made out of cinderblocks and firebrick, a brick oven (made by us of the same material), a nice big cinderblock grill with two heights for the coal, and a smoker (which we didn't make, but it's still awesome). In my family, we take grilling seriously. Hotdogs and hamburgers are not allowed at my parties; I grew up on venison bites, made from deer shot by the next-door-neighbors who came to the pitfires my dad hosted (which were the center of the neighborhood). Nothing compares to the baked beans my mother makes on the grill, and the best apple pie I've ever had was made in the brick oven right beside it.
Now that I'm older, I host my own parties out on that patio. It's not the neighbors who come, but friends of mine (though neighbors are always welcome, we tend to stay out later than the retired folks who live where I grew up), and we don't cook my parents' food. We cook mine. There still aren't hotdogs, though, and I'm not the kind of person who cooks with a recipe; I cook by eye. On the grill, it's the only way to be sure.
I had never really cooked before I hosted my first party, but I had a friend who was vegetarian and I love(d) chicken, so we started from there and raided the garage cabinets for stuff to season with. Here's what we use:
- Olive Oil
- Montreal Steak Seasoning
- Lemon Pepper Seasoning
- Old Bay*
- Honey
- BBQ Sauce
- Hot Sauce
Light up the grill and get it going. Then break out the tin foil and cover the hottest section of the grill with a piece of foil.** With a clean paint brush, brush the foil with olive oil, then put a pack worth of chicken tenders down on the foil and brush the top of the chicken with oil as well. In your mind, divide the foil into quarters, and drizzle honey on all of the chicken in the top right hand corner, BBQ sauce on the chicken in the top left hand corner, Old Bay on the chicken in the bottom right hand corner, and lemon pepper seasoning on the remaining chicken. Obviously you don't have to be that specific, but make sure you keep track of which section is which.
I've heard that the proper way to cook on the grill is to only flip the meat once, but I don't think that's as fun, so flip whenever you feel the urge to check and make sure your meat isn't burned. Every time you flip the meat, add more seasoning. Don't worry that the seasoning is sliding off and mingling with the other seasonings on other pieces of chicken because of the oil and fat; it's supposed to do that, because it adds a nice flavor under the primary taste (which is why we don't just mix them all together on all the pieces).
When the meat starts to brown, I usually slice a piece in half to make sure that the middle isn't pink (because I tend not to be super confident in my cooking, and my mother almost died from salmonella and I'm paranoid). If the meat is done, I eat that piece, since I've already cut it, take the meat off of the grill, put it on a paper plate, and hand the plate off to someone. They pass it around, and if it gets all the way around the group without being finished off, it gets sat down on the table.
Then I open up a second pack of chicken, and make half of it plain and half of it with the Montreal Steak Seasoning, which tends to be the most popular in my group of friends. I use the same piece of tinfoil and cook it the same way. At this point, people's appetites are usually dulled, which is good because vegetables tend to take awhile on the grill, the way I cook them.
First, a basket of cherry tomatoes. They go onto the chicken foil, which is then shaped into a bowl-ish shape. Pick the foil up and put it onto another piece of foil, because the original foil is probably punctured and worn in places. Then the tomatoes are drenched with olive oil, hot sauce, old bay and steak seasoning, then the foil is wrapped around them, with the excess foil twisted into a kind of handle at the top.
Next, chop two or three onions (this is the most popular dish by far at my parties) into bite-sized pieces, roughly the size of a half-dollar. Think onion petals, not rings. Brush a piece of tin foil with olive oil, put some hot sauce, butter, old bay and steak seasoning on top of the onions, and them wrap it up the same way you did the tomatoes.
You can cook green peppers the same way.
While those cook, take a couple of big tomatoes (we get ours from a local farm owned by the family of my neighbor's son-in-law. I used to pick peppers there as a kid) and cut them into quarters. Lay them out side-by-side, skin-side down on a sheet of tin foil, then pour about half a jar of salsa on top.
Cook the tomatoes (both sets) until the skin wrinkles. Cook the onions until they taste sweet. You can cook them longer (and they'll taste even better as long as the heat isn't too high. Don't burn them!), but that's the soonest you should take them off.
While you're waiting for the vegetables to cook, take a tinfoil bowl (don't make it; buy the little foil containers like they make pot pies in, it's worth the dollar or so) and fill it with butter. Then add fresh-mashed garlic and let it melt down and goo. Slice some fresh french bread (from the store, or you can make it yourself if you're brave and talented. I never have the patience to bake bread in the brick oven), brush it with the garlic butter, and toast it on the grill. Directly on the grill is fine this time, but make sure you watch carefully to make sure the bread doesn't burn. Flip frequently.
Make enough for everyone. Let people help. Have a good time while you cook. Between the fire and the food, we always have enough fun that it's never necessary to break out desperate measures like cards or beer pong, which suits me just fine.
* If you aren't from Maryland, you may have a hard time getting your hands on Maryland-style crab seasoning, but it's relatively easy to make. Google old bay seasoning and you'll see a bunch. Here's one that seems reliable.
** I catch a lot of grief for doing this, but I'm not really a fan of burned meat or the taste of charcoal. Besides which, if you put the foil down, the chicken cooks in its own juices and tastes more like the seasonings, and you don't create sparks when oil and fat drip down into the coals.