more grill recipes

Since the purchase of our grill pan, we've been grilling indoors two or three times a week. We've grilled bread, sausages, tomatoes, fish, lamb, pork, beef, you name it! I heard you can even grill shellfish, but I haven't gone that far... yet. And I haven't grilled shrimp yet. Perhaps a future project?

I owed mom a recipe of the Mediterranean tuna kebab I was hinting about. Here it is, plus a couple of other food pictures I thought I'd throw in as well.

I remembered to take a picture when we ate half of the lot

This tuna recipe comes from a big, heavy recipe book we received from Margareta and Mats last Christmas, with the title Maten runt Medelhavet (Food around the Mediterranean). There are really some inspiring recipes in there, most of which are not as uncomplicated as they look (Making your own paté, anyone?) These tuna kebabs are so easy I basically prepared them on a stressful evening and we still managed to get restaurant-style food in less than 15 minutes. That is one major advantage of a grill pan over a coal grill: time saved!

Mediterranean tuna kebab recipe

about 250 grams tuna - I used frozen tuna steaks, defrosted in room temp.
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
large capers (caperberries) - if not available, its OK without it
large seedless olives - mine were filled with anchovies

1. Soak some barbecue sticks in water 15 to 30 minutes before grilling (not sure if this was necessary for the grill pan, but I soaked mine. I also had to cut them short to fit the pan).

2. Cut the tuna into same-size cubes. Mix the lemon juice and oil and marinade the fish there for some minutes. The recipe says you could also add in very thin lemon peel strips into the marinade (only the yellow part, no white rind).

3. Fire up the grill in high-medium heat. While it's heating, prepare your barbecue sticks, alternating the fish, capers and olives.

4. When the grill is hot, put the kebabs in and cover with a lid. Cook for 2 minutes per side but not more; overcooked fish is dry and tough and the cubes cook easily. We served this with homemade bread with tapenade and a tomato-mozzarella salad.

Steakhouse-style steak


This was our dinner yesterday: steakhouse-style steak inspired by Chef John from the Foodwishes blog (recipe here). I told you this blog is our new favorite! Instead of rib-eye though, we had entrecôte, and instead of the herb butter, we made a red wine reduction sauce out of our unfinished bag-in-box. You don't have to make a sauce; it was a bit too overpowering for this steak recipe and herb butter probably works really well, besides being easier to make. In other respects, we followed the recipe as it looked in the site, from the clarified butter coat to the dry spice rub and the resting period. Y-U-M-M-Y!

If you're not into steaks, maybe this simple lunch is more enticing:

I know: the only grilled thing in the picture above is the store-bought pita bread that we grilled on the dry grill pan instead of toasting. If you turn the bread 45-degrees as you grill, you get that nice grill pattern that really looks neat.

I just wanted to show you this picture because (1) it had no meat at all in it! Haha! (2) I made the soup myself and it was actually quite good and filling. It's also a breeze to make and you get some soup leftovers that you can save for later in the week or freeze for a lazy day.

Cauliflower soup recipe

3 potatoes
1 yellow onion
1 garlic clove
a medium-sized cauliflower head, ca. 300 g.
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 and a half cubes vegetable bullion
2.5 deciliters (about 1 cup) cooking cream
salt and pepper

1. Peel the potatoes, onions and garlic. Cut into small pieces. Cut the cauliflower into smallish cubes and sauté all the vegetables in olive oil.

2. Add 8 deciliters (about 3.3 cups) of water and the bullion cubes. Gently boil for 15 minutes. Add the cream and let boil for about 5 minutes more.

3. Blend the soup until smooth. I used an immersion blender. Salt and pepper as desired, and it's done! You can serve it with anything, too: shrimp or crayfish, ham and bread, or salad.

Enjoy!

365 days

We celebrated our first anniversary in the hospital! Nothing too serious, though. Marcus was a admitted as an inpatient to receive some antibiotic drops following an infection / allergic reaction — something he seems to get a little too often these days. His immune system hasn't recovered yet from the chemotherapy last autumn, so he needs to be rushed to the hospital when he develops a fever. This past quarter, we've been spending about a week a month in the hospital for these treatments — it's not ideal, but its necessary and we make the most we can out of it. I sleep over (we share the small hospital bed too!), we bring our hard disk with movies, and I even work from the hospital when I don't have meetings. It's pretty cozy, actually. And it just all goes back to the motto that you can always still have a good time, whatever life has to offer.

These "antibiotics visits" are also different from other longer hospitalizations because there's a lot of freedom to move. Outside the times that Marcus has to have the drops, we can walk around the forest, take a car out somewhere and take a picnic, or even go malling (making sure it's not rush hour, of course). This time, Marcus even got permission to participate in home guard exercises. Shooting rifles in the morning; inpatient at night!

No, that green uniform is not the hospital gown.

The Friday before our anniversary, we bought some food from home that we were supposed to have in the weekend: paté, cornichons, homemade bread, and wine (no restriction on the alcohol either for Marcus! But we just bought a small bottle anyway). We had a light dinner and had these as an evening snack.

In tune with the whole "hostel" feel of the hospital visit, here's how we chilled the white wine. Heheh! No, hospital rooms here do not usually have their own mini-refrigerators.

And here we are, with our goofy smiles, waiting to eat:

When we got back home, I picked up a package from Kristine at the post office. She probably didn't realize it, but it came right on time for our anniversary, so thanks! Lea also sent us a package about a week and a half before. Thanks too, Lea! You guys are so cute!

Kristine's "care package" contained lots and lots and lots of candy! Whee! Lots of candy names that I haven't even heard of: Mike and Ike, Swedish Fish (to think we live in Sweden!), Jolly Rancher, etc. etc. I just had to pose Marcus with all the goodies.

But what the... wait a minute! Marcus, what do we have here?


What a joker!

A grill pan fan

We just discovered this food channel on YouTube that we already know will be an all-time favorite. It's called Food Wishes and is linked to a blog with the same name. The guy who runs the sites, Chef John, was a culinary arts teacher and is now a freelance food writer and food blogger. I highly recommend the sites. All the foods seem delicious, and nothing I've watched so far seems overly complicated. On the contrary, Chef John makes cooking look simple and genuinely full of pleasure, and he doesn't pepper his viewers with gourmet jargon that can otherwise turn a home cook off. It's just straightforward, good food, presented in an uncomplicated way.

Well, Chef John indirectly inspired us to go look for a grill pan. Or, rather, his recipe for lamb with minted honey sherry vinaigrette did. You see, we're a bit reluctant to have a charcoal grill in the balcony, but as we really wanted to make this recipe, we had to find a way.

This is the grill pan we ended up buying: an Anders Petter "Grythyttan" cast iron grill pan. By happy coincidence, we found one in new condition at the second hand store for 70 kronor – a new one costs 500 – just when we were looking for a good, solid grill pan! The pan is really heavy, and feels even more solid than our regular cast iron pan.

We followed Chef John's recipe using this video from another source as a reference on how to cook meat on a grill pan (we also used a lid to cover the pan, as they did on the video). The only significant difference was that we used the pan indoors on a regular stove. Of course, we had to open the windows to let out the smoke, but it was really worth it. The result of our indoor grilling tastes and looks like it would with outdoor grilling -- even the smoke taste! Incredible but true!

Here it was! We even grilled the pita bread on the pan!

And here's the video that we followed. The full recipe is on the Food Wishes site.

Today, we used the pan on pork. I also have a project to grill Mediterranean tuna kebabs.

Needless to say, the site and the pan are very inspiring. I'm already looking forward to an (indoor) grilling summer.