Hello friends! It is hot hot hot in Philly and I’m trying to use the stove and oven as little as possible, making lots of grill-based dinners. As we’re not cooking meat these days, I’ve been getting a bit more creative with cooking on the grill, and I wanted to share two grill-based meals of late that both SLAPPED. One theme: use your cast iron skillets on the grill!!
First, dinner last night. Yesterday afternoon, Clover and I were getting gelati at John’s Water Ice with a friend (BTW, they currently have blueberry water ice as a special and so I was able to get my all time fav gelati combo - blueberry water ice and coffee chip ice cream. If you are in Philly, TRY IT) and a guy backed his car into Clover’s bike tire. He very honorably found us sitting around the corner and wound up paying for the repair, so all good. But anyway, we walked to Mexibikes in the Italian Market to get a new tire and while the guys were fixing the bike, I decided to go to a produce stand to shop for dinner! I don’t often go to the Italian Market for produce, but I want to start doing it more. I spent $11 and got two nice eggplants, a bag of ten or so roma tomatoes, two things of berries, and two mangoes. Then when we were walking back to the bike shop, the clams in the window of the fishmonger caught my eye, so I bought a dozen littlenecks for $6.
At home, I decided to make an Italian-vibed dinner from our Italian market spoils: grilled clams and a non-breaded eggplant parmesan thing. Here’s what I did:
First, I sliced the eggplants into thick rounds and drizzled with a little olive oil and salt. I chopped up eight or so roma tomatoes, and put them in a cast iron with a glug of olive oil, salt, and a few cloves of grated garlic. I put the eggplant slices and the cast iron on the grill, and grilled the eggplant til it was softened and charred. I let the tomatoes bubble away, and then smashed them up a bit with a wooden spoon.
Then, I took everything off the grill and poured the tomatoes into a bowl. I put a glug of olive oil in the bottom of my two cast iron skillets, and then put the eggplant slices in the skillets in a single layer. I put a nice dollop of tomato sauce on each one and then covered everything in a generous layer of cheese (a mix of shredded mozzerella, queso oaxaca, and grated parm, which is what we had in the fridge). If I’d had some gluten free breadcrumbs, I would’ve sprinkled them on top. Back on the grill, until everything was bubbly and delicious.
I took it off the grill and let it cool, topping it with some black pepper and snipped basil leaves from the garden. Then, while that cooled, I made the clams. You can just throw clams on the grill, did you know that?? I used my small cast iron to make a little butter sauce - I just hucked a chunk of butter, a nice splash of dry vermouth, salt, pepper, and grated garlic in there and let it all melt down while the clams cooked. The clams just take a few minutes, and they’re ready when they open. Try to remove them carefully to avoid spilling their juice down into the grill, but some will spill anyway.
Clover made some garlic bread - she cut these nice little soldiers from some GF bread, and brushed them with melted butter and grated garlic, and we toasted them up on the grill.
And that was dinner! It was not at all a classic “cookout meal,” but all the elements cooked sooo nicely on the grill. I will be making this entire meal again.
One more meal! This one unfortunately with fewer pics. We had some friends over on the 4th to watch Godzilla, and I wanted to make an easy grilled dinner to feed a bunch of people. I decided to make veggie tacos similar to the ones I wrote about making last year on a road trip. This is a top tier vegetarian grill meal, IMO!
This time, because we were at home, I decided to make salsa verde. Here is my loosey goosey salsa verde recipe, which I began making years ago when my ex and I lived on a farm and there was always an insane surplus of tomatillos. You can do this in the oven at a high temp, but this time of year of course the grill is the way.
Husk a bunch of tomatillos, and put them in a pan with some white onion, and lightly coat everything with a little vegetable oil and a sprinkle of salt. Grill (or roast) the tomatillos, onion, and a jalapeño or two until everything is charred and the tomatillos are collapsing. They will be juicy and the skins blackened. I’m sorry I don’t have a pic of what it looks like cooked, but here it is going on the grill.
When it’s cool enough to handle, I then remove any woody stems on the tomatillos, and throw the tomatillos (skins, juices and all) into the blender with the onion and the jalapeños (stems removed, any super-blackened skin removed, and some seeds removed - obviously you can adjust spiciness here), along with a chopped clove or two of garlic and half a bunch or so of roughly chopped cilantro. Blend it up, taste, add lime if you like (I usually don’t, the tomatillos have a nice tartness) and adjust salt. It is SO GOOD.
Then I threw a bunch of of peppers and zucchini and roma tomatoes on the grill, lightly oiled and salty, and grilled them til they were softened and charred. Clover chopped them up once they came off.
We warmed up a couple cans of refried beans as well. Then I threw corn tortillas on the grill, each with a little handful of shredded queso Oaxaca on top. You can of course use whatever cheese you like, or none at all, but IMO the stretchy texture of queso Oaxaca really brings something special. I covered the grill for a couple minutes til the queso was melted and the tortillas a bit charred. Then everyone just piled up their tacos on the cheesy tortillas. We had some sour cream in the mix, and shredded cabbage, raw onion, avocado, pickled jalapenos and/or olives would’ve all been welcome but were not necessary. Everyone was VERY into this meal, and I was very pleased and housed quite a few tacos. Let me know what else we’re grilling, friends! XO
you already know the people have been THIRSTING for this post (also wanna mention the grilled pineapple and vanilla ice cream dessert to the yumola grilled veggie taco dinner ;)))) )
Adding to the grilled fruit category: grilled peaches. 😍 a few years ago, I made grilled peaches with burrata on toast— riffing on this recipe, minus the pancetta: www.howsweeteats.com/2019/07/peach-burrata-crostini. It was stellar!!!