Sunday Afternoon Grilling

Yesterday was a truly gorgeous day in Boston, and today we are getting more of the same (I can tell by looking out the small window next to my lab bench -- sigh). Sunny, clear, mid 70's and breezy. These are the kind of days we need to fully recover from the long New England winter...

In honor of the glorious day we decided to have a small cookout with a few close friends. After a brief run to the lab to tend my cultures, I cleaned up in the apartment and courtyard (a slow and unnecessarily meticulous process) while Melissa prepped food in the kitchen (she is quick and efficient). It must drive her nuts to watch me clean -- but she enjoys the results too much to complain about my methodology.

While the grill was warming up we relaxed with Evan in the small window of direct sun we get in our courtyard. This time of year a few square meters of sun move across the outer edge of the patio table for about one hour early in the afternoon -- our golden hour. We soaked in the sun while nibbling at a cheese board with a glass of 2006 Sebastiani chardonnay (Sonoma, CA).

Beautiful and delicious things always come off the grill when Melissa tends it. The main course was a whole roast chicken. She roasts chickens like this standing up on a soda can full of a seasoning mix that percolates up through the meat while it cooks off the flame. This is often referred to as beer can chicken, and it results in a tender and well-seasoned bird. Accompanied by grilled eggplant, zucchini and portobello mushrooms, it made a formidable feast. Melissa also makes a mean grilled tempeh for the vegetarians -- even we carnivores couldn't pass it up.

The most impressive dish of the day was probably dessert. Melissa comes up with some pretty inventive ways to make grilled desserts, and this was a stunning example. She chopped a pineapple lengthwise into fillets (not rings) and coated them liberally with brown sugar. These were grilled over direct flame until the sugars caramelized on the outside of the fruit and made nice, dark grill marks. This was served hot off the grill on a pool of stiff oatmeal cookie batter and topped with vanilla ice cream and mint garnish. Beautiful to look at, even better to eat -- we almost didn't get a photo of this one...

The Sangria

We made the first sangria of the season to accompany today's cornucopia of deliciousness. Sangria is a base of red wine that is fortified with extra spirits (rum, brandy, vodka, etc.) and sweetened with sugar and fruit juices. Served with copious amounts of chopped fruit and ice, it makes a wonderful summer drink. Always a favorite, our sangria recipe was carefully crafted through scientific process a few years back. After enjoying some excellent sangria and a fine dinner at Tapeo on Newbury Street, Ramon, Gijsje, Melissa and I decided we had to replicate this at home. Being a group of four Harvard-trained scientists (three immunologists and a physicist went into a bar...), we of course went about it with great discipline and careful methodology. We assembled a group of ingredients suggested in various recipes we collected during the "literature search" phase of the project and set up our workspace in a controlled, well-lit environment (Ramon and Gijsje's Cambridge apartment).

The experiment: we did not vary the wine base; one should always use an inexpensive Spanish red. Using expensive, high-quality wine is a complete waste -- these should be enjoyed unadulterated by ice, fruit juice and the various other things we are about to add to the concoction. We always use a tempranillo or tempranillo-garnacha mix typical of Spain's Rioja wine region (usually Abrazo del Toro Tinto -- $5 at Trader Joes). We tried various ratios and combinations of fortifying spirits and fruit juice, then sweetened each batch to taste and made our notes. In the end we came to this simple recipe: 4 parts wine, 1 part spirits, 1 part orange juice. The choice of spirits is key and we found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that fruit brandy works best. Apple or peach brandy is what Melissa and I use, and the peach especially gives a nice twist to the usual apple and citrus flavors you find in a good sangria. We have also used regular brandy with triple-sec or Cointreau to good effect. Apples and oranges (about 1 or 2 fruits per bottle of wine) should be chopped and marinated in the brandy overnight in the refrigerator; the wine and other ingredients should be chilled until needed. When ready to serve, add the fruit and brandy to the chilled wine in a large pitcher or punch bowl and stir in the orange juice. Orange juice turns out to be the most important ingredient as far as I'm concerned: it takes the sharp tanniny edge off the wine and softens the whole concoction so that it doesn't just taste like cheap red wine made stronger with cheap brandy. Sweeten it to taste with simple syrup and serve on ice in tumblers or wine glasses.

This recipe is delicious, but also pretty strong -- and it tends to sneak up on you -- so I sometimes dilute it a bit with soda water to make it go a little further and avoid knocking too many of our guests on their asses. Please let us know if you try it out and if you discover any improvements -- a good experiment needs to be replicated as many times as possible.

At the end of the day, Poppy was exhausted. Entertaining is hard work...
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Melissa's Recipes

Roasted Chicken on the Grill

This is my version of “Beer Can Chicken”. I have always been particularly fond of stuffing, so it was difficult for me to forego cramming sage and onion stuffing inside the bird before I cooked it. However, I was once at a friend's house in NZ and had the most wonderfully tender roast chicken. I found out the tenderness was due to the whole lemon stuffed inside the chicken during roasting. All of the oils from the rind and acid from the juice scent and tenderize the chicken as it cooks. So in the summertime I like to make roast chicken that combines the sage from the stuffing, the lemon for tenderness and the BBQ/Grill.

1 whole chicken
2 tsp of chicken stock paste
1 head of garlic cloves
1 lemon
A few sprigs of sage leaves (mine are from the garden. Sage is one of the few herbs that survives the New England winter)
1 empty can

~2 hours before roasting chicken mix chicken stock paste, ~4 cloves of garlic finely chopped, and the zest of one lemon into a paste. Carefully with your fingers separate skin of the chicken from the meat without tearing the skin. I leave the connection between the skin and the ridge between the two breasts intact to form pockets under the skin in which I can smear the garlic/stock/zest paste. Then carefully insert ~ 6-8 whole sage leaves under the skin. Try and lay them flat as when the chicken cooks the skin will become translucent and they will show through. Hand crush the lemon the allow some of the juices to escape and put in the cavity with the rest of the sage leaves. Allow everything to soak in before preparing the chicken for roasting around 2hrs later.

To get the chicken ready for the BBQ remove the lemon and sage from the cavity and cut the lemon in half and collect remaining juice. Cut the lemon and remaining garlic into small enough chunks to fit into the empty can. Add the lemon juice to the empty can also. Place the chicken over top of the upright can so the can fills its cavity and the chicken is vertical. Keep the chicken upright so the contents of the can don’t spill. With toothpicks truss the open neck cavity skin together. As the chicken roasts on the BBQ the can will heat up and all the aromas from the lemon, garlic and sage will be released. Sealing the neck will keep all the aromatics from escaping before they have a chance to permeate the meat.

To cook the chicken on the BBQ you need cook it covered using indirect heat. Our BBQ has 3 burners and a lid (I haven’t tried tenting it in foil if you don’t have a covered BBQ but this might work). I place the chicken over one burner that I leave off. I leave the other two burners on such that it heats the BBQ up to an oven temperature of ~200oC. If you don’t have a good feel for this I’d start on medium and keep peeking. If after ~30 minutes the skin hasn’t started browning you should probably turn it up a bit. If it starts getting brown much earlier than this I’d turn it down a bit. How long it takes to cook the chicken can vary widely. I first use the skin colour to judge, then poke it at the bone joint next to the breast to see if the juice runs clear. The meat should also be firm when prodded and not squishy. Or alternatively you could use a meat thermometer to make sure the internal temperature is ~165-175oF. I like to stay on the lower side to maintain the juiciness of the meat, (but if it’s pink and translucent inside it’s gotta go back on).

I carve the chicken Chinese style by first removing the limbs at the joints and then removing each breast whole and cutting slices against the grain. That way everyone gets some yummy skin with their slice of breast.