Mixed Grill (Prawns, Ribeye, Trout)

[js]
I spent some time when I got home cleaning up dirty dishes. When it was time to prepare dinner, I did not want to dirty up more pots and pans.

The solution?

Grill everything outside. Less cleanup involved.

We had some beautiful prawns in the fridge. We originally wanted to do these prawns for our taco night, but it was not meant to be.

I wanted to use the metal skewers we bought. The prawns would need to be skewered. Yes.

How come it seems I'm always peeling prawns and deveining them? Oh well. It seemed that the more practice I get, the faster I become. In fact, I think I have learned some tricks to making the whole process easier.

Paper towels! Those vein things really cling to the knife and, with my diminished dexterity, I had trouble getting them off my gloved fingers and the knife. I had a paper towel set in front of me and all I needed to do was wipe off my hands and knife on it.

Wow! Lessons learned. Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day, okay?

We marinated the prawns in a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, garlic, lemon, and rosemary. Onto the skewers they went.


huge!

[js]
I learned from America's Test Kitchen that one way to prevent shrimps or prawns from getting overcooked on the grill was to pack them really close to each other.

Here they are in a tight prawn-to-prawn embrace...



...and off the skewers.



[js]
We also had some rib eye steaks on hand. I bought these at my local Choices and they were labelled Uruguay beef. Supposedly Uruguay beef is grass-fed beef and/or free-range beef. I haven't gone and verified that to be true or not, but the meat does not indeed taste like corn-fed beef. But I'm getting ahead of myself: more on the taste later.



I just put a little bit of salt and pepper on the steaks and onto the grill they went.



Steelhead trout in the fridge as well. Again, these were to be for dinner the other night, but we had taco night instead. Hence, the fish was bumped. It's just as well, because I LOVE grilled fish.

So simple again: salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil. Onto the grill the fillets went.





[ts]
And here they are all together. This post is pretty much a food porn post. =D



[ts]
Of course, everything was already good on their own, but I decided to make a little sauce.

I was inspired by a "Tarator-style" recipe I saw on the Lebanese episode of Food Safari.

Mine was a "deconstructed" version. There were three parts:

1) a yogurt-tahini sauce --
That's yogurt, tahini, garlic and lemon juice.

2) roast and ground walnuts, and

3) a "salsa verde" of sorts.
That had cilantro, mint, red onions, chile peppers, lemon juice and olive oil.



To get the full "Tarator" effect, we combined each component on the plate. Like so.



[js]
Everything was so soul-satisfying. I crave the smoke and the grill taste once in a while and this mixed grill dinner hit the spot. Serve with a simple salad of romaine greens. We also had some arugula in the fridge and we had arugula to go with everything.

Oh, that Uruguay rib eye steak? There is a hint of mineral-y taste to the beef that takes a little bit of getting used to, and the beef was not as fatty and doesn't have as luxurious a mouthfeel as corn-fed beef.

Grass or corn? Well, there's an entire political statement in that, but we won't get into that right now.

[ts]
Yes, let's just eat! (Food porn alert.)






[eatingclub] vancouver dishes inspired by Food Safari episodes:
Spanish: Tortilla de Patatas
Thai: Waterfall Beef Salad
Lebanese: Tarator-style Sauce
Thai: Thai Basil Stir-Fry (gka prow)
Lebanese: Lamb Kafta (Turkish: Lamb Kofte)
Indonesian: Belado
Moroccan: Preserved Lemons
Moroccan: Chicken Tagine