Corey Taps Into a New Section

I can't believe it, but in all this time of writing this blog, there was a whole section that I haven't hit even once yet.  Not one time have I made a recipe from the dessert section!  Today I decided to remedy that situation, along with making something from the appetizer section, which I also have only been hitting sparingly at best as of late.  I also know that I have been slacking recently, not grilling at the pace I could be, so I rounded this meal off with a third recipe just for good measure.  Today's prep began with the appetizer recipe, the Hot, Sweet, and Sticky Chicken Wings on page 60.

 

Step one is to start making the marinade.  Step two, which is optional, is to sigh heavily while using the last of the homemade chile powder that you made from scratch (including growing your own peppers).  I guess I'll have to buy some chile powder, as I won't be able to make any more of my own until around January..

The wings, once tossed to coat themselves in the marinade, need to be left alone for four to six hours.

A couple of hours later I started in on the vegetable course today, which was the Provencal Sandwiches With Roasted Garlic Paste on page 335.   Having done a bit of Provencal cooking in the last half-year, I was rather excited to see Weber's take on this region.

You've seen me roast garlic a couple of times now (if you're new, just go back a couple of entries, you'll find it).  Otherwise, the only things that really get grilled in this recipe are the peppers and eggplant.

You add the some other ingredients to the roasted garlic in order to make a garlic paste.  The recipe instructs you to use a food processor, but I just couldn't picture some nice grandmother in the countryside of Provence using a food processor.  So I used my mortar and pestle.

Okay, so this isn't the most pleasant-looking stuff, but I promise you, it's super tasty.  It's like a southern French bruschetta. 

The vegetables came off the grill, and I also gave the canoed bread a bit of a toasting as well.

On one piece of bread I spread the garlic-tomato paste, and on the other I spread the goat cheese.

Next, the vegetables and lettuce leaves were put in place.

It's rather tough cooking for one from this book.  You can try to scale things down, but it doesn't always work.  To make a long story short, the guys next door got some sandwiches.

The chicken wings went on the grill next, and while I was munching on my sandwich I started making my first Weber dessert.  I kept it simple and went with the Strawberries Balsamico on page 383.

The strawberries have to macerate in the balsamic vinegar and sugar solution for about fifteen minutes.  This will soften them up and add flavor.

In they went!

I had timed this so that while the strawberries were getting their cells broken down, I could eat some wings.  Pretty clever of me, if I may say so.

Have you ever tried to keep a strawberry on a skewer?  As it turns out, it's rather hard.  While trying to turn over the skewer at the midpoint of grilling them, they all fell off.  I'll have to come up with a different strategy if I ever do this again.  Still, I manged to turn them one by one, and they ended up looking just fine.

Half of the strawberries went back into the balsamic sauce...

where they were introduced to Mr. Immersion Blender!

The remaining strawberries were sliced up and added to the sauce.  This sauce was then spooned over the ice cream.  I then sat on the couch and thoroughly enjoyed my first Weber dessert.

So let's take this one at a time.  The sandwich was rather decent.  It does a good imitation of Provencal food, but almost uses too many ingredients.  Most of the recipes I've seen keep it amazingly simple.  I've been surprised over and over again while cooking Provencal food by just how far some ingredients will go on their own.  I feel that in a lot of American cooking, we use too many ingredients and make some meals overly and unnecessarily complex. Still, the sandwiches are tasty, healthy, and use many of the ingredients that are home to that region.  This recipe is rather versatile in that it can be used as a side, appetizer, or even a vegetarian meal.   I'd make it again, if I wasn't so bent on getting this blog over and done with (still a ways off, mind you).

The wings were average.  I like slower cooked wings, where the meat is more tender.  The marinade was tasty, but fell short of its title and description.  It just lacked a certain punch that I have come to expect from wings.  Wings should have a ton of flavor, and this was more subtle than anything else.  The wings certainly weren't Hot, Sweet, and Sticky.

Finally, the dessert was awesome.  Then again, how could any combination of vanilla ice cream, sugary balsamic vinegar, strawberries, and orange liqueur be bad?  At first I wasn't a big fan of the orange flavors.  Plain strawberry ice cream is one of my all-time favorite desserts, and I felt that while I like orange, it was acting like an intruder.  But then I noticed that I wasn't slowing down at all while eating it, and saw that it was actually pretty balanced and really rounded out the dessert.  I'd make this again!