Showing posts with label Grilled Albacore Tuna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grilled Albacore Tuna. Show all posts

Saturday, August 12, 2023

GRILL WEEK

 How did we get through two weeks of family meals without ever grilling? And, with two experienced barbecuers around, at that. I suppose it’s because we rarely sat down all together, making it hardly worth while to fire up the grill.


This week, in an attempt to keep a cool kitchen, I am grilling every single day. With the addition of salad-y foods and pots of rice and pasta, I’ve got lunches and dinners for days.

Ben gave me a grilling tutorial on day one to get me started. (We are using a gas barbecue.) His advice is pretty basic: Scrape the grill rack. Turn the gas on High to burn off residue. Scrub the grates with a half-lemon speared on a long-handled fork or tongs. Don’t use any oil on the grates nor on the foods to be grilled. Heat the grill very hot before placing food on it, then lower the heat as needed. Don’t use marinades, rubs or sauces that contain sugar, which can cause the food to burn. Add barbecue sauce at the very end of cooking time. 

Sea bass (lubina) on the grill with a bunch of vegetables.


So simple! A whole sea bass (about 1 3/4 pounds) on the grill. The fish vendor suggested not removing scales. I sprinkled it with salt, nothing else. No oil. Surprisingly, the fish did not stick to the grill at all. 

Remove the fish from the refrigerator 20 minutes before grilling. Salt it inside and outside. Heat grill to maximum. Place fish on the grill, reduce heat and lower the cover. Grill 5 minutes. Turn the fish and grill 2 minutes longer or until fish, when prodded with a skewer, seems to separate easily from the spine. 

In the kitchen, I removed the head, pulled off the skin and lifted the fillets off the bone. I served the fish with a hot-spicy Green Chile Sauce, Mojo Verde (the recipe for mojo verde is here.)

Vegetables for grilling.

Any time the grill is on, you can be sure I'll add some vegetables on the side of the main item. Mushrooms, asparagus, zucchini, peppers, onions, garlic, eggplant, tomatoes are all good. The vegetables pictured grilled alongside the fish, but I didn't prepare them, removing skins and cutting them up, until the next day. 


Albacore tuna (bonito del norte) on the grill.

Albacore tuna (bonito del norte) is a summertime favorite and amazingly economical. I bought two thick steaks, about 15 ounces each. Dipped them in coarse salt and sesame seeds, seared them on a preheated very hot grill, 2 minutes per side. I wanted them rare in the center, but made the mistake of turning them a second time. Experience is everything with grilling!




The albacore tuna was delicious sliced and served with Japanese-style ponzu sauce (the ponzu sauce recipe is  here.), rice, bok choy and coleslaw with black sesame. Leftover grilled bonito made a good lunch in a salade Niçoise. 


Pasta with grilled vegetables.

And those gorgeous grill-roasted vegetables?  After peeling the eggplants, peppers, onion and tomatoes, I pulled them into strips for escalivada, a Catalan dish. (That recipe is here.) I  sautéed the vegetables and the mashed roasted garlic in olive oil with 1 cup grated tomato pulp and white wine to make a pasta sauce. Here it is served on noodles and topped with requesón, the Spanish version of ricotta, pine nuts and chopped basil for a summery vegetarian dish. 

Racks of ribs on the grill, before adding Fig BBQ Sauce. Those tomatoes, once they char and soften, will be stashed for a future pasta sauce.

No grill week is complete without ribs! I had two small racks of ribs, each weighing about 1 ½ pounds. I marinated them in a semi-adobo, with salt, pepper, oregano and vinegar (no pimentón, which burns easily; no oil, which causes flare-ups). Placed on a preheated hot grill, they cooked 12 minutes before turning. Another 12 minutes. Then I brushed them on one side with Fig BBQ Sauce and let that brown nicely (careful!) before brushing the reverse side with more sauce and turning to glaze. The recipe for Fig BBQ Sauce is below.

Grilled ribs are finished with a fig BBQ sauce, served with skewered grilled figs and grilled potatoes. 




I served grilled potatoes with the ribs. They were par-boiled, then cut in halves, brushed with a little oil, sprinkled with salt, pepper and sprigs of rosemary and placed on the grill just until lightly browned. I had leftover grilled potatoes, so, the next day, I turned them into Green Potato Salad!

For the Green Potato Salad: Cut cooked potatoes into dice. Add chopped celery, onion and red bell pepper. Add spoonsful of Green Chile Sauce (mojo verde, the sauce that accompanied the grilled sea bass) and mix gently. Add more salt and vinegar, to taste. 



Small, spatchcocked chickens splayed out on the grill. Grill week came to an abrupt end when the butane gas bottle ran out! Luckily, it was in the last few minutes of cooking time. The smaller chicken was done to perfection. The larger one I'll use, cut up, incorporated in different dishes that will cook a little longer. I served the grilled chicken with chunky Fig BBQ Sauce on the side, not brushed on the birds as for the pork ribs. Same sauce, different ways to use it.

I like these small, whole chickens (each weighing about 2 pounds) because they roast so quickly and stay juicy. For the grill, I spatchcocked them first (removed the back bone), then dry-brined them. I served them with chunky fig sauce. 

Remove back bone from chicken.
To spatchcock a chicken: Place the chicken on cutting board, breast-side down. With a sharp knife, cleaver or kitchen scissors, cut out the center backbone, from neck to tail. (Save it for the stock-pot.) Turn breast-side up and press down on the breast bone to slightly flatten the chicken. Salt the chicken generously, inside and out. Leave it, uncovered, in the refrigerator at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours. 

Preheat grill to very hot. Lay chickens, cut-side down, on the grill. Close the cover and reduce the heat to medium-low. (Or turn off one of the three burners.) Roast the chickens 15 minutes. Check to make sure the chickens are not burning. Move them to different positions on the grill, but don’t flip them yet. Grill 15 minutes and move them again. After a total of 45 minutes, turn the chickens skin-side down and roast 15 minutes more to brown the skins. (Larger chickens will take longer. Cook to an internal temperature of 160ºF in the thickest part of the thigh.)

Chicken with Chunky Fig Sauce

Serve the chicken hot, warm or cold accompanied by the Fig BBQ Sauce (recipe below). 



Fig BBQ Sauce
Salsa de Higos para Barbacoa

Super-sweet ripe figs give this barbecue sauce substance without the addition of sugar. A sweet wine, such as Pedro Ximenez, adds to the fruity, caramel flavors. Balance them with vinegar and lemon juice. The figs do not need to be peeled. The sauce can be used chunky or pureed to make a sauce that can be brushed on a rack of ribs. For grilling, add the sauce at the end of cooking time so the sauce doesn’t burn. 

Chunky fig BBQ sauce.

Makes 3 cups of sauce.

1 ½ pounds ripe figs (4 cups chopped)
¼ cup soy sauce
¼ cup sweet wine 
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon grated ginger
¼ cup white wine vinegar
1 strip lemon zest, minced
¼ cup water
1 dried chile (optional)
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Chop figs without peeling.
Wash the figs, remove stems and chop the figs. Combine them in a saucepan with the soy, wine, garlic, ginger, vinegar, zest, water, chile, if using, and salt. Place over high heat until the mixture begins to bubble. Lower heat and cook, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching, until thickened, about 15 minutes. Add the lemon juice. Cool the sauce.

If desired, puree all or part of the sauce. If using as a sauce for foods on the grill, add it at the end of the cooking time and watch carefully so that the sauce doesn’t char. 


Skewer ripe figs on rosemary twigs and grill. Wow!





More grill recipes:





Saturday, August 8, 2015

TWO WAYS WITH TUNA

Summertime is tuna time. Both the Atlantic bluefin tuna, atún rojo, (Thunnus thynnus) and the albacore tuna, called in Spanish bonito del norte or atún blanco, (Thunnus alalunga) are fished off Spanish coasts. The bluefin are captured as they head for the Mediterranean (see more about the almadraba tuna fishing here ) while the albacore are caught on the northern Cantabrian coast and Bay of Biscay.


A great price for bonito del norte--albacore tuna.
It was albacore, or bonito del norte, that I found at a local market at a really good price for either the whole fish (big, but not as big as bluefin) or a thick steak.  I’ve been buying canned bonito del norte instead of tuna for a long time, as the albacore, with catch quotas in place, is less threatened than the bluefin. But I had never cooked it fresh before.


Albacore is "white tuna."


Albacore, which can legally be called “white tuna,” really is much lighter-fleshed than the deep red tuna. Less fatty, it can be dry if overcooked. I tried it two ways—quickly grilled on a plancha and cooked in a traditional Basque stew.
Bluefin tuna has red flesh.












Grilled Albacore Tuna with Garlic-Crumb Topping
Bonito del Norte a la Plancha con Migas

Grilled tuna has a crispy topping of garlicky breadcrumbs.
 The bonito steaks can be grilled on a plancha, over coals (a la parilla) or baked in the oven. If baking the fish, mix the crumb topping ingredients and spread them on top of the fish without first sautéing them.

4 (6-ounce) albacore steaks, about 1-inch thick
Salt and pepper
5 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Thyme
1 small red chile, minced
½ teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
1/3 cup chopped parsley
Coarse salt


Sprinkle the fish steaks with salt and pepper and allow to stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. Brush them with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil.

Heat 3 tablespoons oil in a small skillet. Add the garlic, thyme and chile. Sauté until the garlic begins to turn golden. Add the lemon zest and bread crumbs. Toss the crumbs in the oil until they are golden and crisped. Remove from heat and stir in the parsley.

Ridged grill pan marks the steaks.
Heat a ridged grill pan on high heat. Brush the grill with remaining oil and sprinkle it with coarse salt. Place the bonito steaks on the grill. Cook 2 minutes and turn the steaks a quarter turn (in order to get cross-hatch grill marks). Grill 2 minutes longer. Flip the steaks and cook the reverse side in the same manner.

Remove to a platter and spread the garlic-crumbs on top of the steaks.





Basque Albacore Tuna and Potato Stew
Marmitako
  

Chunks of white tuna simmer in a flavorful sauce with potatoes.

Marmitako—from the word marmite, a cooking pot—was traditionally made aboard Basque fishing trawlers. Originally, it was a stew of bonito boiled with bread and a chunk of salt pork. Once it became part of home cooking, potatoes, peppers and olive oil became standard ingredients.

This recipe is  based on one in Cocina Vasca en Bizkaia, by Jesús Llona Larrauri, Garbiñe Badiola and the Escuela Superior Hostelería Artxanda. It substitutes roasted red bell pepper for the usual pimiento choricero, a dry red pepper that has to be soaked and scraped.  Typically, the potatoes are not cut with a knife, but broken into uneven pieces. Insert knife tip into the potato, twist it to break off a chunk. The broken surfaces release starch that helps to thicken the stew.

A frugal home cook would use the bones and trimmings of the bonito to make a simple fish stock. (Cook the trimmings in 4 cups of water with salt and a slice of onion.) Use any fish stock or, simply, water.

Marmitako--a Basque dish of white tuna, potatoes and peppers.



1 ½ pounds bonito
Salt and pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 ounce chopped bacon (optional)
1 cup chopped green pepper
1 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup peeled and chopped tomatoes
¼ cup white wine
1 bay leaf
2 pounds potatoes, cut up
1 roasted and peeled red bell pepper, pureed
Pinch of hot pimentón (optional)
2 ½- 3 cups fish stock or water
Chopped parsley to serve


Remove all skin and bones from the bonito. Cut the fish into 1 ½-inch chunks. Sprinkle them with salt and pepper and set aside, refrigerated.

Heat the oil in a lidded cazuela or skillet with the bacon, if using. Add the green pepper, onion and garlic and sauté gently 5 minutes. Turn up the heat and add the tomatoes. Fry them until they begin to thicken and stick on the pan bottom. Add the wine and let it cook off.

Add the potatoes, 1 teaspoon salt and the bay leaf. Put the pepper pulp and hot pimentón, if using, on top of the potatoes and pour over enough stock or water to nearly cover the potatoes.  Bring to a boil, cover and turn down the heat so the liquid just simmers. Cook until potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes.

Add the chunks of bonito. Cook until fish is just cooked, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow the stew to set for 10 minutes. Serve sprinkled with chopped parsley.