Grilling

Everyone who grows red peppers roasts red peppers, because it is, to use a legal term, their highest and best use. Once they’re roasted, you can include them in a variety of recipes found here and in other books, or you can sauté them with onion and tomato, include them in stews, or put them on sandwiches. Arguably, they are at their best when served at room temperature, drizzled with oil and perhaps with some capers and anchovies. (They also keep very, very well, up to a few days, refrigerated.) You can roast these, grill them, or broil them; all methods work about equally well. Obviously, if you grill over wood, you’re going to get some added (and welcome) flavors.

Black cod, a Pacific fish also known as sable, is treasured in Japan (and at elite Japanese restaurants here) for its richness and slightly smoky flavor. With miso it is astonishingly delicious. (Mackerel is not the same but still very good.) Use white (it’s actually beige) miso if you can find it. As is common before cooking many types of fish in Japan, this is salted to firm up the flesh; you can skip this step if you prefer. This is not a super-saucy dish, but well-made short-grain rice (page 507) is still a good accompaniment, as would be any salad.

We typically associate king crab legs with Alaska (and butter), but they are indigenous to the waters of the South Pacific as well. Down there, the accompaniment is a little more interesting. You can grill softshell crabs this way as well and serve them with the same salsa.

Lemongrass stalks are used as skewers throughout Southeast Asia, where lemongrass grows like . . . well, grass. (It will grow that way for you, too, if you stick a couple of stalks in the ground, especially if you live in a warm climate and keep it well watered.) Simply trim the stalks, skewer the shrimp on them, and grill; you can gnaw on the stalks when you’ve finished the shrimp. Serve these with Nam Prik (page 586) or Soy Dipping Sauce (page 583). For information on Thai fish sauce (nam pla), see page 500.

The usefulness of miso is nearly unlimited, and it can convert the simplest of ingredients into an exotic dish, a secret of much of Japanese cooking. Here the fermented soybean paste is combined with scallops and a little seasoning, then allowed to sit for a while before being grilled or broiled. It’s a traditional dish, in some parts of Japan the home-cooking equivalent of slathering something with barbecue sauce before cooking. For ease of use and strict authenticity, the miso should be thinned—it’s too thick to use straight—with mirin, the sweet, golden-colored wine made from rice (and Japan’s most important sweetener before the introduction of white sugar). Mirin, too, comes in a naturally brewed form called hon-mirin; it’s preferable to aji-mirin, which may be boosted with corn syrup; check the label. But the amount of mirin is so small, and its flavor in this dish so subtle, that you can use a fruity, sweet white wine in its place or even honey. If you can, try this with Asparagus Salad with Soy-Mustard Dressing (page 190) or a plain salad. And a bit of short-grain rice, of course.

A simple, bright, and light salad with tons of flavor. One of the best possible lunch dishes. See page 500 for information on fish sauces like nam pla.

The first time I had this salad—it was in Saigon—I ate so much of it I could barely eat anything else. So, obviously, you can make it as a main course (serve it with rice). Technically, it’s a starter and a great use for leftover steak. For a traditional, unusual, and wonderful Thai version, toss the beef with 1/4 cup Khao Koor powder (page 587) before dressing. For information on nam pla, see page 500.

Not surprisingly—Vietnamese food is only occasionally hot—this isn’t as blistering as the vegetarian Thai version on page 174. You can buy Vietnamese chili garlic paste at any store selling Asian ingredients; it keeps nearly forever in the refrigerator. Fish sauces like nam pla and nuoc mam are discussed on page 500. Palm sugar is available at many Asian markets, but brown sugar is indistinguishable in flavor.

Eggplant is everywhere in the Middle East; you see it as often as you do tomatoes. Here are three takes on a creamy, mild dish of eggplant and yogurt. The first relies on the charred flavor you get when you grill or broil eggplant; especially when seasoned this way, it’s really the best. The variations are easier and still very good. As always, small eggplants are best; regardless of size, they should be as firm as you can find.

This cooked salad can be prepared in many different ways, including a twice-fried method that by most standards is overwhelmingly oily. These options are all suitable, though the first one, in which the eggplant is grilled, is my favorite. The salad is best served cold, so plan to prepare it ahead of time and refrigerate. It’s quite good warm or at room temperature too.

Bruschetta is toast. Usually with olive oil. Often grilled. But no more than that—or not much more. You need coarse, crusty bread; the preceding recipe will give you the kind you want, but any peasant bread will do. The amount of garlic you use is up to you. You might split a single clove and rub it on the slices of bread after they’re toasted; or you might mash a few cloves and smear them on, which is obviously stronger.

If you can grill the tomatoes for this salsa—especially over wood—so much the better. But you can broil or even pan-grill them, and the salsa will still be good, as long as you make sure they blacken a bit. This makes a wonderful all-purpose condiment, and a great salsa for burritos and tacos; it’s also fabulous used in an omelet or scrambled eggs.

Somewhere between a vegetable dish and a salsa, this is great as a topping for simple grilled fish or chicken. If you have a gas grill, you can make this almost effortlessly; it’s easy, too, when you’ve started a charcoal fire for another purpose.

In their simplest form, quesadillas are warm corn tortillas encasing spicy melted cheese, but the basic construction simply begs to be built upon. See the variations and keep in mind that the possibilities are endless—take advantage of what you have in the refrigerator or garden. Fresh corn tortillas are best, but flour ones are acceptable. You may dry-sauté the quesadillas, with no oil, in a nonstick or well-seasoned cast-iron skillet.

The most difficult part of making negima, the popular Japanese appetizer in which meat is wrapped around scallions or chives, is slicing the meat thin enough. You can ask your butcher for ultra-thin-cut sirloin, and you might get it, but it’s probably easier to use pork, chicken, or veal, all of which are regularly sold as thin cutlets. With a little gentle pounding, they’re thin enough, and the process becomes easy.

Most satays are thin slices of meat threaded through a bamboo skewer and grilled; they are almost inevitably dry. But this Malaysian version is made like kebabs, with bigger chunks of meat, which remain juicy and tender. Since they can be assembled ahead of time, they make a convenient starter, especially if you’re going to be grilling anyway. More on tamarind on page 587 and on nam pla on page 500.

These are not “grilled” at all but cooked on a plancha, a hot flat-top griddle similar to those used by short order chefs. But you can grill them, too. Both ways work fine, but in either case the heat should be very intense and the cooking time very short. The squid should be the smallest you can find, preferably about the size of an average adult’s thumb.

A staple of many tapas bars, and among the most elementary of appetizers, this is a surefire crowd pleaser—as long as your crowd isn’t vegetarian. Even if some members are, you can skewer plain mushrooms or mushrooms and other vegetables—like red peppers and zucchini, for example.

I had the best Japanese-style chicken wings at the Gonpachi Restaurant in Tokyo. They arrived at the table crackling on a little hibachi grill. Salty, sweet, and aromatic, they were great with chilled sake. To me, this is perfect contemporary Japanese cooking.

Wherever you find octopus, you find grilled octopus, though it is most closely associated with Greece, where it is prepared wonderfully. Most octopus in the U.S. is sold frozen, so make sure you think ahead (the benefit is that frozen octopus is also cleaned octopus). If you buy fresh, be sure to ask to have it cleaned or be prepared to do it yourself. One more thing: Allow plenty of time for simmering until the octopus becomes tender—it’s a simple but usually time-consuming process. (Sometimes octopus becomes tender quickly—but it’s an unpredictable occurrence, not something you can count on.)