The Tale Of Three Barbecues The Thai Grill Recipes

THAI GRILLED TOM YUM SHRIMP RECIPE

Steps:

• Gather the ingredients.
• Place the lemongrass, garlic, ginger, chili, cilantro, fish sauce, oil, soy sauce, shrimp paste, lime juice, sugar, and onion in a mini-chopper or food processor and blend to create a smooth paste. (Or you can prepare by hand-simply mince the ingredients well and stir together.)
• Place shrimp and scallops, if using, in a large bowl and pour 1/2 to 3/4 of the marinade over the seafood. Mix, ensuring all the seafood is coated. Reserve any remaining marinade for the side sauce.
• Marinate the shrimp and scallops, if using, 10 to 12 minutes. If using wooden satay sticks, soak them in water in a shallow baking dish for 10 minutes to prevent burning.
• Prepare a medium (350°F to 375°F) gas or charcoal grill fire. Remove the seafood from the marinade. Pour the marinade into a small bowl. Slide the shrimp and scallops onto the prepared skewers.
• Grill the skewers, turning once, about 4 minutes total, or until shrimp are pink and plump and have firmed up. Baste the shrimp the first time you turn them with a little of the reserved marinade.
• If making the side sauce, place reserved marinade from the food processor in a small saucepan over medium heat. Simmer the paste for 30 seconds to 1 minute to warm through. Add the coconut milk , stirring to create a sauce. Taste-test the sauce, adding more sugar if too sour. If too spicy for your taste, add more coconut milk. If too salty, add more lime juice. Add more chili for a spicier sauce.
• Serve the shrimp hot off the grill garnished with cilantro and the warm coconut dipping sauce.

CLASSIC THAI BBQ GRILLED CHICKEN RECIPE (WITH TANGY DIPPING SAUCE)

Steps:

• Combine all marinade ingredients in a bowl and stir well to dissolve the sugar.
• Add chicken, turning several times to ensure the chicken is covered and literally bathed in the marinade. Cover and place in the refrigerator to marinate at least 2 hours, or overnight is even better.
• To make the dipping sauce/glaze, place all the dipping sauce/glaze ingredients in a saucepan. Stir and bring to a boil (the smell will be quite pungent as the vinegar burns off). Reduce heat slightly to keep it on a gentle boil. When sauce has reduced to 1/3 and is bubbling all over the surface, remove from heat. The sauce will thicken as it cools and should taste tangy - a mixture of sweet, sour, salty, and spicy. Note that it's best to make the sauce right before eating, or it will thicken too much. If this happens, reheat and add a little water.
• Brush your grill with a little vegetable oil, then grill the chicken, turning occasionally. Brush the chicken with the leftover marinade for the first 10 minutes or so, then discard marinade. (If the weather doesn't cooperate, see tip below recipe.)
• Serve with the dipping sauce on the side, or spoon a little sauce over each piece of chicken as a glaze before serving. This dish goes well with a salad or served with rice. ENJOY! If the Weather Doesn't Cooperate: Cook the chicken in your oven!
• Place chicken pieces on a grill pan or on a baking sheet lined with foil.
• Bake at 375 degrees for approximately 45 minutes, or until chicken is nearly done (thicker pieces may need slightly longer).
• Then Turn oven to the "broil" setting (on "high" if you have a choice), and move chicken to one of the upper racks of your oven.
• Baste both sides of chicken with the leftover marinade, or with a little of the dipping sauce, then broil 3-5 minutes per side, or until fully cooked (stay near the oven for this process, or chicken may burn).

THAI-STYLE GRILLED CHICKEN THIGHS

Steps:

• Combine all ingredients except chicken in a bowl.
• Mix thoroughly.
• Add chicken and leave to marinate at least one hour, preferably longer.
• Grill chicken on the BBQ, hotplate or in the griller until golden brown and cooked through.
• Ususlly you would expect 12 thigh fillets to feed 4 to 6 people- in my family the kids eat 4 each so this recipe serves 3.

THAI BARBECUE MARINADE

Steps:

• Place all ingredients in food processor and mix, or in a bowl using a whisk.
• Pour over meat of your choice and marinate, refrigerated, overnight (or at least 6 hours).

THE TURKISH GRILL

Steps:

• You probably won't find the name Imam Cagdas-or Gazientep-in your typical Turkish guide book. But mention either place to a Turk and you'll get the sly, conspiratorial look reserved not for tourists but insiders. Imam Cagdas (pronounced "ee-mam cha-dahsh"), which is also the name of the owner, is arguably the most famous kebab house in Turkey, a boisterous, two-story storefront founded by Imam's great-grandfather in 1887. The day of my visit, guests included the city mayor and the commander of the local army base, not to mention 700 other hungry customers. And it was slow season! Turkish gastronomes have the sort of reverential regard for Gazientep that Americans have for New Orleans. Gazientep is the sixth largest city in Turkey, a booming, dusty metropolis located 30 miles west of the Euphrates River near the Syrian border in south central Turkey. The few American businessmen I met here know it as a center for textiles and machine-made carpets. Foodies know it as the pistachio capital of Turkey, not to mention a city whose collective fondness for chile peppers would rival Santa Fe. But the stars of the show are the kebabs, which are stacked in towering piles on metal trays in Imam Cagdas's open kitchen. The variety bears testimony to the Turkish culinary imagination. There is sogar kebab-skewers of ground lamb and whole shallots that are seasoned with a few drops of pomegranate molasses before serving. There is semit kebab, springy sausages of ground lamb and bulgur wheat spiced up with fresh mint and allspice. For sheer visual appeal you can't beat sedzeli kebab: shiny purple chunks of eggplant spit-roasted with ground lamb. And that's just in winter. Imam Cagdas varies the half dozen kebabs it serves on a typical day according to the seasons. Gazientep might seem like an odd place to begin a story on Turkish grilling. It's not particularly easy to get to and it's certainly not on the tourist circuit, but the love of barbecue here is evident even before you land at the airport. A few years ago, an airline pilot passing over Gazientep radioed the fire department to report a forest fire. Closer investigation revealed the thick cloud of smoke to be the output of thousands of portable grills brought to the woods by families for holiday picnics.Almost every restaurateur worth his salt in Turkey claims to have a chef from Gazientap-as I was to discover on my next stop: the restaurant Develi in Istanbul.When in IstanbulDeveli is the sort of restaurant I came to love so much in Turkey: fancy enough to have tablecloths, but relaxed enough for men to pass the evening drinking raki (anise liquor) and eating mezze (appetizers) with their buddies after work. The night I was there, I saw no women and no foreigners. According to its fifth-generation owner, Ali Develier, Develi was opened in 1912 by a camel trader from Gazientep. Today, the four-story restaurant seats 450.I started with pilaki, a variety of dips and salads seasoned with fruity Turkish olive oil. Lamejun, Turkish ground lamb pizza, came next, followed by freshly baked pida, a Turkish bread that tastes like a cross between focaccia and pita. In short order, I was served the house specialty, ground lamb and pistachio nut kebabs, followed by lemony shish kebab and Ali Nasik kebab, a sausage of ground lamb served on a bed of puréed grilled eggplant and yogurt. (The idea of pairing grilled meat and puréed eggplant is suppose to have originated with a Bursa grill jockey whose name means "Gentle Al.") Desserts are exquisite pastry confections doused with butter, syrup, and rosewater.Street KebabsI don't mean to give the impression that grilled fare is solely restaurant food. Indeed, Turkey's most popular "barbecue" is a street food known as donner kebab. Donner means "twirling" or "turning" in Turkish the kebab in question consists of thin flat strips of spiced lamb (or sometimes chicken), layered and stacked to make a giant roast that turns on a vertical spit in an upright rotisserie. The genius of donner kebab is that each portion comes off the roast freshly grilled and delicately crusty. (Good donner kebab is like a prime rib with nothing but end cuts.) Donner is always carved from the bottom up to allow the dripping fat from the top to baste the meat. Actually, there are two types of donner: yaprak (literally "leaf" donner) made with whole lamb and kyma, made with ground lamb. I prefer the former.The sliced donner is rolled in a piece of pita bread or a sheet of lavash with sliced lettuce and tomatoes and yogurt sauce. It's fresh, hot, and succulent, and a serving costs less than a dollar.Short-order KebabsMy last night in Turkey, I wandered the streets of the Beyolu (a lively neighborhood in istanbul that reminds me of the Latin Quarter in Paris). I came upon a smoky grill restaurant tucked away amid the area's taverns and cafés. No one spoke English, but it really didn't matter, for the menu was self explanatory. In the center of the restaurant stood a troughlike brazier perhaps 12 feet long and 2 feet wide, crowned by a hand-hammered copper hood decorated with scenes of Turkish country life. Around the brazier ran a marble counter with seats for a dozen guests. It reminded me of a sushi bar that specialized in grilled lamb instead of raw fish.Kiyi's (for such was the name of the restaurant) pit master is Murat Dademir, a big, gracious man in his thirties, from Adana in southern Turkey, who tilts his head in a kindly way when you ask him a question. When I met him, he was making adana kebab, molding ground lamb spiced with fiery Aleppo chiles onto flat metal skewers by hand. In rapid succession he turned out some of Turkey's most popular grilled dishes: iskander kebab, thinly sliced ground lamb served over diced pida with yogurt, hot tomato sauce, and melted butter. Next came durum-thinly sliced grilled lamb wrapped with lettuce, tomato, onion, and yogurt in a sheet of lavash.When Murat learned of my interest in Turkish grilling, he offered to make me a special salad called ezmeli. He laid a skewer of bull's horn peppers directly on the coals until the skins were charred and blistered. Tomatoes and slender Turkish eggplants were charred the same way. He scraped off the burnt skin (or most of it-a little was left on for flavor), then cut the vegetables into bite-size pieces. He tossed them with chopped parsley, fruity Turkish olive oil, and freshly squeezed lemon juice-exquisitely delicious proof that even a vegetarian can eat great grilled fare in Turkey. In the end, I didn't have a favorite grill joint in Turkey. I enjoyed kebabs in a wide range of settings, at street stalls and restaurants on every level of the socioeconomic scale. That is to say, I ate like a Turk!

THE TALE OF THREE BARBECUES: THE THAI GRILL

Steps:

• This is a tale of one city-and three barbecues. The first embodies the privileged world of Somerset Maugham, of the jet-setting gentry that frequents one of Asia's grandest hotels. The second and third reflect a more realistic style of Third World dining. All three take place in Thailand's political and cultural capital: Bangkok. And all reflect the Thai love of explosive flavors and their profound reverence for food.Curiously, I did not think of Thailand as one of the world's great barbecue centers. There isn't a single great barbecued dish in Thailand's pantheon of culinary masterpieces. There's no Thai equivalent to Brazilian churrasco, to Italian bistecca alla fiorentina, to Persian chelow kebab, or American ribs.Yet everywhere I went in Thailand, I experienced grilling-on the beaches of Samui Island, in the highlands of Chaing Mai, on the crowded streets and back alleys of Bangkok. So strong is the Thai love of yaang (live-fire cooking), they reserve it not just for special occasions, but for everyday fare.Everyday fare? Well that's a mundane way to describe my first experience with Thai grilling: the riverside barbecue at the Oriental Hotel. The Oriental is one of those pleasure palaces built in the last century, on the banks of the Chao Prya River. Joseph Conrad resided there so did Herman Melville and Somerset Maugham. My room in the Writers Wing was a veritable two-story townhouse, with every architectural amenity and electronic convenience known to modern man.But what had my jaw dropping was a torchlit barbecue on the riverside terrace. Seated at a pink granite table with teak chairs, I was surrounded by pedestal globe lights entwined with bougainvillaea. Here a whiff of frangipani, there the perfume of jasmine. The longtail boats skimming the Chao Prya River seemed close enough to touch.As with everything at the Oriental, barbecue is done in a grandiose way, with banks of grills and a buffet line stretching a good fifty feet. There's a seafood station that fairly sparkles with spiny lobsters, slipper lobsters, fresh and salt water prawns, and a fishmonger's assortment of fish, neatly bedded in ice. There are poultry and meat stations, where chicken, duck, squab, beef, and pork emerge sizzling from the grills.But despite the fancy surroundings, the basic preparations are really quite simple. The marinades are variations on a mixture of fish sauce (nampla), lime juice, sugar, and garlic. The accompanying table sauces range from a mild, sweet lemon-honey-garlic sauce to an incendiary tincture of chiles, shallots, and fish sauce. I could spend a couple of paragraphs describing the side dishes-the salad spreads, elaborate carved fruit displays, dessert stations where young women in sarongs cook coconut cakes called kenoms. But what really impressed me was the straightforwardness of the grilled fare, the elegant simplicity of the fish.The Hawkers' CenterA few days later, I experienced a similar barbecue in a considerably different setting: a hawkers' center on a tiny side street off traffic-clogged Silom Road. Hawkers' centers are where ordinary Thais eat-a motley assortment of food stalls and pushcarts selling every imaginable Thai street food, from stir-fries and soups to noodle dishes, like pad thai. The air was thick with smoke from charcoal braziers.I stopped at the cart of a tiny woman for a popular local snack, squid on a stick. She fished the tiny sea creature from a jar where it was marinating in an aromatic mixture of fish sauce, lime juice, palm sugar, garlic, chiles, and lemongrass. The squid went onto a tiny skewer for a two-minute sizzle over the coals. It was sweet, salty, tender, smoky, and absolutely delicious. These, of course are the same flavors I experienced at the Oriental. But this feast cost all of 10 baht (about 45 cents).It's no accident that fish sauce is a recurring theme in Thai barbecue. This malodorous condiment-made from salted, fermented anchovies-is as essential to Thai cooking as soy sauce is to Japanese and Chinese. Fish sauce has a wonderful way of reinforcing the briny flavor of seafood. I suppose this is the reason it's so popular in Thailand as a marinade and dip for grilled fish.Barbecue in EsarnTalk to Thais long enough about barbecue and you'll hear the name Esarn. The term refers to both a region and a people: the province in northeastern Thailand adjacent to the Laotian and Cambodian borders, whose inhabitants are of Lao descent.According to my guide, Nilcharoen Prasertsak, the Esarn became masters of grilling by simple economic necessity. They couldn't afford the oil necessary for stir-frying. So they turned to cooking food over the one commodity even the poor in Thailand have plenty of-coconut shell charcoal. Esarn street vendors are famous throughout Thailand for their gai yaang (grilled chicken) and pla yaang (grilled fish).And that is why my next destination was an Esarn neighborhood in the Dusit District of Bangkok. There houses open directly onto the sidewalks, women sit crosslegged, washing dishes, clothes, and children in plastic tubs on the ground. Sun filters through the leaves of scraggly trees, and mangy dogs lie in the middle of the street. The scene is more reminiscent of a village in the jungle than of an Asian metropolis with seven million inhabitants.To judge from the smoke in the air, I was certainly in barbecue central. Every square foot of sidewalk seemed to be devoted to some sort of culinary activity. On one street corner a man fanned a charcoal fire that was blazing in a hub cap. Elsewhere, women were pounding garlic and spices in mortars with pestles and shredding green papayas to make a crunchy, fiery Esarn salad called som tum.My destination was Raan Khun Noi (Mr. Noi's Restaurant), located at 52 Sukhantharam Road. It was clearly a class joint-you could tell by the flashing jukebox. There were also a framed picture of the King of Thailand, plastic chairs, and pink-clothed tables, and scrawny kittens foraging for scraps on the floor. There was even air conditioning-a rare luxury in these parts-although there was a 5 baht charge per person for the management to turn it on.Mr. Noi specializes in the sort of simple but pungent fare for which the Esarn are famous: a som tum so laced with chiles, it all but melts your molars an oxtail soup that soothes your soul while it scorches your gullet a spatchcocked grilled chicken, all smoky and crisp, redolent with cilantro and garlic. As with most Esarn grilled meats, the chicken was accompanied with a platter of cabbage and celery leaves, basil sprigs, and green beans. The sticky rice came Laotian-style, steamed in a hollow length of bamboo. I devoured it Esarn style-with my fingers.Despite dubious hygienic conditions, there was such good will and warm hospitality on the part of the staff, I decided to eat whatever was put in front of me. I survived without so much as a hiccough, but I'm not sure I would risk it again.Thai SatesIncidentally, there's one grilled dish you don't have to risk your gastrointestinal track to enjoy, a dish you'll find wherever you go in Thailand-high-style restaurant or down home street stall-which is all the more curious, because the dish was invented in a country a thousand miles away: Indonesia. I'm talking, of course, about saté.Named for the Javanese word meaning to "stick" or "skewer," saté consists of tiny pieces of chicken, pork, or other meats grilled on tiny bamboo skewers. Saté has become quite popular in North America, but nothing here can rival the tiny size and delicate flavor of Thai satés. The sweet soy sauce marinade of Java has given way to a fish saucencoconut milk mixture. (The oil-rich coconut milk keeps the meat from drying out.) Thai saté is traditionally accompanied by a creamy peanut sauce and a tangy cucumber salad.Thai barbecue makes the perfect alternative to the meat-laden cookouts of the West. Seafood and vegetables play a major role in Thai grilling. When meats are eaten, it's in small quantities, with a high proportion of vegetables and rice. But even if this is not a concern, you can't beat the dynamic flavors of the Thai grill.