Benjamin´s Unmarred Meat Marinades

Chicken; I'll start here with a classic. Yakitori! The recipe obviously is not mine, but having wrestled it at great personal cost from a creepy employer, I do feel it deserves this place of honor.

Reduce on low heat: 1 part soy sauce, 1 part meirin, 1 part castor sugar. Don't reduce too much, because, when cool, it will be too dense and sticky to use. Always use the fattier parts of chicken, or you'll get a dry and tedious result.

Beef; This marinade emphasizes the full, reddish sweetness of beef. It's wonderfull for a sunny, mediterranean barbecue.

Mix olive oil, salt, black pepper, bay leaf, oregano and tomato-paste (as thick as you can get), a couple of crushed garlic cloves, red wine.

Crocodile; This is amazing meat; delicate and pinkish white, lean, with amazing long fiber. Your marinade should also tenderize it, by adding enough acid. You´ll see that I tried to stay close to the animal´s habitat in its garnishing. I suspect that gator meat is similar at the outset, though I would fear that swampy nutrition would give it a muddy taste. Don´t let my musings keep you from trying.

Mix rice-bran oil, a spoon of sesame oil, some crushed ginger, garlic, lemon grass, and red pepper, a few limes cut to pieces, salt.

Lamb; I've organized this one around a North-African taste-theme. It's nice, not as explosive as these times might suggest, and well suited to temper the fatty and sometimes dominant scents of this meat. If you generally find lamb too ancid, it helps to rinse it in cold running water.

Mix olive oil, salt, some dried or fresh red pepper, lemon juice, orange peel, a pinch of cumin and cloves, honey. If you want some chopped parsley or cilantro.

Porc; Porc can be quite delicate and I wanted to bring out that aspect with this marinade.

Mix white wine, a spoon of almond oil, salt, green pepper, tarragon (not too much!).

Wild Boar; Wild boar, as all game, is powerfull in taste so you need to garnish it with power in order to reach some sort of balance. The gamey notes harmonize well with spices, so I followed a rather classic style.

Mix olive oil, red wine, salt, black pepper, bay leaf, thyme, rosemary, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, crushed garlic, chopped onion. Choose your cuts well, since not all of the boar will be fatty and tender enough for your bbq.

Horse; For fear of all sorts web-attacks and legal trouble, I'll only let the thought sink in for now. If you want it, I'll definitely post a marinade for horse meat.

Grilling Vegetables

Even if the first and last think you would think of, when mentioning a barbecue, is wonderful cuts of meat (with the possible exception of marshmellows), I donnot think any open fire excess is complete without some vegetables. And don't worry: I am not going to discuss your health, though I personally do enjoy the alleviation from vegetables when my stomach is churning on the exigent animal proteins and fat. It is the lightness and variation, the endless palate of subtle sweets, sours and little bitters that complete for me a nice and sunny, out-door meal. The beauty is that you can cook it all on the very same fire, or even on the cooler edges of your grill that are useless for cooking any T-bone of importance.

What I'm proposing below is worthwhile, though far from spectacular. It is also Mediterranean, not only in the use of ingredients and flavors, but also in its culinary approach, I believe. That is, the various dishes are all directed, not to the creation of 'something new', but towards the discovery of the flavour that was always there. Call it sublimination, if you like, or aha-erlebnis, your grill is the most fabulous tool for pure tastes immaginable.

A good sprinkling of salt will help your vegetables to cook better on the irons, as will a drop of (olive-)oil.

Prepare the following garnishings for the specified vegetables:

Zucchini: Extravirgin olive oil, lemon juice, chopped (flat) parseley, a crushed clove of garlic, ground black pepper.

Eggplant: Extravirgin olive oil, a drop of balsamic vinegar, coarseley chopped mint leaves, a crushed clove of garlic, ground black pepper.

Bell pepper: For the red type use extravirgin olive oil, a drop of red wine vinegar, a crushed habanero or other pepper, crushed basil leaves, and a crushed clove of garlic.

Pumpkin: Extravirgin olive oil, lime juice, ground green peppercorns, a bit of chopped tarragon.

Chicory: For these bitter beauties I'd use nothing but olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and black

Radicchio: pepper.

A grilled tomato attains perfection for me with just a bit of olive oil and salt. Just make sure to puncture them once or twice before laying them on the grill, or they might explode.   

Sunset Scallops

Ingredients:

Scallops (to your heart's desire)

the peel of half an orange

a pinch of saffron

a dessertspoon of pink peppercorns

extravirgin olive oil

a lemon, if you like

Procedure:

Take the zest in strips from the orange and lay them to dry on the (less hot) side of your grill.

Remove the beard (and the eggs if still attached) from the scallops and wet (that is not soak) them with the oil.

Take a mortar and pestle and work the dried (but not parched) zest, the saffron, and the pink peppercorns to a powder.

Sprinkle the scallops with the powder and grill. Do not cook them through, or they will be dry and stringy. Serve immediately, if you like with a piece of lemon on the side.