Saturday, June 13, 2009

A cool-kitchen supper

Tonight's Menu

  • grilled shrimp
  • garlic bread
  • grilled asparagus
  • green salad "bar"
Oh people. It is already SO HOT here in central Texas. Too hot to sit outside while the food grills, unfortunately. The good news is, this meal pretty much cooked itself on the grill while I sat inside in my nice, cool, air-conditioned kitchen! Yes!

I deviated from the script a bit with this shrimp. We love our usual recipe, but I've been making it like once every 10 days or so and wanted something just a little bit different. So I mixed together about 1/2 cup of canola oil, 1/4 cup EVOO (I would have done ALL EVOO, but I was running low), a few glugs each of Worcestershire and hot sauce, a tablespoon or so of honey, the juice of one orange, one lemon and one lime, a bunch of minced fresh garlic, a pinch of salt and some freshly ground pepper and poured it over two pounds of peeled jumbo shrimp. This marinated in the fridge for about 4 hours before I threaded the shrimp onto skewers and grilled them for 5 minutes per side over medium heat. They were really good!

The garlic bread was purchased at the store. I wrapped it in foil and stuck it on the top rack of the grill to warm up while the shrimp was cooking.

The asparagus was dead easy. I grilled it on a grill screen after I'd pulled off the shrimp. I drizzled it with EVOO and sprinkled it with salt and pepper, then grilled it for maybe 8 minutes total, tossing it around with tongs to brown it all over. Yum! This is my favorite way to eat asparagus (roasting it in the oven is a close second).

The salad bar was just chopped romaine, sliced carrots, sliced cucumber, and wedges of tomato.

Easy dinner, and the house stayed nice and cool! Good thing, because it was about 98 degrees out on the patio -- yikes!

3 comments:

Trina said...

Sounds yummy! Not only is it to hot to sit outside and wait for the food to grill, but the mosquitos are horrible. I became their dinner.

Anonymous said...

I agree--sounds yummy!
Just wondering if you buy pre-peeled or peel the shrimp yourself. I'm ashamed to say, as a former NoLa'n, I hate to peel shrimp, and I also hate the black vein. I just like to get to the nitty w/out the gritty.

J

Badger said...

I usually buy either the pre-peeled or the EZ-peel, depending on what's cheap. I honestly can't tell a difference in quality. All the shrimp at my local grocery is "previously frozen" anyway!

MochaTrina: the mosquitoes are TERRIBLE this year! And stealthy, too. I never see them, but I come inside with like 20 bites every time!