Remember I told you I had butterflied a chicken and was planning on grilling it under a brick?  Well now I’ll show you how I did it.

As I mentioned the other day, Pollo al Mattone, or Chicken Under a Brick is a Tuscan style of grilling chicken.  The chicken cooks quickly since it is flattened under the weight of the brick and you end up with crispy delicious skin and juicy, perfectly cooked meat.  What more could one want from a chicken? Continue reading →

All the credit for these goes to my friend Ron. He’s famous throughout California’s central valley for his blue cheese burgers! I don’t have his recipe because even though I think I managed to pry it from him once, I never wrote it down. But I was craving a blue cheese burger today for lunch and since Ron and Ruby live in California and I’m still in Sicily, I had to come up with something myself! Continue reading →

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written about one of my favorite online shops. No, I’m not talking about Zappos, I’m not talking about King Arthur Flour, and I’m not talking about Burt’s Bees. While it’s true that all of those businesses get their share of my money, my most recent online purchase was from The Spice House. Does it seem strange to shop for spices online? I kind of thought so too. But one visit to their site changed my mind and after my first package arrived in the mail over a year ago, I was completely hooked!

I was one of those people whose spice cabinet was packed with old bottles of spices that had been purchased for one recipe or another and then never touched again. Continue reading →

How it is that I’ve gone this long without tasting any of Nando’s Peri-Peri sauces, I will never know. But now that this wrong has been righted, I’m definitely a Nando’s convert. I like spicy foods and I like hot sauces but I wouldn’t call myself a connoisseur. I always have a supply of a couple different Tabasco sauces on hand (I’ve also tried Texas Pete’s and Louisiana brands but I’ve always been a Tabasco girl), but my pantry hot sauce collection doesn’t usually get much bigger than that other than maybe some Cholula and a mild tomatillo-based green sauce. And of course, there’s the occasional Asian chili paste and I am now always fully stocked with Italian chili paste (crema di peperoncino). But really, considering the variety of hot sauces available in this world, my tiny collection doesn’t even scratch the surface. Continue reading →

Artichokes in Niscemi

I just got my first camcorder and had the opportunity to try it out in the town of Niscemi during the Feast of St. Joseph celebration or, La Festa di San Giuseppe, as it’s known here. I’ll have more photos and videos soon but I wanted to share a quick look at the grilled artichokes I got to eat for lunch!

Enjoy!

Subscribe to Pinch My Salt by e-mail

I created this salad quite a while ago but haven’t posted it because I haven’t come up with an exact recipe. Each time I make the salad, I change the ingredients and amounts, trying to come up with the perfect combination. But it seems that it tastes just as good each time. So, I’m just going to give you a basic recipe and some general guidelines and you can either come up with your own “exact recipe” or you can keep changing it up like I’ve been doing.

I started experimenting with this salad because I was trying to replicate the mexican caesar salad from El Torito, a chain restaurant here on the west coast. I haven’t had it for years but I’ve never forgotten the cilantro dressing. Since I was in Italy when I started my experiment, I ended up using olive oil, pine nuts and parmigiano reggiano cheese. What I came up with is basically a thin cilantro pesto and it’s REALLY good on salad and meat! I think the only resemblance my recipe has to the El Torito salad is the main cilantro flavor and the tortilla strips. But it’s similar enough that I no longer crave the other one. Continue reading →

I decided to get out and grill something before I missed the deadline for Carnival of the Grill…a blogging event hosted by Men in Aprons. I usually don’t need an excuse to fire up the grill but lately I’ve chosen to stay in my air conditioned kitchen and have kept my distance from fire-producing objects. Luckily, the mercury seems to be dropping and it’s actually pleasant outside in the evenings again.

So last night, in honor of my return to the grill, I opted for something fancy. And by fancy I don’t mean complicated, I mean expensive! But it’s nice to splurge once in a while and the thick beef tenderloin steaks looked so good that I couldn’t resist. Although I love a good porterhouse and rib eyes are always a good bet, there’s nothing like biting into a perfectly grilled tenderloin steak.

Usually I don’t do much to these steaks…a little olive oil, some salt and pepper and they taste amazing. But occasionally I wrap them in bacon and last night I took it a step further and crowned my effort with a slice of spicy, smoky compound butter. I was inspired to make up this butter a few days ago after visiting 101 Cookbooks. I love my smoked paprika from The Spice House and am always looking for new ways to use it. It tastes amazing in this butter and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner! By the way, if you like to make your own barbeque rubs and you have never tried smoked paprika…go buy some now!!

Yes, a steak wrapped in bacon and covered in butter might sound like a heart attack waiting to happen but beef tenderloin is very lean and we’re only talking about one slice of bacon and maybe a teaspoon of butter. It’s not something I do often but adding a dab of compound butter to grilled meat takes it to a whole new level. Try some sage butter on a grilled pork chop if you don’t believe me!

On to the recipe… Continue reading →

I stumbled across a crazy site by the name of Steve’s Hot Dogs one afternoon and found this great recipe for grilled peaches. The actual name of the recipe is “The Best Damn Peaches You’ve Never Had…” and now I can say that they come pretty close to the best damn peaches I have had. These peaches were brushed with oil, grilled, filled with crumbled blue cheese and drizzled with honey. Unfortunately I didn’t have the Tupelo honey that was specified in the recipe but the bees in Sicily do a pretty good job.

Even if grilled peaches aren’t your thing, be sure to head over there for some interesting recipes (squirrel stew, for one), Samuel L. Jackson references, and the terrific beverage recommendations that accompany every recipe (”Serve with your favorite Cabernet Sangiovese and have yourself a Champagne Jam like the Atlanta Rhythm Section or with the Atlanta Rhythm Section”).

Once you try these peaches, you’ll probably be hooked on grilling fruit. I love to grill apple rings after they have been brushed with oil and sprinkled with a little cinnamon and sugar. Be creative. Just about anything you put on a grill is going to taste pretty damn good! An interesting article about grilling fruit can be found here.

Subscribe to Pinch My Salt by e-mail