Sunday night we made grilled porkchops with a mango, basil, and bean salsa. It was good, but the whole meal was kind of ill-planned and untrustworthy. The beans were supposed to be black beans, but we realized too late we were out, so we used blackeyed peas instead, the Southern US being closer geographically to the West Indies than is either the Middle East (garbanzos) or the Mediterranean (cannellini).
The recipe was from a grilling cookbook Lawson gave me for my birthday, and we had to correct several ingredients and amounts. For example, the salsa part of the recipe called for 1/8 teaspoon of chile powder. Why even bother? We added quite a bit more, plus some minced habanero. The recipe called for 1/4 teaspoon of salt, which I more than quadrupled. 1/4 teaspoon of ground cumin was not nearly enough, either. The rub recipe called for granulated garlic, which had to be replaced with fresh...and so on.
Last night Lawson made pantry clam pasta. We have been joking about starting a band called the Pantry Clams.
Why are grilling cookbooks so terrible? I got Dad one from Williams Sonoma last year and it was embarrassingly lame. We've already passed it on to Goodwill. Joy of Cooking has a few good grill recipes, and I have a cookbook from Sunset that's usable, but there's a void out there for someone to fill.
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