Praise The Pearl - Williams-Sonoma Grilled Meatball Subs

Finally, it feels as if summer has arrived and it's time for both chillin' and grillin'. These meatballs are awesome and so too, the Smoky Bacon BBQ Sauce. As much as I am completely enthralled by the invention of the Meatball Grill Basket, I don't have a grill and all, so I made the meatballs stovetop (and grilled the onions as well) with my Calphalon grill pan and finished them off in the BBQ sauce. Divine! We felt like baking so we made our own dinner rolls, instead of purchasing the sourdough sandwich rolls that the recipe suggests. It was very easy and well worth the extra time spent on the preparation. Follow that recipe from Cuisine at home - but unless you plan on feeding the entire British Army, cut the recipe in half. Also, I think Pillsbury Grands would work out really well, if you want to start eating sooner. Or just drop the whole idea, and go out and find those store-bought, already made sourdough sandwich rolls! Oh, and throw a really good loaf of French bread into your Cuisinart to use as your bread crumbs (instead of the "crustless white bread"). It'll keep for ages in a Zip-loc bag to use whenever you need.

Here's the original Williams-Sonoma recipe for the meatball sandwiches:

Ingredients
1/4 cup milk
1 cup torn pieces of crustless white bread (1/2-inch pieces)
2 yellow onions
4 Tbs. olive oil
1 tsp. salt, plus more, to taste
1 lb. ground beef
2 Tbs. chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/2 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
Freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 jar smoky bacon barbecue sauce
4 sourdough sandwich rolls, each about 5 inches long, halved lengthwise
4 slices provolone cheese, each 1 oz., cut into 1-inch strips

Directions
Prepare a medium-hot fire in a grill. In a large bowl, combine the milk and bread and stir until evenly moistened. Set aside. Finely dice half of 1 onion. In a small saucepan over medium-high heat, warm 1 Tbs. of the olive oil. Add the onion and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is softened, about 6 minutes, reducing the heat as needed to prevent browning. Let cool to room temperature. Add the cooked onion, ground beef, parsley, thyme, the 1 tsp. salt and pepper to the bowl with the bread mixture. Using a spoon or your hands, gently mix just until the ingredients are combined. Spray the wells of a meatball grill basket with nonstick cooking spray. Using about 3 Tbs. of the meat mixture for each meatball, form the mixture into balls in the bottom half of the wells (the side with the handle). Close the lid on the basket.

Thinly slice the remaining onions. In a bowl, stir together the onions and the remaining 3 Tbs. olive oil. Transfer the onions to a mesh grill-top fry pan and place on the grill. Cover the grill and cook, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. Season the onions with salt and pepper; keep the onions on the grill. Place the meatball basket on the grill. Cover the grill and cook, turning the meatball basket over once, until the meatballs are cooked through, about 14 minutes total. Meanwhile, continue cooking the onions, stirring occasionally, until caramelized. Remove the meatball basket from the grill but keep the onions on the grill. Pour the barbecue sauce into a 5-quart Dutch oven, add the meatballs to the pot and place on the grill. Heat until the sauce is warm, 2 to 3 minutes. Arrange the sandwich rolls, cut side down, on the grill and toast until golden, 2 to 4 minutes. To assemble the sandwiches, layer the onions, meatballs and cheese on the rolls, dividing evenly; spoon on more sauce, if desired. Place the sandwiches on the unheated side of the grill, cover and heat until the cheese is melted, 2 to 4 minutes. Serve immediately. Serves 6.

Surprising Tuna!

When it comes to cooking, there are a number of things that leave me absolutely bewildered. Artichokes for example--love, but haven't got the vaguest what to do when it comes to actually doing anything with them! Some people have tried to show me, such as other instructive types who've foolishly attempted to teach me how to drive a stick shift. I can't properly poach an egg, floating freeform in a boiling pot of water, although I am determined to figure that one out, taking small steps these days with a Calphalon poacher. Thankfully, eggplant and I are okay now.

A nicely prepared tuna sandwich, without a lot of mayo (and with a bag of chips and a crunchy garlic pickle), is one of my favorite things to have for lunch but I always hit a snag when making the tuna salad itself at home, despite a number of recipes I've tried. Recently at a friend's house, with ingredients they had, I floundered through a Lovely Tuna Lunch that I'm very pleased to call my own at last! Serves 4.

***

-2 cans tuna in olive oil, drained, 1/2 can oil reserved

-1 large chopped shallot

-1 Tb chopped capers

-3/4 lb elbow macaroni, or small pasta shells, or orrechiette pasta

-4 Tb Maille mustard (my favorite, or another strong mustard such as Grey Poupon)

-3 Tb mayonaise, light or otherwise

-lemon, salt, ground pepper

Marinate shallots and capers in the reserved oil with some grinds of pepper while the pasta cooks in salted water, according to the directions on the box. Drain the cooked pasta and toss with shallot mixture. Add mustard and mayo and incorporate the tuna with salt and pepper to taste along with a few assertive sprays of fresh lemon.

Serve with your favorite pickles, chips and chilled glasses of Italian Prosecco for a Lovely Tuna Lunch!

Just For The Halibut

This was totally off the cuff: I just happened upon a Martha Stewart recipe I had printed out in 2007 for Halibut with Grapefruit and Rosemary. I had planned to make dinner for Baby and me and since we already had halibut in the refrigerator courtesy of a fisherman friend, I went out and bought some Del Monte SunFresh red grapefruit segments, Florida's Natural Ruby Red Grapefruit juice and fresh rosemary. Seemed to me to be a pretty good way to welcome in the summer. Ms. Stewart's recipe naturally calls for exacting work, such as trimming the pith from two ruby red grapefruits, etc. but my trimmed down version of the recipe is easier and simply fantastic for a simple evening at home, served with a side of Corn and Shrimp Salsa, which is my own recipe.

Halibut for Two (adapted from marthastewart.com)

2 cups Ruby Red Grapefruit juice

8 segments from a jar of red grapefruit segments

1 sprig plus 1 tsp chopped rosemary

1 Tb sugar

Salt and black pepper

Olive oil

2 pieces of skinless halibut, sized to your appetite

-Preheat broiler

-Pour juice, rosemary, sugar, 1/4 cup water, 1/4 tsp salt into a small saucepan over medium heat and let boil until reduced to a syrup, about 15 minutes or so. If sauce becomes too thick, simply add a little more juice to thin out

-Brush fish with olive oil, salt and pepper and place on a baking sheet in the oven for about 10 minutes

-When juice mixture has been reduced to a fragrant syrup, toss out the rosemary sprig, and add the grapefruit segments to warm up
-Drizzle over your fabulous fish, each dish topped with the segments, divided between the plates

Corn and Shrimp Salsa

I thought a nice side would be a corn and shrimp salsa as we also had some deveined Black Tiger shrimp in our freezer, which was easily thawed by spraying cold water over them in a colander for two or three minutes. I roasted three ears of corn in a 450 degree oven, coating them with lemon olive oil, extra virgin oil, lime juice and salt and black pepper. Grilled shrimp (about two minutes each side in a Calphalon grill pan) was also done so in both oils and more pepper. I chopped the whites and some of the green ends of two scallions and put them in an accomodating bowl, and covered with the still steaming shrimp, some salt, and lime juice. The roasted corn was easily shaved off the cob once cooled, the kernels falling into the other ingredients of the salsa mixture. Spoon a heaping portion on a plate alongside the halibut.

Halibut and salsa...just for the hell of it!