grill – Cook and Drink

Spicy Grilled Octopus

24 March 2021

We have all experienced chewy, fibrous and tasteless octopus, so how to make sure your octopus is juicy, tender and full of flavours?

Since octopuses don’t have bones, they have very tough connective tissue (collagen) between the muscles. When heating the octopus for a few hours, the collagen will break down into soft gelatine and the meat will become tender and juicy, just as you would like it to be.

‘How to speed up the process’, you wonder?
You could add vinegar to the cooking liquid, you could prepare the octopus by storing it in brine for a few hours, you could beat and pound the flesh, you could freeze the octopus for a few days, you could try adding a wine cork to the cooking liquid (hilarious!).
Unfortunately none of these short cuts make a significant difference.

The best method is to stew the octopus in a large pot or in the oven. This may take 4 hours or more. Octopuses contain a fair amount of juices and you want to capture these and their lovely flavours, which is exactly what you do when stewing an octopus.
Cooking an octopus in water for hours means losing these flavours; not something you want to do.

There is only one alternative to slow cooking: buy (frozen) baby octopuses. Marinate them for a few hours, grill them for 2 minutes and enjoy with a glass of wine or a nice cold beer.

What You Need

6 Baby Octopuses
For the Marinade
- Neutral Oil
- Soy Sauce
- Sweet Soy Sauce (Kecap Manis)
- Fresh Ginger
- One Garlic Glove
- Teaspoon of Cumin
- Tablespoon of Chilli Bean Sauce (Toban Djan)
- Water (optional)
Chinese or Japanese pickles

What You Do

Clean the octopuses and remove the beak. Grate the ginger, chop the garlic and combine with the other ingredients. You’re looking for a powerful marinade with lots of chilli and (sweet) soy sauce. Allow the octopuses to marinate for a few hours.
Heat your grill, dry the octopus and grill for 2*1 minute. We prefer using a non-stick contact grill. Cut of the mantle and slice the tentacles in two. Serve on a warm plate with pickles and share.

Halibut Marinated in White Miso

27 May 2020

Saikyo Yaki

Grilling is an art in its own right in Japan. A simple way is Shioyaki: the fish is salted, left to chill overnight and grilled the next day. An essential element of a Japanese breakfast, together with pickled plums (Umeboshi), sweet yet savoury omelet (Tamagoyaki), rice, a bowl of miso soup and green tea. As you can imagine a traditional Japanese breakfast is rather nutritious and packed with flavours.

A well known grilling method is Teriyaki: the fish is marinated in a combination of soy sauce, mirin and sake for a few hours and then grilled, with the fish dipped in the sauce several times during the grilling process.

Another way is Saikyo Yaki: the fish is marinated in Saikyo miso for 5 days and then grilled. Saikyo miso is a white, slightly sweet, low sodium miso from Kyoto. The marinated and grilled fish is served with pickled ginger. Originally a way to preserve the fish, it’s now much liked because of the umami and the intriguing combination of flavours and aromas.

Sake Pairing

Best served with dry sake. We prefer Junmai Taru Sake as produced by Kiku-Masamune. The sake is matured in barrels made of the finest Yoshino cedar. The aroma has indeed clear hints of cedar. The sake will clear your palate and allow for a more intense taste of the marinated halibut.

What You Need

Two slices of fresh halibut (thin is best)
White Miso (preferable with less salt)
Pickled Ginger or Cucumber
Karashi (Japanese mustard)

What You Do

Start four or five days in advance. Coat the halibut with miso making sure the halibut is fully coated. Cover with foil and transfer to the fridge. Check on a daily basis if the fish is still covered.
Using a small spoon carefully remove most of the miso. Rinse the halibut with water and dry with kitchen paper. The white flesh should now be slightly orange. Heat a non sticky pan until warm, but not hot, through and through. If too hot, the fish will burn. We set our induction hob to 6 (where 9 is the maximum). Add a bit of olive oil and then fry the fish for 2*2 minutes. Serve on a warm plate with pickles and karashi.

Fried Halibut Marinated in White Miso © cadwu

Halibut Marinated in White Miso © cadwu

White Miso © cadwu

Grilled Asparagus with Parmesan Cheese

7 May 2018

We enjoyed this dish as a starter when in Milan, on a beautiful evening, eating al fresco and enjoying the wonderful combination of the sweetness and bitterness of the asparagus, the slightly caramelised sugars as a result of grilling the asparagus and the salty and sweet cheese. A glass of Pinot Grigio was all we wanted. In Milan they served us green asparagus, but it works even better with white asparagus.
This is typically a dish you would make when the asparagus season is at its high and outside temperatures feel like summer. You could drink a Pinot Grigio, a Muscat from the Alsace region or a Rose with character. Remember the wine needs to combine with a range of very diverse flavours in the dish.

Here is what you need:

2 Asparagus per person
Olive Oil
Parmesan Cheese
Black Pepper

Peel the asparagus and cook or steam until slightly tender. Depending on the size we would say 10-15 minutes in the Russel Hobss steamer. Leave and let cool. Take a plate, add some oil to the plate and use it to cover the asparagus in oil. Heat the pan and grill the asparagus for 4*1 minute, making sure you have a lovely brown (not too dark) pattern. Serve on a plate, add some grated Parmesan cheese and pepper. Add a generous drizzle of very good olive oil.

white asparagus with parmesan cheese — White Asparagus with Parmesan Cheese (c) cadwu

white griled asparagus with parmesan cheese — White Grilled Asparagus with Parmesan Cheese (c) cadwu

Grilled Swordfish with a Spicy Tomato Sauce

31 January 2018

Red List

Before we start cooking, be aware that Swordfish is on the Greenpeace red list, so try to find the origin of your swordfish. Having done that assess the quality of the swordfish. No doubt it was frozen, so an extra reason to look carefully and smell. As always: if fish smells like fish, then don’t buy it.
If swordfish looks it has been pre-prepared (sometimes salt or smoke are used) or the flesh is not transparent: don’t buy it. For some reason you need to be extra critical when buying swordfish. But once you’ve found good, fresh swordfish, you have found yourself a great starter.
Also note that swordfish is a predator. Some organisations mention the risk of mercury when eating swordfish, so don’t eat it too often we would say.

If you scan the various recipes for swordfish, you will notice the massive use of marinades. We would not suggest using a marinade when preparing swordfish. The fish has a delicate, slightly sweet taste, which begs for a clever combination, not for a taste bomb like a marinade.
Often the fish is brushed with a mixture of oil and lemon. Sorry, wrong idea. Lemon is probably used to hide a fishy taste (in which case you shouldn’t have bought the fish). The lemon juice will burn when grilling because of the sugar in the juice, so your grilled stake will not just be grilled, it will also show traces of burned sugar. Not tasty, not healthy, not pleasant.
There are only three things you need to do pre grilling swordfish: prepare your tomato sauce, transfer the steak 30 minutes prior to grilling from the fridge to a plate and brush generously with a decent olive oil.

Wine Pairing

We enjoyed our grilled swordfish with a glass of Radacini from the Codru region in Moldova. The wine is made from chardonnay grapes and comes with a beautiful yellow colour. It made us think of apricots and maybe a touch of vanilla. It is not oaked, which is an exception for chardonnay. A wine with a round, velvety taste, but also fresh and fruity. The mouth feel is coating. The velvety aspect goes really well with the fish and the fruitiness is a great combination with the sweetness of the sauce. As an alternative go for an un-oaked, fruit-forward chardonnay.

What You Need

Steak of Swordfish
Olive Oil
Shallot
Chilli
Red Bell Pepper
2 Garlic gloves
2 Anchovies fillets
2 Tomatoes
Bouquet Garni (Sage, Thyme, Rosemary, Parsley)
Capers (in brine)

What You Do

Start by slicing the shallot and glaze it gently in olive oil. Cut half of the bell pepper and the chilli in smaller chunks and add to the pan. Stir and then add the garlic. Cut the tomatoes in quarters, add the tomato meat to the sauce and press the remainder through a sieve, making sure you get all the lovely juices. Add the juice to the sauce. Add the bouquet garni and the anchovies. Leave on small heat for two hours.
Remove the bouquet garni, blender the sauce very well and make sure it is a spicy combination of tomatoes and a touch of bell pepper.
Brush the steak generously with olive oil, heat your grill (we use a Le Creuset pan, see picture) and grill for maybe 8 minutes. The meat of swordfish is firm and needs longer than you would expect when grilling fish.
Serve the fish on a hot plate with the tomato sauce. The capers are crucial; they add a bit of acidity, which works really well with the spiciness of the sauce and the gentle sweetness of both the fish and the tomatoes.

PS In case your swordfish looks great but is from the wrong region according to Greenpeace, simply buy the fish, enjoy eating it and donate some money to Greenpeace.