Grill Pan

I was inspired to make this after reading  Grill Pan Cooking.  The preparation is really pretty simple and involves slicing Lady Finger bananas in half lengthwise.  Hey…easy is good sometimes.

I pre-heated my grill pan on medium for a few minutes and added the bananas to the pan cut side down.  After about five minutes I flipped the little guys over and let them go for another few minutes.

One of the things that really surprised me was how black the skin became.  I guess I should have anticipated that but….sometimes you just have one of those days.

I plated these up and drizzled with a little honey since they looked a bit dry.  The texture held up pretty good and the bananas looked great with real pretty grill marks.  So here is the catch…..I made these because I thought it would be fun and would look pretty.  These are meant to be served on top of ice cream but to be honest; I don’t like bananas and haven’t eaten ice cream in years.  I wish I could tell you that these were delicious and you needed to go make them RIGHT NOW.  All I can really say is that this was fun!

Really this was just another excuse to bust out a grill pan and play in the kitchen.  Thanks for playing around with me.

Here is a much better post on grilled bananas.

Here is another link for a Meal Planner you might find interesting.

Grilled Sweet Potatoes

This is a super easy but impressive side dish that takes about twenty minutes to grill.  If you don’t care about the grill marks this recipe also works well by roasting in a 350 degree oven for about forty minutes.

Trim the ends from two sweet potatoes and peel.  It helps if the potatoes are roughly equal in size and uniform in appearance.  Some sweet potatoes have all kinds of gnarly and funky shapes which makes them a pain when you are trying to get relatively uniform wedges.  Cut the potatoes in half lengthwise and then cut each half into three or four wedges.

Cut into wedges and season

Get even shaped potatoes

Lightly coat the wedges with some vegetable oil and then sprinkle with kosher salt, black pepper and freshly chopped rosemary.  Heat you grill pan over medium heat for five minutes then add the potato wedges to the pan.  Turn the wedges every five minutes until grilled on all sides and fork tender.

Grill five minutes per side then turn..

Remove the wedges from the pan and while still hot add a few pats of butter for a nice shine.  If you like to sweeten your potatoes you could always add a little brown sugar, honey or maple syrup at this point as well.  I skip this step as a the butter and rosemary suits me just fine.

I had some leftover marinade from my grilled tofu post and decided to use it up with some grilled vegetables. I wanted to give eggplant another try and I found some portabella mushroom slices that looked fantastic. Let me start by saying that half of the mushrooms were indescribably fantastic, the other half were okay and the eggplant was a complete and total failure.

Eggplants mock me.

I tried peeling the eggplant this time but it didn’t really matter as I believe my eggplant was doomed from the start. I tried to find a bright, shiny purple eggplant because I figured it would make for good pictures. I didn’t have any luck and as you can see the one I got was pretty dull. After peeling it quickly started turning brown and looking unpleasant. (I know this doesn’t affect the flavor but it sure as heck doesn’t help either!) When I sliced it I saw it had a heck of a lot more seeds than the last one I grilled. The slices were marinated for about thirty minutes and then grilled along with some mushrooms for about ten. The end product was extremely pretty but was absolutely inedible. I have to believe this was the result of an eggplant past its prime.

The mushrooms offered quite a different story. Like the eggplant, the mushrooms were marinated for about thirty minutes before heading into the grill pan. They took up some nice marks and smelled great while they were grilling. I let them go for about four minutes a side (heat at medium low) and that seemed just about right. I cooked the mushrooms in two batches. I wanted the second batch to have a little gloss for a better picture so I brushed them on both sides with some melted butter towards the end of grilling. The difference the butter made was unbelievable! In addition to making things look prettier it took the mushrooms from “Okay” to “I can’t stop eating these dang things!” I will be eating a lot more portabellas.

Just trying to be helpful here..adding a few links to some folks who have had better luck with grilled eggplant than me!

Grilled eggplant and goat cheese

Grilled eggplant parmesan

Grilled eggplant sandwiches

If you are looking for ideas or equipment check out my page on grill pan starter sets!

Another great lean protein for the grill pan is tofu.  Plain tofu is pretty dang boring; not much to look, mushy texture and not much flavor.  I jazz it up by hitting it with a pretty strong marinade overnight for flavor and color.  For extra color and a bit of contrasting texture I grill it.  The grill marks are a nice visual contrast and they add a little bit of crunch to the surface.  I have a little video of the process at the bottom of this post.

Grilled Tofu

In order to get the marinade to do much good you have to get some water out of the tofu.  I do this by pressing the tofu with a brick for a few hours.  After pressing the tofu gets cut into half inch slices and covered in Stubb’s Chicken Marinade in the refrigerator overnight.

Pat the tofu dry and add it to a pre-heated grill pan.  It only takes about two and a half minutes per side to heat through and get some nice marks.

I ate these plain as shown above.  These would be excellent on top of a warm rice salad or drizzled with dressing and served with some grilled green beans.  You get the idea…I’m not the most creative person in the world, I’ll leave that part to you.  What else would these be good with?

Here are some other takes on grilled tofu:

Grilled tofu and asparagus

Grilled Mexican tofu

If you are looking for ideas or equipment check out my page on grill pan starter sets!

Eggplant is something I have struggled with for a long time.  I really want to like eggplant but so far I have not been successful.  I won’t bother with a detailed listing of my eggplant failures but suffice it to say that they have been numerous.  However, I am nothing if not persistent and so I decided to give my purple nemesis another try.

One great attribute of eggplants is that they take to the grill very well.  Indeed, eggplant might be the ideal grilling vegetable.  It is easy to slice seven or eight half inch “steaks” from a mature eggplant making it a cinch to use one plant for an appetizer course.  The firm slices hold up very well to the heat of a grill and, if you are grilling outdoors, are large enough that they won’t slip through the grate.  The white flesh of the eggplant is an ideal canvas for grill marks which will develop beautifully over the ten minutes or so that the slices are on the grill.

I made up a basic marinade for my eggplant slices from equal parts canola oil and red wine vinegar with some roasted garlic, salt, pepper and paprika thrown in.  There are undoubtedly much better marinades for eggplant out there and if anyone would like to share theirs I would love to give it a try!  I let the slices soak for about thirty minutes at room temperature and then patted them dry.  I let my cast iron grill pan pre-heat for about five minutes over medium heat until a few drops of water sizzled as soon as they hit the pan.

I grilled the eggplant for five minutes on each side and took the opportunity to do a demonstration on grill marks.  After the slices had been in the hot grill for three minutes I rotated them ninety degrees and grilled for another two minutes to get the classic cross hatch pattern.  You can see that the pattern is present but rather weak.

Grilled Eggplant

I then flipped the slices and let them grill another five minutes without moving them.  You can see that the sides that got the full five minutes of undisturbed grill contact have much sharper grill marks.

Grilled Eggplant

In order to get the best of both worlds, a highly defined cross hatch, I find I have to grill something for about eight minutes on a side; four minutes of grilling, rotate 90 degrees and another four minutes of grilling.  I then will flip my food to let it finish cooking. Unfortunately for most foods this results in food that is over cooked on one side.

So how did the eggplant turn out?  It was okay; nothing spectacular but definitely a step in the right direction.  I might try peeling it before grilling next time.  I will also cut back on the vinegar content of my marinade and add some herbs.  Any other suggestions?

These mushrooms are tasty and easy to make but make sure you do not skimp on the marinade time.  I like a pan with no or very low sides for this as it makes reaching in and flipping the mushrooms pretty easy.

• 4 portabella mushrooms
• ½ cup olive oil
• 4 TBS minced or grated onion
• 5 TBS balsamic vinegar
• 4 cloves garlic, finely minced

Wipe the top of the mushrooms with a damp paper towel to clean.  Remove the stem and discard or save for other uses.  Mix the oil, vinegar, onion and garlic.  Place the mushrooms cap side down and distribute the marinade equally into the cavities of the mushrooms, reserving one tablespoon of the marinade.  Add the remaining tablespoon of marinade to a wide shallow bowl and stack the mushrooms on top of each other, cap side down, in the bowl.  Allow the mushrooms to marinade for at least an hour.

Preheat your grill pan on medium low for five minutes.

Drain the marinade from the mushrooms and season lightly with salt and pepper.  Place the mushrooms onto the grill pan cap side up and grill for five minutes.  Flip the mushrooms after five minutes so the cap side is now down and grill for another five minutes until the mushrooms are done.

I like to finish with the cap side down so I have the option to get creative and add breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, diced tomatoes or anything else that strikes my fancy to the inside of the cap during the last five minutes of grilling.

The mushrooms can be treated like a burger and served on a bun with tomato and lettuce.  I also like to serve them as a side dish so I get the visual benefits of the nice grill marks.