Don Genova's Blog

Since I have been quite heavy on meat and pork fat for the past few weeks of grilling (and I haven’t even gotten to the pork hocks and pig’s feet in the freezer) I figured I would do something a little different on the weekend and put some halibut on the barbie.  What you see above is the amazing result.  My Grill Girl Ramona and I went to our favourite fish shop in Duncan, Mad Dog Crabs, and picked up a nice boneless, skin-on piece of fresh halibut.  For all the people (nutritionists and sustainable seafood folk) who tell us we should eat more of the right fish, halibut is damn expensive!

I think we paid about $14 a pound, and that was less expensive than some prices I’ve seen elsewhere, such as at supermarket chains.  Anyway, the halibut came home, and while I figured out what to do with it I grilled some eggplant slices.

I sliced the whole eggplant thickly, at least 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch, then brushed on some olive oil, and sprinkled liberally with sea salt and freshly ground pepper.  I turned my Napoleon Grill down to low and only turned the slices once, to preserve some nice grill marks, and to avoid sticking and tearing.  When they were soft, I pulled them off and drizzled on a bit more olive oil and some of my precious Venturi-Schulze balsamic vinegar and some chopped parsley. If you’ve never tried this vinegar, you don’t know what you’re missing.

I had roasted a whole bulb of freshly harvested garlic for one of my upcoming radio shows, and I had most of the head left.  So I squeezed out the remaining cloves into a bowl and put an equal amount of miso paste in with it, along with a splash of toasted sesame oil and a dollop of soy sauce.  Mixed it all together, then slathered it over the fillet and put it on the grill at about 400F for 10-15 minutes, just until the halibut easily flaked.  All the flavours blended together with the heat and made a great counterpoint to the robust white flesh of the halibut, Yummm!  Oh, that stuff you see around the halibut is a sharp mango salsa I made with one diced mango, some sweet white onion, chopped cilantro, a chopped pickled jalapeno, salt, pepper, olive oil and a little red wine vinegar.  Oh, almost forgot, tossed in the rest of a box of boysenberries I picked up at the Duncan Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning.  The weather was great, we sat outside with a crisp white Orvieto Classico and smiled at each other.  Life is good!

Yum!  Hot-smoked salmon on the BBQ this weekend.  Actually, it was a boneless steelhead trout fillet.  This is a very simple recipe from Ron Shewchuk’s first cookbook, Barbecue Secrets. Rub the fillet with sesame oil, then sprinkle on salt, pepper and hot pepper flakes to taste, then sprinkle with a light coating of brown sugar, and drizzle with lemon juice.

This went on my Traeger Lil’ Tex for about an hour and a half or two hours at 225F, and came out moist and flavourful.  I drizzled some more lemon juice on top when serving, and people just forked out sections of the fish onto slices of fresh Granary baguette from True Grain Bakery in Cowichan Bay.

The other great thing I’ve used the Traeger for lately was to smoke a rack full of whole chicken legs and thighs.  This was another recipe from Ronnie’s book, and the flavours were supposed to be Thai in nature.  I found that after the 4-hour smoking process, the chicken was fantastic, but tasted more like smoked, barbecued chicken, then any Thai flavours.  I also crowded the legs a little too much on the rack, so they weren’t quite done in the middle.  A flash on my propane barbecue took care of that problem.  The rack is supposed to be for chicken wings, but you can hang the thigh-leg combination on them is well.  Using it for wings is fantastic.  It keeps the fatty skin off the grill…so no sticking, and most important, no burnt wings! 

You might have a hard time finding these racks, so here’s a picture and a link to help you.  I got mine from a friend who was working at a Hot Tub/Barbecue shop in Ontario a couple of years ago.  They’re not very expensive at all, so they’re worth the search!