Greg Denton - Around the Fire: Recipes for Inspired Grilling and Seasonal Feasting from Ox Restaurant

I had only one night in Portland to find and eat the most incredible meal possible. One single dinner in this city my food-industry peers had for months been calling the new culinary capital of the country. And there I was, stuck dining with a pescatarian.

Out of the many restaurants that had been recommended to me, I had chosen this place called Ox upon a friends insistence. And with its particularly carnivorous-sounding name and Argentinian grill concept in mind, I arrived ready to eat some meat.

When I walked through the doors at Ox, I felt a rush of warmth from the wood-fired grill, a 16-square-foot behemoth crackling and hissing away in the center of the roomnot hidden in the kitchen like in most restaurants. And as the smoky scents and the buzz of the diners spiraled through the dining room, sparks flew around me in more ways than one.

Then I remembered my dining companion.

Dont get me wrong: I have nothing but love for you, non-meat-eating friend I speak of. But surely, I thought, the fire-cooked rib-eye and the onion-marinated skirt steak and the list of other grilled meats that ran down the center of this restaurants menu must be the best dishes they offer. In this age of share-everything dining, I silently panicked.

It was partly through this mishap that I discovered the true genius of Greg and Gabi, the chefs and owners of Ox Restaurant and my coauthors of this book. That night, as our somewhat reluctant order of dishes like grilled halibut, mushrooms, and artichokes rolled out, I was floored by the magic these two chefs could work atop the fire with not just meat (though, of course, I snuck in a skirt steakand a lamb shoulder chop) but these other foods as well. A heap of maitakes came off the flames glistening, chewy, and kissed with char plus a sprinkling of smoked sea salt and a brushstroke of a fruity extra-virgin olive oil. A deeply caramelized grilled onion tasted candylike beside rich and buttery diced beets. And a drippingly juicy fish steak was served thickly sliced, bone-in and skin on, smeared with toasted garlic oil and doused with a bright, citrusy sprinkling of chives. It lit up something inside me: an entirely new way of thinking about the grill.

Many of us likely grew up under the impression that throwing something on the grill meant applying the most minimal, summer-appropriate effort possible. While it may be true that it doesnt take much to make grilled food taste good, for better or for worse, we grew up lazy as a grilling culturethe easier, faster, and more straightforward grilled food could be, the better. And at my house, it all tasted the same: usually either slightly overcooked or totally overcooked (still love you, Dad), and slathered with bottled barbecue sauce. But we loved it anyway, for the ritual of eating in the backyard with family, and those familiar, somehow comforting charred flavors. Only now do I realize how far I was from understanding the grills potential.

I wasnt much of a dedicated griller before working on this book, probably for the reasons I just mentioned. But to witness grilling the way Greg and Gabi do it rendered the parts of grilling I once admittedly thought of as a hasslethe sometimes tedious process of lighting charcoal, the likelihood of going to sleep with smoke in my hair, and the rosy cheeks I acquire while tending a hot grillworthwhile. Their food has proven to me that there is far more to grilling than convenience cookery, medium-rare meat and cover-up saucing. And once I was privy to their secrets, I looked at all food differently, wanting to take contrasts in ingredients to the extremes, pair dishes and plan grilled meals more deliberately, and surprise myself and my family and friends at every meal. Nowadays, Id rather eat the food made from the recipes in this book than almost any food on the planet, and I look forward to any opportunity to light the grill.

Although part of what is romantic about grilled food is its rusticity, in reality, making grilled food as humblingly delicious as Greg and Gabis takes an impressive amount of know-how. With their creative flavor pairings and perfectly honed fire-cooking techniques gleaned from years of cooking and traveling, they have taken the art of fire cookery to a level I had not realized existed.