Adler Karen - BBQ bistro : simple, sophisticated french recipes for your grill

2015 by Karen Adler and Judith Fertig

Photography 2015 by Steve Legato

Published by Running Press,

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014956652

E-book ISBN 978-0-7624-5603-1

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Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

Designed by Frances J. Soo Ping Chow

Edited by Sophia Muthuraj

Food Stylist: Mariana Velasquez

Prop Stylist: Mariellen Melker

Typography: Chronicle Text, Gin, Phaeton, Sentinel, Stereopticon, and Trade Gothic

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NEAR AND DEAR WHO INSPIRE US,

BREAK BREAD WITH US, AND GATHER ROUND THE GRILL.

LA VIE EST DLICIEUSE!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

W e have both enjoyed many a bistro meal on our travels, especially when we have lived and cooked in France. We love the vibrant colors, the casual atmosphere, and the vintage feel at the French equivalent of a mom-and-pop restaurant, where the cooks know what theyre doing, the plat du jour is the blue plate special, and your glass is filled with wine. We love the zinc-topped bars, black-and-white tile flooring, and robust food served on plain white china, with a Gallic flair to it all.

We always go home, however, and as women who barbecue outdoors and cook indoors, we have thought about how we could translate the bistro dishes that we have enjoyed to food on the grill.

Now, it seems, reinventing bistro food is on trend.

Recently, chefs from Montreal to New York, Seattle to Paris have been reinventing bistro food by tweaking the classics and cooking over higher heat on planks, a rotisserie, or over a wood fire.

Voil! Thats BBQ Bistro.

Traditional bistro food, French fast food, usually features a thin cut of meat or fish, such as a chicken paillard or a salmon fillet. For us, BBQ Bistro is a hot and fast grill plus a sophisticated French sauce like (page 116) give traditional French bistro foods a lighter, updated barbecue twist.

The small plates concept also works with bistro, as Jody Williamss gastrothque Buvette proves successfully in New York City and Paris. In either place, you can enjoy a Croque forestiere (a grilled mushroom sandwich) with a glass of wine, any time of day. You can do the same with a (page 93) and a glass of wine and save the airfare.

Tartines (grilled bread with toppings) and soccathat delicious chickpea flatbread served in the south of Franceall taste better on the grill. According to Francophile David Lebovitz, Although you can make it at home, making socca in a home oven is like baking off a batch of smores in there: Its close, but not exactly the real thing. You really do need a wood-fire to get that blistered crust. Your grill and a cast-iron skillet will give you a much more authentic result than the stovetop or oven.

Parisian bistro chefs are rediscovering spit-roasted chicken, grilled to an herb-buttered deliciousness that you can only get over an open flame. Many of those same rotisserie bistros also offer planked poultry, game, and fish. Try our (page 45) for a taste of France as close as your own backyard.

On the grill, you can get a char on a steak, a smoky flavor on cheese, or a roasted-ness you thought could only be done at a restaurant.

To increase your grilling savoir faire, BBQ Bistro offers an array of barbecue techniques:

High heat grilling

Grilling on a plancha, plank, or cast iron

Grilling vegetables so they can claim the center of the plate

Rotisserie grilling

Grill-roasting

Wood or herb grilling

Grilling with a kiss of smoke

All of this reaches back to the hearth-style cooking of long ago and blazes ahead to the lighter, fresher way we want to eat now, all with a French twist.

According to Judy Rogers, the late doyenne of the famed Zuni Caf in San Francisco, the multi-Michelin-starred Claude Troisgros loved steak frites at the local caf better than going to a three-star restaurant. It is pretty clear that the food you eat every day is the most important food. So, lets make everyday, home-style food as delicious as possible. Lets pick it fresh from the garden, flavor it with herbs and spice and wine. Lets give it the depth that only wood smoke can give it. Lets choose the freshest fish and seafood and beautiful aged steaks to sear on the grill and pair with lovely French sauces. Lets slow smoke larger cuts of meat until they are melt-in-your-mouth tender like the (page 170).

Lets take it outside.

Lets make it BBQ Bistro.

GRILLING IS A MATTER OF DEGREES

You can do a lot more with your grill than simply sear: You can melt, toast, scorch, blacken, add a kiss of smoke, spit-roast, plank, and grill in a flash. But first you need a grill.

GAS OR CHARCOAL GRILL?

People always ask us if we grill with charcoal or gas, to which we answer yeswe use both. The majority of American households have at least one outdoor grill, which, more often than not, is gas rather than charcoal. As far as were concerned, to get great flavor and char, charcoal is the way to goin particular, hardwood lump charcoal, which burns really hot for a terrific sear. But there are pluses to gas grilling as well, not the least of which is you just flip a switch and its on. You can add wood smoke to a gas grill, too, as well show you later on. Just make sure you buy a unit with as high a number of BTUs (British Thermal Units, which measure the maximum heat output of a burner) as your budget permits for hot surface searing. Youll need at least 40,000 BTUs from the grill burners (not including any side burners BTUs) to get good grill marks on your foods.