Grilling season has started and we’re ready to rock and roll at our house. Mind you, I have a Weber® that I break out once in a while, but I’m not great at it. I often miscalculate the amount of charcoal I’m supposed to use and that leads to undercooking or overcooking the meat. But thankfully, and this isn’t a shameless plug or anything, grilling indoors on an electric grill has benefits. I still get the charbroiled marks, I’m not fighting the wind and it’s safe for amateurs like me.
For these grilled vegetables, I coated them with a little olive oil and salt in a bowl before tossing them on the grill. Then like an assembly line I moved them over to a serving platter as they got done.
Of course since I’m not a vegetarian, I’m not against adding a nice steak to this cook-in.
For steak aficionados, it might be a sin to pre-cut a beautiful piece of sirloin into slices like this, but we do this sometimes if we have a side dish like these grilled veggies that are just as beautiful as the steak. Seriously though, since I like my steak with rice, it’s easier for me to eat this Japanese style—with chopsticks. Here’s a tip—when eating with rice, try dipping in soy sauce and wasabi, as if you’re eating sushi. Trust me, you’re gonna love it.
It was so much fun using the grill to cook those vegetables, you have a lot of leftovers and no more steak to eat it with. What do you do? Make a grilled veggie pasta salad of course. This is the kind of salad that holds up well in the refrigerator and probably tastes better on the second day anyway, as the dressing soaks into the pasta. I brought mine for lunch the next day and had it at room temperature—my favorite way to eat a pasta salad.
Did you do grilled pineapples like I did? If you did, you can cut them into small chunks and marinate them in rum for about 30min. Then all you do is use them as a topping with vanilla ice cream and you get the most delicious dessert. Get some Häagen-Dazs® and this really starts to taste like their rum raisin ice cream. Hey, I won’t judge you if you decided to drizzle more rum on top either (hic!).
Last month I tested some Zojirushi recipes. I’m going to try doing this from time to time so you guys can get an idea of how they actually come out. I’ve never baked their Baguette recipe in my bread machine, so I tried it. Even though you need to bake it in your own oven to get the shape you want, it still helps to let the machine do the dough. Follow the recipe to do these steps:
Once I got the bread baked, I wanted to make a Pan Bagnat, a French sandwich that is a specialty of Nice, France. Yay! I’ve been there (a long time ago) but I didn’t have this at the time. If you’ve ever had a niçoise salad before, this is kind of like that salad in between two slices of a baguette. Personally, I love tuna so this kind of sandwich was made for me. Here are the basic ingredients.
The dressing is just a basic vinaigrette that’s brushed on the bread. You can leave out the anchovies if you don’t like them, or add for more punch.
After I assembled it I decided to smash it down with a cast iron pan just to get it more easy to manage. This is the type of sandwich that gets better with allowing it to sit for a while to let the dressing soak through the ingredients. The baguette remains crispy on the outside so it doesn’t get soggy as long as you eat it in a reasonable amount of time.
As a matter of fact, my Pan Bagnat made a perfect lunch box. Try this—it’s not hard at all, but remember, it all starts with the bread!
Products used in this post:Home Bakery Maestro® Breadmaker BB-SSC10, Indoor Electric Grill EB-DLC10
Please note that these recipes were not tested by Zojirushi America.
All images by Bert Tanimoto ©2024
