now that bbq season is over...

let's reminisce about afternoons spent on the alki seawall grilling pork loin, mussels, and fresh trout. sigh.

the mussels are my standard recipe: sautee onions, chili flakes, and garlic in butter; once translucent add mussels and heavy pour of white wine; cover to steam for 2-3 minutes; toss with italian parsley and enjoy. i don't know if it was the butter, charcoal, or amazingly fresh shellfish, but this batch of mussels was out of this world. we all feasted on this appetizer standing around the grill. i even ended up cracking a shell in half and scooping the wine/butter/parsley juice out of the bowl. absolutely bananas.

another crowd-pleaser is M's slow-roasted pork roast. he always dresses it with olive oil and whatever spices are lying around R's kitchen...usually smoked paprika, chili flakes, sea salt, pepper, simple stuff of that nature. M then sears it in the center of fresh coals (= hot grill), then moves it out to the perimeter to slowly roast for the remaining life of the coals. it always turns out great a couple hours later, but i couldn't personally attest to that. i can only tell by the glowing reviews from all the c-vores.

here we're cooking by camping lantern light, hence the blue tint to the photo. J grilled up some fresh trout fillets stuffed with onion and lemon slices which turned out great! they just needed a hit of salt before serving, et voila!

a few zucchini halves are hiding in the upper lefthand corner, i think...a barbecue staple.

i also cooked some yams in the cast iron pan with butter, salt, pepper, and garlic. it was simple but tasty. the only thing i worried about cooking with the cast iron pan was the actual temperature of the grill. it was far hotter than i anticipated, and the yams ended up burning on the bottom! eee! it wasn't that big of a deal, though, because we just ate the top few layers.

oh the carefree days of summer are long gone, but i hope this little shot of sunshine grilling will help you through the winter!