Summer Grilling

I love sitting on sunny patios with a glass of wine. Not many things can beat this leisurely activity when you have a good company. The experience is completely enhanced when grilling, and that's exactly what a friend and I decided to do. In an hour (including shopping time), we had a beautiful summer feast that included grilled marinated shrimp, scallops, asparagus, zucchini, and yellow squash. We supplemented with herb rice.
There's something about eating food with grill marks -- I don't know what it is but it makes everything taste fresher, healthier, and better. May be it's the sun, the wine, or the company, or all of it. Food just tastes better off the grill and outside in the sun.

It was all very simple and easy. Rinse the asparagus and slice up the zucchini and squash length wise. Toss together with a bit of olive oil and salt and pepper and you're good to go. The asparagus was a bit tricky. The zucchini were ready before the asparagus and then we left the asparagus on a bit too long but it still tasted good, even if it was a little soft. Grilled softness is better than steamed softness.

We deveined the shrimp and marinated in a very good teriyaki called Veri Veri Teriyaki made by Soy Vay. Soy Vay is salty so perhaps cut some of it with water. I don't think I would have noticed the salt except that my grill buddy pointed it out. In comparison to everything else, it was salty but not in a bad way. If you're salt sensitive you could probably cut the salt by diluting with a bit of water.

It probably could have used a good 2 hours or marinating time but we were hungry and probably did it for 20 minutes. The shrimp cook quickly -- as soon as they are pink take them off otherwise they're a bit tough. I deveined shrimp for the first time. Just make a slit on the underside of the shrimp and pull out it's intestine -- it will be blue in color. After deveining, rinse the shrimp.

We didn't do anything to the scallops -- just placed them right on the grill. Probably out of laziness but hey some of the best things come out those things that are not overly done up. I am glad that we left them alone because I actually noticed the scallop flavor for the first time. At restaurants they have a tendency to drown them in some sort of sauce to mask the taste but a scallop all by itself tastes really great. Not too fishy like salmon. I bet it would taste awesome with a lemon butter sauce, a condiment that would enhance the flavor without masking it altogether.

I would say we did really well considering everything was done on the fly, and we didn't even get in a plane.