When summertime arrives, as it did in gorgeous fashion this weekend, a lot of my cooking shifts outside to the grill.  If you are the same, and looking for ideas, here are two different flavor profiles you might find interesting: grilled lamb and feta meatballs with a yogurt mint sauce, and a ginger, mustard seed and soy sauce marinated london broil (aka flank steak).

Grilled Lamb Meatballs w Yogurt Mint Sauce

I have really been enjoying working with ground lamb recently.  It is fabulous to use when stuffing an eggplant or zucchini, or you can grill little patties mixed with spring onions and ground cumin.  But right now, this recipe below is tops in my book:

Meatballs
1 lb ground lamb
1 tbsp finely chopped fresh oregano and winter savory
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 cup crumbled greek feta cheese

Sauce
4 heaping tbsp of greek yogurt
2 tbsp of finely chopped mint
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt to taste
olive oil to taste

Combine the lamb, herbs, salt and feta in a bowl and thoroughly mix it all together with your hands (if you do not have fresh winter savory, just use oregano, but I have to say that fresh savory is one of my favorite discoveries this year).  Shape round meatballs of 1.5 inches in diameter; as you can see, I ended up with 14.  Grill them on a medium hot grill.  They do not take very long to cook, but you will want to hover over them with a pair of tongs to turn them to brown a few sides, and to move them when the inevitable flare-ups occur.   Take them off when they are medium. You can feel doneness with a finger or the tongs — don’t let them get too hard, i.e. overcooked! Use a set of tongs that will be gentle on the food, i.e. does not have jagged claws of death.

Lisl (who is the lamb expert in the house, being Australian) had the idea of serving these with a yogurt-mint sauce and the pairing worked marvelously.  Just stir the yogurt, mint and lemon juice together in a bowl, and add a pinch of salt and 1/2 tbsp of olive oil.  Add more salt and olive oil to taste (I probably ended up at about 1 tbsp).

London Broil Marinated in Ginger, Mustard Seed, and Soy Sauce

I love working with “london broil”, which is an American term for round steak, usually 1 to 1.5 inches thick, marinated and then typically cooked under the broiler or on the grill. This is a cheaper, tougher cut of meat, which benefits from being tenderized, cooked to medium-rare, and thinly sliced.  The leftovers are always marvelous for sandwiches.  As you can see, the marinade included more than ginger and mustard seed, but a title can only be so long.

1.5 lb london broil round steak
1 large knob of ginger (about 1.5″ thick, 2″ long), finely chopped
1/2 tsp yellow mustard seeds
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
8 black peppercorns
1/2 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
soy sauce

With a mortar and pestle, coarsely grind up the mustard seeds, coriander seeds, and peppercorns.  Stir in the brown sugar and salt.  On a dish or tray large enough to hold the piece of beef, scatter down half of the ginger and half of the spice mix.  Lightly drizzle a little bit of soy sauce around.

Rinse the beef and with paper towel, then place on the tray, on top of the ginger and spices.  Scatter the remaining ginger and spices on top, and again lightly drizzle with soy sauce.  With your hand or a utensil, smear some of the marinade mixture on the sides as well.  Cover the tray with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 6 hours. You can also just marinate the beef in a plastic bag, but I prefer this method since I know a tray won’t leak!

Cook on a hot grill, between 2 and 5 minutes a side depending on how hot your grill gets.  Remove when it feels medium-rare to the touch, and let rest for several minutes on a cutting board before thinly slicing across the grain (important!) and at a 45 degree angle.

I served this with some baby potatoes roasted in foil on the grill (with olive oil and rosemary) and asparagus.  A green salad with a lemon-olive oil dressing would also be a nice complement.

Of course, it always helps to work with great meat.  That’s Josh Applestone, from Fleisher’s in Kingston, breaking down a Berkshire pig for a pork loin I tried smoking on my gas grill with hickory chips (verdict: fine, but a roast would have been better. I don’t think my grill contained the smoke well enough).

I’ll leave you with a picture of thyme flowers growing in a pot outside our kitchen door. I wish I had a picture of the Eastern Phoebe tending a nest over our dining room window.  It took me forever to pin down whether it was a Flycatcher, Peewee, or Phoebe since it was rather skittish.  A longstanding bird geek, I love my Sibley guide.

I had thought that the re-emergence of warm weather would put me in a vegetarian mood, harkening back to those wonderful Food Blogga salads from last year.  That was before I made a stop into my favorite butcher, Fleishers.  So much for being leaf-eaters. We devolved into fully fledged T-Rex.

Josh Applestone (Fleisher’s proprietor — should it be a requirement to be in the food business with a great last night like that?) gave me a great deal on two monster porterhouse steaks (bottom left in that pic), which were between 2 and 3 inches thick.  Fleishers’ beef is entirely grass fed, and while some argue that “corn finishing” improves marbling, I love the flavor of grass-only, and tend to be fairly minimal with how I treat cuts like this.  I got some hickory chips going, salted one side, seared for 2 minutes with salted side down, salted the top side, and flipped for another 2 minute sear, then moved them on the grill to cook with indirect heat and smoke until done.  The thickness of the steaks required a little more time, and the meat came out beautifully. Three of us shared one of those monsters!

One thing I like to do during grill season is play around with the flavors and concept of a “burger”.  Two examples from this weekend:

• Take some ground lamb, add finely chopped red onion, a finely chopped spring onion (including all the green part), a sprinkle of cumin and some salt. Form small patties and grill. Serve with a sauce of ketchup, with some lime juice, chili powder, and freshly chopped cilantro mixed in.
• Go the herbal route and mix some ground lamb and pork together, a finely chopped spring onion (including all the green part), salt, and a bunch of fresh thyme or oregano.  Grill and serve with a slight squeeze of lemon juice on top.

We didn’t survive solely on meat, however.  I broiled ramps with olive oil and kosher salt, made my favorite grilled mushrooms, and there were other supporting-actor veggies.  I also threw together a refreshing little salsa, which we ate on toasted bread and with chips.  I don’t know that it deserves a recipe, because really it’s just:

Chop up tomatoes, tomatilloes, green pepper, red pepper, jalapeno pepper, red onion, garlic, a ton of cilantro, and mix together with some salt, freshly squeezed lime juice, rice vinegar and white wine vinegar to taste.

Once you start eating it, it’s hard to stop.

I was also pleased to cross two things off of my “must do” food list (care of the Adams market in Kingston — why the hell can’t we have a market as good down in Westchester?).  I finally got ahold of some fresh fava beans (believe it or not, I had never worked with them before), and I also found winter savory at the garden store and planted some in the herb garden.

That picture above is the pod from a fava bean.  It has the coolest puffy foam padding on the inside.  I have to wonder if packaging engineers have studied it for replication.  I ended up working them into a nice salad, but my grand idea for their use got stymied by parental duties. Ah, kids.

Winter savory is an herb I’ve used in dried form, and it is referenced often in books on southern french cooking.  I have never seen it fresh in a market, so was tickled pink to spot the young plants.  The fresh leaves are absolutely delicious (along the same lines as oregano and marjoram, but different), and I can’t wait to work with it. The deer better stay away!

Finally, lest you forget that it is still only April(!), I’ll close with a shot from this gorgeous thicket of forsythia I discovered in the Rye nature reserve.