Friday, January 4, 2008

Clean the fridge pita bread sandwiches

I admit that doesn't sound the least bit appetizing. We are going to be going to Panama on vacation and are leaving next week, so I have been trying not to buy much food. The eggplants at Mega looked really good though and were only $13.00 a kilo so I bought one, and 2 little zucchinis which were some cheap price like $6p/k. So what I did was fire up my grill. I have a cast iron grill that I bought, complete with the ridges so you get those nice sear marks.
A couple of weeks ago, I got the brilliant idea of making flavoured olive oil so I have a bottle of garlic flavoured olive oil, the criteria that I used for the oil was it had to be virgin and the bottle had to be attractive. I also made some rosemary flavored oil but I didn't use it this time. After tasting the garlic oil, I decided it wasn't quite garlicky enough, so I poured some in a custard cup (I use custard cups to hold small portions of ingredients, I thought about buying some cute little cups at Galaria made for that function, but really the custard cups are perfect and I can also use them when I make flan.) and added more chopped garlic.
I sliced the eggplant, zucchini, an onion, a green bell pepper and a yellow one. I brushed everything with the garlic oil and grilled them over high heat. Because I like the pattern made by the ridges, I turned the eggplants more often I strictly needed to, brushing them with more olive oil (eggplant will absorb all the olive oil you want to put on it).
After the vegetables were done I also grilled some pork cubes. Cubes of pork that had been marinating in sour orange, black pepper and salt, to cover, for about 4 hours. I drained the marinade and replaced it with olive oil and a handful (okay, 1/4 cup?) of fresh ground cumin. The pork marinaded in the olive oil while I grilled the vegetables.
I simply dumped the pork (I'm sure there is a more elegant way to say this) on the grill, and cooked until brown. After I removed the pork, I cooked the garlic that had been sitting in the olive oil. I deglazed the grill with about a half cup of white wine. I scraped up any brown bits and this "sauce" got poured over the pork.
Everyone got a pita bread that had been warmed and cut in half and made their own sandwiches.
Because of the quantity of olive oil (probably a cup in total), I don't think this was really healthy but it was tasty, and you can of course be more moderate.
I think the best pita bread available in Merida is from panaderia El Fenix just across from Office Depot on Calle 23.

2 comments:

  1. That sounds very good. Try cooking the vegs and meat over carbón. They will gain even more sabor.
    http://picasaweb.google.com/cottongeni/VeggieGrill

    Saludos,
    Mike

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  2. You are so right, we just haven't gotten around to buying a barbeque, we can't decide between the simple "hubcap" type or going all out and buying a fancy NOB style with a hood and all the options. Thanks for stopping by.
    regards,
    Theresa

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