Grilled shrimp on rosemary skewers recipe: easy summer grilling

Hail summer. Are you grill-weary yet? I love grilling, especially ever since that job was delegated to Man of the House ages ago when he insisted on replacing our corroded gas grill with a charcoal-fired Weber. I’m not about to get into the fray in the charcoal vs. gas debate. My point of view is: when it’s hot, keep the heat in the great outdoors. If you want to use charcoal, be my guest. All I want is to turn the damn thing on and cook. Go ahead, be techy-geeky-analytical if you must, but I don’t want to talk about it. Like I said, all I want is to turn the damn thing on and cook.

So in the division of labor department, I came up with these easy shrimp skewers. The rosemary plant in my little herb patch miraculously survived a New England winter and it is now a bush. That gave me the idea of putting the overabundant branches to good use. Hence, shrimp on rosemary skewers. They impart a subtle piney essence to grilled shrimp. Note the word subtle here. Don’t get too excited. Since they’re essentially free and available to me, I’m using them. You could also use bamboo skewers as an alternative; both need to be soaked in water in advance of grilling.

The recipe, which I contributed to the Boston Globe recently, is a good one for a party. (It can be doubled or even tripled.) The shrimp need to steep in a lemon-mustard-honey marinade for 45 minutes, but if it is more convenient, they can marinate for a couple of hours. Save some of the marinade for the zucchini. The zucchini wedges are easy to grill without skewering. Add some grilled corn and you have a meal that is easy to prep ahead of time. Once the work is done, you can sit back and mix up a few gin and tonics, if that’s your poison.

Grilled shrimp on rosemary branches with zucchini wedges and corn

Serves 6

12 (10-inch) rosemary branches

5 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

Finely grated rind of 1 lemon

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tablespoon honey

2 teaspoons grainy mustard

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

2/3 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

2 pounds large (16-20 count) shrimp, peeled, with tail shells left on

2 large (10-inch) zucchini, ends trimmed and halved crosswise

6 (or  more) ears of corn

1. Strip the leaves from all but the tips of the rosemary branches. In a baking dish, soak the branches in water to cover for 30 minutes. If using bamboo skewers, soak them for 30 minutes.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, vinegar, lemon rind, garlic, honey, mustard, salt, pepper, parsley and rosemary. Whisk in the oil. Set aside about 1/4 of the marinade. Add the shrimp to the bowl and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate for 45 minutes. On each rosemary branch, thread 3 to 4 shrimp, piercing both the thick and curled ends of the shrimp.

3. Quarter each zucchini half lengthwise to make a total of 16 wedges. In a baking dish, arrange the wedges in one layer with the cut sides up. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper and brush with the remaining marinade. Marinate for 30 minutes or longer.

4. Peel back and discard the outer tough layer of the corn husks, leaving a few layers for insulation. Peel back the top third of the husks and pull out most of the silk; don’t worry if you can’t remove all of it. Fold the husks back to their original shape.

5. Prepare a charcoal grill, or turn on a gas grill to medium-high heat.

6. Grill the corn, turning often, for 10 to 12 minutes, or until charred all over. Grill the zucchini wedges for 3 minutes on a side, turning once, until cooked through. Grill the shrimp for 2 minutes on a side, turning once, until shrimp are opaque and cooked through.

7. Cut off the stem ends of the corn ears and peel back the husks and silk. Arrange 1 ear on each of 6 plates with zucchini wedges and shrimp skewers.

Carpe diem: Piccalilli recipe (also known as India relish)

I used to make this relish at the end of every August. It made sense when I had a garden with more than enough tomatoes, and a few green ones that would never live up to their red, ripe potential as the summer waned. But now I think, why wait? Barbecue season is at its peak now, and this is the condiment I crave to slather on just about anything that comes off the grill. By the end of August, the horse is already out of the barn, the ship has sailed, the toothpaste is out of the tube. Or as my mother used to say: “summer is over by the fourth of July.”

Now there’s a cheery thought. I guess that’s where my glass-half-empty outlook came from. Thanks, Mom. Never mind. It’s incentive to start pulling out the canning jars. Canning has always been grounding for me. Coming home from a trip after a lazy (or frenetic) summer vacation, the urge to ‘put something up’ inexplicably arises. Once the laundry is done and the house is put right, there I am in the steaming kitchen with a vat of boiling water and a mess of jars and lids and funnels. As if, as my mother predicted, summer will be over in the next few minutes.

Hot fudge sauce for when it’s too damn hot: Grunings hot fudge recipe

I come from a long line of sweet-toothed women. My twin great aunts walked up and down the length of Manhattan in matching coats and high heels, window-shopping, visiting the Metropolitan Museum, or just plain shopping. Where did they get their energy and stamina? Every journey ended at Schrafft’s on Fifth Avenue for a hot fudge sundae.

Speaking of sundaes, Sunday lunch at my grandmother’s, a regular tradition until I was about eight when we moved too far away to make the drive, culminated in more of the same. As soon as the clearing up started, Uncle Eddie was dispatched to Grunings Ice Cream Parlor for coffee ice cream and hot fudge sauce. In addition to aunts, uncles and cousins, my grandmother’s younger sisters were faithfully at the table. I couldn’t tell them apart, and anyway, we always referred to them as Twinnies. They had names—Bea and Vi—short for Beatrice and Viola; but to us, and I think even at times to themselves, they were a single entity: The Twins. Their love of sweets, along with their high heels and shiny red nail polish were woven into the fabric of family legend. Twinnies laughed and winked at me conspiratorially as I dug into the sundae that punctuated every Sunday meal. They greeted the pleasure of hot fudge that hardened over cold ice cream and then stuck to your teeth with fresh enthusiasm every single week. 

Time, as is its wont, eventually extinguished the Sunday lunches. Even Grunings, a family owned northern New Jersey ice cream haunt that held strong for some eighty odd years, bit the dust some time in the late 1980s. Luckily, I found at least four dog-eared cards in my mother’s old recipe box (they really, really really liked it). All were attributed to various family members with more or less the same recipe (Grunings) in different quantities. I picked one and revised it slightly—oh how the younger generations just can’t leave well enough alone. But I didn’t mess with it too much. I swapped out the evaporated milk for heavy cream and bumped up the chocolate by an ounce.  I don’t think you’ll mind. So, if you have about ten minutes to spare and want to make something easy for a modern Sunday lunch cooked outside on the grill, this hot fudge is the ticket to assuage a raging sweet tooth when it’s just too damn hot to turn on the oven.

Grandmother’s (Grunings) hot fudge sauce

Makes about 1 1/2 cups

3/4 cup heavy cream

1 1/4 cups (8 ounces) light brown sugar

2 tablespoons butter

1 pinch salt

3 squares (3 ounces) unsweetened chocolate, chopped

1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Stir cream, brown sugar, butter and salt over medium heat in a small saucepan until the cream comes to a boil and the sugar dissolves. Turn the heat to low and stir in the chocolate. Cook, stirring constantly, for about 5 minutes, or until the sauce is “glossy.” You’ll know exactly what that means when you get there. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the vanilla. Serve hot. The sauce can be refrigerated and reheated in the microwave.