There’s more to the Fourth of July dinner table than a bunch of hot dogs and some buttered corn.
Just ask Matt Rimel.
Rimel, owner of Rimel’s Rotisserie and Zenbu Sushi Bar in La Jolla, joined us yesterday on Gourmet Club, the radio chat show of the San Diego Union-Tribune’s SignOnRadio Web site. It took him only a couple sentences to get all three hosts drooling.
The topic: His favorite fish dish for a holiday dinner at the beach.
It starts with a very hot grill. Then there are five layers of aluminum foil, big enough to cover most of the grill. Next comes a bunch of sliced or chopped summer veggies – zucchini, yellow squash, red and yellow bell pepper strips, onions, potatoes and herbs.
“Then I lay fresh local rock cod fillets on top, add some more of the vegetables, top it with aluminum foil and seal the package,” said the outgoing restaurateur who will soon open another restaurant in North County and an old-fashioned butcher shop in La Jolla.
When the fish and vegetables are tender, you simply unfold the package, drive off all the other beachgoers that will come around wondering what the heck that fabulous aroma is, and dig in. “We just stand around the grill and eat straight from the foil,” he says of his wife Jacqueline and two young daughters.
Gourmet Club’s wine guru Robert Whitley also weighed in on holiday grill favorites. Whitley’s choice, a boneless leg of lamb, is marinated for about 24 hours, then grilled in the backyard. He says he likes the way a boneless leg produces several degrees of doneness – very pink in the center, medium to medium-rare on the ends and well-charred around the edges.
If you’re more inclined to cook indoors, you can’t go wrong with the roasted leg of lamb that Patricia Wells celebrates in her book “Bistro Cooking.”
Called “Gigot Roti au Gratin de Monsieur Henny,” it’s a leg of lamb that cooks directly on an oven rack set above a gratin dish filled with potato, onion and tomato slices. As it cooks, the lamb’s juices drip into the gratin. Wells calls for a bone-in leg, but I’ve had success with a boneless leg as well. Also, I like to substitute Yukon gold potatoes for her russets.
GIGOT ROTI AU GRATIN
Serves 8 to 10
6 cloves of garlic, 1 clove split, the rest chopped
2 pounds baking potatoes, peeled and very thinly sliced
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon fresh thyme
2 large onions, very thinly sliced
5 medium tomatoes, cored and thinly sliced
2/3 cup dry white wine
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 leg of lamb bone-in (6 to 7 pounds)
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Rub the bottom of a large oval porcelain gratin dish with the split garlic cloves. Arrange the potatoes in a single layer. Season generously with the salt, pepper and some of the thyme and the chopped garlic.
Layer the sliced onions on top; season as with the potatoes. Layer the tomatoes on top of the onions. Season with salt, pepper and the remaining thyme and garlic. Pour on the white wine and then the oil.
Trim the thicker portions of fat from the leg of lamb. Season the meat with salt and pepper. Place a sturdy cake rack or oven rack directly on top of the gratin dish. Set the lamb on the rack, so that the juices will drip into the gratin.
Roast uncovered for about 1 hour and 15 minutes for rare lamb. (For well-done lamb roast an additional 30 to 40 minutes.) Turn the lamb every 15 minutes, basting it with liquid from the dish underneath.
Remove from the oven and let the lamb sit for 20 minutes before carving. Serve on warmed dinner plates with the vegetable gratin alongside.
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