On naan bread grilled just before serving, this mini-pizza thrilled everyone. Kiddo ate red bell peppers and zucchini for the 1st time in his life, no less. Can you say Hippy Happy Mom?
A stainless steel monster on our worn-down backyard deck, there it stands: the new President’s Choice barbecue grill, bought on the spur of the moment at discount chain Maxi. Its lower-than-low price explained itself as soon as we opened the box: we had found and without searching, thank you very much, the Ikea of barbecue grill, a DIY assembly of epic proportions which kept Monsieur swearing, in front of his son no less, for the better part of 3 hours. And Monsieur has an engineering background. You may not want to attempt otherwise, trust me.
Of course, I instantly went searching for recipes to feed our new shiny behemoth. Surprisingly, I own few BBQ cookbooks beyond Steven Raichen’s Barbecue bible. I tend to improvise when it comes to backyard grilling, a marinade here, a rub there, mix as you go and please don’t expect the same next barbecue, I have no idea what I’m doing half the time. Grilling makes me crave simplicity, improvisation and headache-free cooking, with sometimes mind-blowing, sometimes stomach-sinking results. A girl’s gotta try, right?
However, with a picky eating child in the house, suffering from vegetable denial to booth, I seriously needed “produce” inspiration, the quicker the better. So I turned to the other bible, Quebec magazine Coup de Pouce, a partner magazine to Canadian Living. They had invited me to talk about their mokasofa.com portal here, probably as the result of positive cookbook reviews I had previously posted on this blog. (Whenever I blog about Coup de Pouce, I get hundreds of visits from Quebec foodies per days which doesn’t exactly thrill my U.S. provider.)
I would normally just link back to the magazine for the sake of copyright, but since the original recipes are in French, here’s the translation so you can whip up these 3 killer recipes by yourself. Unless you read French of course, then just follow the links below and enjoy.
So one sunny day saw me attempting the unheard-of: a meatless barbecue for my family of picky eaters, yes, that includes carnivore hubby. I made olive tapenade and grilled vegetable “pizza” (in French only), tofu kebabs with peanut sauce and, to wash it all down, a tall glass of strawberry lemonade since they are in season. For dessert, we ate a Black Forest sundae (also in French) but my apologies, we were too relaxed and camera-phobic by then.
So kudos to Coup de Pouce and sister mag Canadian Living. A Meatless Barbecue, who would have thunk? Here’s the 1st of that day’s offering: Killer Vegetarian & Tapenade Pizza on crispy naan bread. In a bind, you could just use store-bought tapenade or even substitute regular pizza sauce.
Second surprise, Junior also devoured the tofu kebabs and even nibbled the mushrooms. All other veggies were ignored but who’s minding at this point?
Your strawberries are beyond ripe? This refreshing lemonade is barely sweet and absolutely refreshing. My kind of alcohol-free cocktail with a touch of mint to go.
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