Condiment Class

To add some easy variety to grill night (you don't always have time to make chard and fava salad, after all!), turn to some easy condiments from around the globe. We all know that old standby pesto, great for brushing over grilled chicken breasts or thighs, stuffing trout or scallops before you grill them, or mixing with orzo or rice for a speedy side dish, but food processors and sharp knives make some other flavorings equally easy and accessible. My recent favorites include:

Chimichurri: A condiment for beef in Uruguay and Argentina, this simple combination of lemon juice, crushed red pepper, parsley, garlic, onion and lots of good olive oil is heavenly on a seared skirt steak.

I like The Minimalist's basic recipe (though you will see from the photo I used tiny pequin chiles, about half of the pile you see pictured, ground with a mortar and pestle), but it's extremely versatile -- use as a marinade and/or serve alongside; heavenly with red meat it also works beautifully with seared very rare tuna, grilled shrimp or chorizo (or some skewers of both for a nice mixed grill?), and even these grilled green heirloom tomatoes.



Harissa: North African in origin, you can actually buy this condiment in a jar or tube online if you're a slacker. But trust me, better and more fun to make your own. It's a fairly simple mixture of dried chiles (I have a lot of guajillo and one ancho here; pretty much anything will work depending on your own tolerance/preference for hot versus fruity), garlic, caraway and coriander seed, topped off with a bit of good olive oil. A good starter recipe is here via the LA Times; they even have a nifty slide show if you're nervous about technique. To this basic recipe I add a couple of drained canned plum tomatoes (fresh would probably also be fab but then there's the tiresome peeling/coring/seeding); some people also like to add red bell pepper. The beauty of this is that basically, once you have compiled all your ingredients you throw them into the bowl of your food processor and pulse the hell out of them until you get a fragrant red paste.



Thereafter, do what you want with it -- you can serve it as a condiment brushed on or alongside lamb chops or a fatty fish like salmon; thin it with more oil and use it as a marinade for other meat or fish; even use it as the base for a pasta dish like this gorgeous weeknight meal from Heidi Swanson.

No shortage of good variations and uses for these versatile condiments so these should keep you plenty busy as you squeeze the last over this rapidly-evaporating summer. . .