It may be difficult when sunny spring days alternate with sleet, but think ahead to summer meals prepared and eaten al fresco.
Offer guests a smoke-touched ear of corn, grilled zucchini spears or even potatoes roasted over the flames, and you’re on familiar territory. But plate up grilled greens or a grilled fennel bulb, and you’ll be seen as a culinary innovator. Better yet, go crazy and grill dessert from skewers of strawberries and Palisade peach halves.
You can plan now for a garden that ensures that you don’t have to stand over a hot indoor stove between June and September. Here are a few vegetables you probably haven’t thought about growing for your grill — but will be glad you did.
Carrots. Their natural sweetness comes to the fore when they’re grilled and served with a balsamic vinegar glaze. And they’re simple: Scrub them, rub them with oil, and put them on the grill perpendicular to the grate to give them orange-and-brown tiger stripes.
Front Range clay soils are inhospitable to most of the longer, pointier carrots, so plant Nantes or Danvers varieties.
Tomatoes. Maybe you’ve tried tomatoes on the grill only to watch them disintegrate. A good grilling tomato needs to be meaty, says Janie Lamson of Cross-Country Nurseries (). Oxheart varieties like Amish Paste or Verna Orange fit that description. Oxhearts are sweet and versatile, good for slicing, canning, sauce or fresh salsa, Lamson says. “They’re a good multipurpose tomato, and they’re not full of that gooey seed stuff.”
Brussels sprouts. These tiny cabbage heads get a bad rap, but they’re great parboiled, tossed with oil and threaded onto skewers before grilling. Botanical Interests sells Long Island Improved Heirloom seed, a variety cultivated since the 1890s. Brussels sprouts are a cold-hardy fall crop, so see if you can find sturdy starts to plant outdoors late this month or June. They’ll grow into 24-inch spikes with leaves at the top.
Spinach. What? Yes. Bloomsdale Long Standing is an heirloom variety that tolerates cold and is slow to bolt in heat. Cooking show host Jayni Carey suggests rinsing a bunch of spinach and dividing it into two mini-bunches, leaving the stems on and a little water on the leaves. Tie the bunches tightly with string and brush them with olive oil, then grill, covered, for a minute on each side. Serve with rice vinegar, roasted red pepper slices and crumbled blue cheese.
Fennel. Florentine fennel (finocchio) caramelizes beautifully on the grill if you can keep it from falling apart. “Cooks Illustrated” suggests removing the stems and fronds and slicing the bulb vertically, with a piece of the base still attached. Then brush with olive oil and grill for 7 to 9 minutes.
Fennel does have a tendency to bolt, but it does so beautifully, sprouting frothy tops and yellow flowers that attract ladybugs and butterflies.
If you’re lucky, these fennels will reseed and grow again.
