Firing up the grill, and want a change of pace?
Monday June 23, 2008
Make Spiedini!They're easy to assemble; you take wooden skewers about a foot (30 cm) long, and slip pieces of meat onto them separating the pieces with slices of bread that will absorb the drippings. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and freshly chopped herbs (rosemary and sage work especially well, and some people also put bay leaves next to sausages), set them over hot coals, and cook until done, turning them occasionally.
What will you need?
The Spiedini pictured here, which were prepared by a butcher in Florence's Mercato di San Lorenzo, have sausage, chicken, beef, pork (loin, I think), and pork side (the cut used to make bacon). You could also add other meats, lamb for example, and if some of your guests won't eat a particular kind of meat, you can simply leave it out of some of the spiedini.
For that matter, if you assemble platters of the various kinds of meat, cut into chunks, you can invite your diners to assemble their spiedini as they see fit.
Raining, or don't have a grill? Heat your oven to 400 F (200 C) and set the spiedini on a rack for 20-30 minutes, with a water-filled pan below to catch the drippings that escape the bread. Or, if you want to put the drippings to use, lightly oil the pan and fill it with peeled, chopped potatoes -- the drippings from the spiedini will flavor them delightfully.
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Comments
First of all I want to thank Kyle Phillips for his Italian Food Blog. I look forward to each email from him.
I tried the spiedini recipe today and I didn’t have good luck with following all of the directions given. I immediately had to move the skewers away from the direct coals because the Italian bread began to burn like toast. Even in indirect heat, the bread burned. The meat cooked in about 25 minutes, but I had to turn the skewers over every three minutes so the bread (toast) wouldn’t burn too much. When it was all done, I couldn’t taste the flavor of the meat drippings on the bread.
Incidentally, my choice of meat was steak, chicken, Italian sausage, and salted pork. The salted pork was not a good choice when coupled with the salt I used for seasoning.
Other than indirect heat, if anyone has any other variations to the original recipe, I would be interested in knowing about them.