GLOBAL GRILLING
Sizzling Recipes from Around the World
By Jay Solomon
The Crossing Press
116 pp. $10.95

Cookbooks with an international recipe collection are not as popular as they once were. Today Americans are ever more educated about global tastes and seem ready to delve into books devoted to a single foreign cuisine, and to go the extra mile to get authentic ingredients.

Yet unlike when Global Grilling was published, nearly two decades ago, going that “extra mile” is likely to be just that—driving one additional mile to your local Asian or Hispanic market. Reflecting the difference between then and now, some recipes in the book give the choice between more or less authentic ingredients, such as fish sauce and Worcestershire sauce, making them incredibly flexible templates, (more…)

Earlier this month, over Labor Day weekend, I took a rewarding and inspiring writing workshop lead by Crescent Dragonwagon, a warm and nuanced, broadly talented, and gifted writer who has been thinking about, writing about, and teaching about the process of writing for a lifetime.

The workshop, called “Fearless Writing,” takes a holistic view: There is the thing of writing—involving objective realities such as craft, process, and habit—and there is the life of the writer, or simply life, often unpredictable, (more…)

This recipe, from Global Grilling by Jay Solomon, was inspired by the cuisine of the Yucatán, the land of Mayan culture. The marinade features some key, commonly used ingredients from that cuisine: citrus, in particular the bitter orange; chili pepper; and achiote oil, which is made from simmering annatto seeds in oil. The annatto seed is used for the brilliant, dark red color it adds to food and even beverages. (Historically, the Mayans added ground annatto seeds (more…)

We’ve had great weather for grilling enthusiasts this summer in Vermont. Until one day last week when I planned a lunch with my friend Lynne. With constant rain coming down, and a wounded chicken to tend to, I decided to cancel our lunch date. The ingredients couldn’t wait until Lynne’s next day off from the library, where she (more…)

After writing Global Grilling, published in 1994, Jay Solomon went on to publish several more cookbooks, but he still makes a number of recipes from GG, this sandwich among them.

When I mentioned to my neighbor and DCCC club member Sam Heffernan that the Chicken Teriyaki and Avocado Sandwich is one of the author’s favorites from the book, she decided to try it. Though Sam has long been a fan of Global Grilling—in fact, she’s the club member responsible for getting us to cook from this great book—and has made several recipes from the book over the years, she’d overlooked this one.

After a Q & A with Sam, (more…)