Cookbook Club – Around the Fire

For August’s Cookbook Club, we used Around the Fire by Greg Denton and Gabrielle Quinonez Denton, with Stacy Adimando. I chose the Grilled Baby Bok Choy with Ecuadorian Peanut Sauce and Hard-Boiled Egg. Go to my Cookbook Club site to see everything we grilled up at the event. For now – my dish!

I love grilled things. My best friend jokes that all a guy would have to do is show up wearing grill-scented cologne and I’d be smitten. I also like bok choy. I’ve only every made it Chinese stir-fry style, so I was excited to discover a new way to cook bok choy.

I halved baby bok choy lengthwise, sprinkled with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and onto the grill it went!

Since we were grilling outside, I’d cooked the Ecuadorian Peanut Sauce ahead of time. It had olive oil, onion, jalapeño, cumin, milk, and peanut butter simmered together, then topped off with lime juice and salt. I have to admit that the recipe also called for ground annatto seed (also known as achiote powder), which I left out because I’d never heard of it and couldn’t find it at the store. It turned out fine, and no one could tell!

Once the baby bok choy was grilled, I drizzled it with the sauce and added chopped up hard-boiled eggs and cilantro. Sorry for the blurry pic – it was a grilling event so there was grease flying everywhere and some got on my camera lens!

The grilling imparted a nice smoky flavor to the baby bok choy. The hard-boiled egg gave the dish some robustness, and the sauce was pretty salty so only a little was required to add great flavor. In fact, I ended up with quite a bit of sauce left over, so later I stir-fried some green beans with the sauce and topped with egg again. It was great too – I’d recommend the peanut sauce and hard-boiled egg combo with any green veggie you happen to have.