By Greg B. Grilled food means simple food.  Sure, you can spend hours marinading or smoking or bbq-ing meats, and those are invariable delicious.  But for me, one of the quintessential aspects of the grill is the ability to make a small fire, and in a matter of minutes cook food.  Again, this is almost always simply seasoned and just easy to prepare.  And while I tend to grill almost every meal in the summertime, most of these meals I don’t write up for the website because, well, not every food/beer/wine related thing that I do has to become work!  But this was a simple meal, with an easy going beer pairing, and I felt you all might want to know about it.

I placed my charcoal in the bottom of my grill in a simple pattern, one side had two layers of coals, the other had one.  This helps me distribute some heat and also to let me cook some food items faster than others, because not all things on a grill need to be cooked at the same heat for the same time!  Once I had a fire going, I went back into the kitchen and prepared dinner from the following.

• 1.2lb boneless, skinless organic chicken beast
• 1 bunch of asparagus
• 1 large tomato, diced into large dices
• 1/2 cucumber sliced thick
• 1/4 diced red onion
• some kosher salt
• cracked black pepper
• thyme
• 1/2 lime
• rosemary
• balsamic vinegar
• olive oil.

First, because it takes the longest to cook, I sliced the bottoms off the asparagus, then put them in an aluminum foil ‘boat’ I made, seasoned them with some kosher salt, black pepper, and some olive oil.  I tend to put these on the grill while the coals are still finishing lighting themselves up, because  a) these will take longer to cook than the chicken and b) I love some of the smokey flavor they get during this period.  After this, I went into the house, put the chicken in a bowl with some olive oil, kosher salt, black pepper, a little bit of thyme and crushed rosemary, squeezed some leftover fresh lime juice into it, mixed all this by hand and left it in the fridge for the next 20 minutes or so, while the coals heated up and the chicken marinated.  During this time, I sliced up the tomato and cucumber and red onion, mixed it in a bowl with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, added salt and pepper to taste, and was done!  I then checked on the asparagus (I like it cooked somewhere between the crunchy texture and the mushy very well cooked texture), made sure this was doing well and moved it to the side with 1 layer of charcoal.  I then added the chicken to the double layer, and let it cook, flipping it only once to cook the second side.  After a few minutes, everything was done and I went up and prepared the meal for me and my roommates.

This is a great recipe, because it’s so easy to put together and it takes so little time.  In the meantime, I had poured myself a glass of MoM hefeweizen from rogue brewery, and though it was not the most flavorful of wheatbeers, it did have a refreshing maltiness that helped to wash away some of the oils in this dish.  Plus, the chicken was so light and juicy, and the spices really were quite nice, that the aroma of the wheat beer with the salad and chicken was a great pairing.  Though hefeweizen beers are always great with light grilled foods like veggies and chickens!

And there you have it, a simple way to produce a great and easy dinner on the grill.  It’s light enough to be palatable during the summertime heat, it’s easy to make in a short amount of time, and the simplicity of it is partly what makes this so delicious.  Just remember, friends don’t let friends grill alone!