How to Grill Lettuce with Chocolate Balsamic Dressing - Steven Raichlen Recipe

This is a great, fun and VERY easy recipe. Located on page 370 of Steven's amazing grill guide, How to Grill: The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques.



After a day of reviewing a S'More recipe that every girl scout knows, it is back to much more interesting and challenging recipes. I have been dropping a chunk of lettuce on the grill for awhile now. A quick drizzle of olive oil, and 3 minutes on a hot grill will add a bit of carmalization to the taste that will set your salads apart.

As expected, Steven takes this method up a notch and encourages unusual lettuce variety, and provides a wonderful dressing that really brings out the taste.
First is the prep. I bought a head of RADICCHIO lettuce (the red one, no it is not cabbage). And a head of ENDIVE lettuce. I quartered these (the book calls for serving a halve a head of lettuce, but I thought that was too much). When you prepare these for the grill, be sure to leave the heart of the lettuce attached to the leaves. This prevents them from separating. I used my handy dandy grill proof rubber bands I have talked about before to also hold them together. The book advocates using toothpicks to keep everything together. Once again, the bands are washable, reusable and work better than toothpicks. I will put a link to them on AMAZON at the bottom of the page, they are great for many things.
My grill was set for indirect heating. I was grilling some lamb chops that you will hear about soon. So I let these cook for about 10 minutes total, 3 minutes per side.
I drizzled a bit of the dressing on while they cooked.
Right before serving, I gave them a good soaking of the dressing... The radicchio I was able to dunk, the endive i drizzled.
This is good eating!

The dressing is called VENETIAN SWEET AND SOUR SAUCE. It is equal parts Balsomic Vinegar and honey as a base; with a generous amount of pine nuts, garlic, raisons and butter. The unusual ingredient is a small amount (only 1 ounce) of semisweet chocolate! It was a great addition. No one was able to spot the ingredient, but when they were told, everyone certainly could taste the chocolate once it was revealed.

I LOVED this recipe and technique. This deserves a HUGE 5 on my scale of 1 to 5. It is very dramatic to pull a salad off the grill. the presentation is terrific, and the dressing is among the best i have ever had. I can not possibly recommend this more. One possibly alteration, the radicchio lettuce was a bit too bitter compared to the endive. In the future, I will probably just make the endive. But the red radicchio certainly made a great presentation.
Oddly enough, no dessert was planned, but as much as i made fun of them yesterday, I was asked to have S'Mores again.
Real men wear pink on their way to the dinner cruise on their anniversary.