Chef Paul’s "Cookin' with Passion" Tip of the Week
Grilled Fruit Skewers
Paul O'Toole: Tip of the Week to you! This is Chef Paul O'Toole, Chief
Culinary Officer for all of the Forewinds Hospitality Golf Clubs with
this week's tip.
Welcome back. Chef Paul here, grillin' and chillin' once again. We're back on the grill and what I'd like to talk about today is grilled fruit skewers with a citrus rum yogurt dip. This is an awesome desert for finishing up a perfect meal outside.
We're going to start out with some fresh fruit. Pineapple works great. The sweet pineapple, available now from Hawaii or Costa Rica, some of those areas, are just absolutely great. They're grown now with sugar cane together and it gives it a sweet flavor. They work perfect.
So let's take some pineapples and clean the outside and let's cube them about one inch diameter, one-inch squares. Then also take some mango and papaya, both of those. Also cut those into large chunks or cubes and then we're going to take some fresh plums. We're going to split them in half and take the seed out.
Now what we can do if you have a metal skewer that works great but if you don't have a metal skewer, we can use a wooden skewer. But if we use the wooden skewer, let's remember to soak them in water just about 30 minutes prior to when you need them. That way they won't char or burn up on you as you're cooking your fruit.
So we're going to put the fruit on the skewer and we're going to have them nice big chunks. We're going to go pineapple and then we'll go papaya and then we can go mango and then plum and then back to pineapple. Now if you don't have any of the mango or you don't have a papaya, by all means you could use a Charlene melon or an Israeli melon or Honeydew melon or Crenshaw or whatever melon you'd like. That also works great.
What we're going to do is to sprinkle some sugar on the outside, just white sugar on the outside of these skewers. We're going to put them on the grill, but before we put them on the grill, remember that we need to have this grill nice and clean because the sugar is going to want to caramelize this right away. So we need a hot, clean grill.
What we're going to do is we're going to put these on and then we're going to turn this and we're just going to get grill marks, just so that the fruit starts to caramelize. Then we're going to take this off and we're going to put this aside.
Now, for our rum sauce we're going to take some Malibu rum, put it into a heavy pot, and we're going to make sure that this pot is not hot to start. We're going to put the rum in the pot starting cold and then we're going to add six tablespoons of sugar to four ounces of the rum and we're going to mix this with a whip and we're going to reduce this to a syrup. Then we're going to remove this and let it cool.
Meanwhile we're going to add yogurt, either your favorite flavored yogurt with fruit or another sweet yogurt would work great. Possibly a vanilla yogurt would work perfect. And then to that yogurt we're going to add sour cream and we're going to add sugar. So for a cup of yogurt, we're going to add a tablespoon of sour cream and a tablespoon of sugar and we're going to mix this up.
Now once your rum sauce starts to turn into a syrup, then we're going to take the rum and we're going to drizzle that in and whip this up. We're also going to take the zest of one lemon and the zest of one orange, also adding that to the yogurt sauce. Then we're going to drizzle this on top of our skewers.
This is an absolutely great summertime dish. We can garnish this with fresh mint out of the garden, either peppermint or spearmint works great and even if you have some coconut, put that coconut in a dry sauté pan on the stove and sauté that up just so it toasts - or put it in a toaster oven. That works great too. Just toast it until it just starts to brown and we'll garnish the top of our skewers, our fruit skewers, with that.
Till next time, keep grillin'. See you soon.
That's my tip of the week. I am here to make certain your dining experience at any Forewinds golf club is a wow! Come out and taste the difference for yourself. This is Chef Paul promising we'll deliver Hospitality PLUS! on every visit.
