We continue to chase the flavor of the grill. More often than not, I do not like the texture of grilled foods. They tend to be drier and tougher than other cooked preparations. But the flavor of grilled foods is amazing. We have grilled bacon skins for sauces and potatoes for ice cream. The flavor of the grill is wonderful, especially when it is used as a flavoring agent. Recently we were working with leeks and realized that by trimming the vegetable we were generating a large amount of leek skins. On a whim, I seasoned the skins with salt and olive oil and then grilled them so they well were charred but certainly not ash. Then we cooled the them down and worked on a number of applications: from wrapping the charred skins around the cleaned centers to flavor them during cooking to infusing the flavor into the fresh king crabmeat. The results were amazing. The flavor of the grill and the leeks permeated the wapped ingredients while allowing us to retain the delicate texture of the underlying ingredient. While we used leeks here, the possibilites are endless and not necessarily confined to the vegetable world.
