Yaktori-style grilling 焼き鳥風グリル

For one reason or another, we have not had a chance to grill outside in Yakitori-style for a long time. Since it was warm, mosquitos were not out (yet), and we regained access to our Yakitori grill, we decided to do an impromptu Yakitori-style grill.  Since we did not have much time for preparation, I made a simple grill including;

1. Chicken wings and drumetts (marinated in sake, mirin, salt, and Sriracha hot sauce for several hours but I should have just grilled with salt and pepper)

2. Chicken tenders (marinated in sake and salt. After it was almost cooked, I smeared miso sauce - mixture of miso and mirin - and finished cooking).

3. Vegetable: small red potatoes (microwaved and then cut in half, coated with olive oil and salted), Royal trumpet mushrooms (torn lengthwise into 2 to 4 pieces depending on the size and seasoned with soy sauce, sake, mirin and coated with olive oil), and asparagus (coated with olive oil and seasoned with salt and black pepper). We also had shimeji mushrooms in a packet (a pat of butter, miso disolved in sake and mirin with an addition of sugar).

Here, from the left are two shimeji packets, red potatoes, wings, and tender.

The shimeji was very good with miso and butter flavors (below). As I mentioned before, a similar dish made of enoki mushroom was the dish we enjoyed at the Robatayaki restaurant  in San Francisco Japan town in our earlier days.

My wife was mashing up the grilled potatoes in this sauce (She even raided my packet since I had some sauce left). The royal trumpet mushroom had a nice firm meaty texture. The chicken parts were all good as expected, although the surface was a bit charred due to the sugar content of the marinade. After finishing the chicken and the vegetables, I also started grilling our perfect grilled rice balls as you can see in the first picture below. 

My wife disappeared and brought down some sliced Fuji apples and red seedless grapes on skewers. She suggested I grill them as a dessert (see the picture above). She also suggested that I smear the miso sauce I had used for the chicken tenders and the rice balls on the apples. I have heard of grilling peaches and pineapples but no apples and grapes. (Leave it to my wife to come up with out-of-the-box (grill??) ideas).

This picture shows a plate of our dessert. The apples were still firm and juicy inside but the surface was caramelized and sweet. The miso added a nutty and slighly salty flavor that was unusual but quite nice. The grilled grapes were new to me. I fully expected them to explode when they were over the fire, but they didn't. Again, the surface got slightly caramelized and the sweetness was enhanced. They went extremely well with the red wine we were drinking. We, as always, enjoyed eating al fresco.