Grilling Day, part I: The Appetizer

BbbGrowing up, pretty much all I knew about grilling came from my dad and his round Weber grill. We'd do burgers, a steak, some teriyaki chicken -- and that's about it.

That's why years later, it kind of blew my mind to see people like Bobby Flay throwing everything in sight on the grill -- whole peppers, small peppers and even skillets for sauces. In my mind, grilling was for meat and you had to run inside to prepare everything else.

When I saw this Cat Cora recipe, "Grilled pineapple and avocado guacamole," it looked like something right out of her fellow Iron Chef's heart -- your main ingredients -- the avocado and pineapple -- went right on the grill.

At this point, I should say that even though I knew pineapple was on the recipe, I had my doubts on what we'd actually be able to get. My mom's from Maui and my grandparents have a farm there -- they grow the sweetest pineapple you can imagine. Pineapple on the mainland just doesn't even come close. It's probably because of how long it takes to ship to my grocery store from whatever part of the world it comes from and it probably has to be picked long before it's ripe.

So we dutifully picked up a pineapple from Your Dekalb Farmers Market. When the wife cut it open on Grilling Day, I couldn't believe it -- it was so delicious!

In the recipe, you start out with 2-3 avocados, ripe but firm. You cut them in half (longways is much more attractive) and pull out the pit (twist them after you cut it) and then peel it.

With the pineapple, you shave off the prickly exterior, lop off the crown and then remove the thick center core. Without having a coring device handy, we just took half of a pineapple and then took a paring knife and cut around the core before chopping a slice of pineapple off. Then you just poke out the carved out core section like popping out a doughnut hole.

Brush your avocado and pineapple slices with olive oil and then season with a little salt and pepper before putting them on the grill.

I waited until it had nice char on it before flipping. When I had nice char on both sides, I would remove it and then diced it up before putting into a bowl. Because this recipe only asks for half of a pineapple, we had lots of extra grilled pineapple rings. They were so good! Even sweeter than the raw, already sweet pineapple. Now I know why people like pineapple on pizza (I don't).

You also grill in the same way rings from a red onion and don't forget 2 jalapenos like I nearly did. For those I tossed both onto the grill and rotated them until they were nice and charred. Then I removed them and diced those up. I love really spicy things so pretty much everything but the stem went into it. It brought some heat so I wouldn't recommend that if you are accustomed to a more mild taste.

All of the grilled veggies and fruits diced up and into a bowl, then chop up a tomato, some fresh cilantro and lime juice from about two limes. I forgot to add two diced up cloves of garlic but the salsa didn't seem like it was lacking anything.

Stir it up and you'll have some awesome guacamole!