Grilled Summer Vegetables
By: Frank Fariello
Published: Friday, December 10, 2010 - 1:02am

Ingredients




Asparagus spears
small carrots
Eggplant
Fennel
Sweet peppers
Leeks
New potatoes
Baby zucchini or regular zucchini
Olive oil, melted margarine, or
melted butter

Preparation

1 Before grilling, rinse, trim, cut up, and precook vegetables as directed in "Preparations and Timings for Grilled Vegetables". To precook any one vegetable, in a saucepan bring a small amount of water to boiling; add desired vegetable and simmer, covered, for the time specified. Drain well. 2 To grill, brush vegetables with olive oil, margarine, or butter before grilling to prevent sticking to grill rack. Cook vegetables on the grill rack directly over medium-hot coals until tender and slightly charred, turning occasionally. Use the following timings as a guide. (Actual timings will differ depending on thickness of vegetables, how hot the coals are, and how far the vegetables are form the coals.) 3 Preperation and Timings for Grilled Vegetables: 4 Asparagus: Snap off and discard tough bases and stems. Precook 2 minutes, then tie asparagus in bundles of 3 or 4 spears with strips of cooked green onion tops. Grill bundles 3 to 5 minutes or until vegetables are of desired doneness. 5 Small carrots: Cut off carrot tops; wash and peel. Precook 3 minutes. Grill 3 to 5 minutes. 6 Eggplant: Cut off top and blossom ends. Cut crosswise into 3/4-inch-thick slices. Do not precook. Grill 6 to 8 minutes. 7 Fennel: Snip off feathery leaves. Cut off stems. Precook whole bulbs 8 minutes. Cut bulbs into 6 to 8 wedges and grill 8 to 10 minutes. 8 Sweet Peppers: Remove stems. Quarter peppers and remove seeds with membranes. Cut peppers into 1-inch-wide strips. Do not precook. Grill 8 to 10 minutes. 9 Leeks: Cut off green tops; trim bulb roots and remove 1 or 2 layers of white skin. Precook 6 to 10 minutes, then halve leeks lengthwise and grill 5 minutes or until tender. 10 New Potatoes: Halve potatoes. Precook 10 minutes or until almost tender. Grill 10 to 12 minutes. 11 Yellow squash (crockneck or straightneck) or zucchini: Wash; cut off ends. Cut each vegetable lengthwise into strips. Do not precook. Grill 6 to 8 minutes. 12 Comments: It seems that these days no cookout is complete without grilled vegetables. Serve them as a side dish for grilled fish or meat, or as an appetizer.

Comments:
Orsola CK

Why precook the vegetables?
celine  cochrane

you don't need to precook all the vegetables, only the ones that take longer to cook. I fyou don't precook the potatoes for example, instead of grilling them for 12 minutes you will need to grill them for at least 30 minutes of more. Unless you like your potatoes still crunchy?