Summer Sides Trio: Marinated Tomato Bruschetta, Roasted Red Peppers, and Mezcal Margaritas

Hello my fireflies and tinkerbells, it's Carla and I am back again in my gorgeous Brooklyn backyard for part two of our grilling extravaganza. In this video I'm going to be making three summer sides for all of your grilling adventures indoors and out. We have a gorgeous marinated tomato bruschetta. I have roasted red peppers with garlic chips and finally the mezcal campari margarita or as I like to say the drink you'll be making all summer. Each of these sides can be made using a grill or can be made not using a grill. If you are the host and you want to get your grilling out of the way early so that you can just do the main event you can make these all ahead. If you're going to a grilling picnic potluck and you're bringing something but you don't have a grill you can make all of these as well. It is really something for everyone. Hello and welcome to my bedroom. We had to come up here because I'm about to talk to you about my underwear. The reason we're going to talk about my underwear is because I famously hate underwear. I have been known to come home from a day of work and rip all of my clothes off in the front hallway. I cannot even wait to get upstairs. A couple of years ago I looked into my top drawer looked at what was in there and it's all this stuff that's always in there because it's never the stuff that I'm choosing to wear and I said you know what I never want to see these underwear again in my life. I never want to see these bras again in my life. They all had to go. The only thing you're going to find in that drawer today and I'm not messing with you is skims. So right now I am wearing the skims scoop bralette. The only thing I ever wear on shoot days clip my mic right onto it you do not know it's there I don't know it's there and what is actually insane is that some days after wrapping I will take most of my clothes off and I will lounge around in the bra. I've not worn a thong since sometime in the 1990s but this thong is cut as a thong in the back. This is the high-waisted thong but what's genius about it is that it's nice and high cut in the front so it is like pulsing it is in closing it is the softest stretchiest kind of melts into the skin and you're not feeling it in between you and your mom jeans if you know what I mean. I now have so many different things in the core collection of the fits everybody line. I branched out into some of the briefs. I've branched out into shapewear which is psychotic since I don't like to feel enclosed. If by some miracle you had not tried skims yet this is your sign. I came here into my bedroom to tell you about my underwear. So what else do you need to hear? Click the link in the video description to check out the fits everybody collection available in double xs who are you to 4x. After you place your order select youtube in the survey and then choose my channel from the drop down menu that follows so that they know that I came to you from my bedroom to share so much information about my underwear. For the roasted red peppers I want to set up a direct medium high heat. So I have a raging burning inferno over here but I don't want to use that obviously so I'm just going to scoop some of the coals that have accumulated and set a little portable grate over that. You can also do this directly on your gas burners. You can also do this under a broiler. So now the peppers are going to go directly over here not even oiling them. I don't even need to clean these grill grates because the skin's going to protect them. Now that these are on here I'm going to keep an eye on them turn them every couple of minutes until they're really totally carbonized on the skin which should take somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes. The dressing for the peppers is essentially going to be garlic chips but the flavored oil from cooking the garlic chips is also going to be part of the dressing. You don't have to use a mandolin it just helps to get like nice evenly thin slices. I have a absolutely adorable cast iron pan perfect size for this and this can go right into the fire but obviously indoors you'll just use a small skillet or saucepan over medium heat. And the key is really starting in cold oil and then gradually bringing it up. I also believe that a little bit longer of a cook time helps to develop flavor so you get more flavor into the oil that the garlic's cooked in. I'm going to season the garlic with a little salt and pepper and adding just enough olive oil to lightly float these. It doesn't have to be completely submerged but you don't want a lot of garlic sticking out the top either. So whatever that means to you visually. A little shake before the garlic starts to toast and crisp it will be sticky you know the way raw garlic juice feels a little bit sticky. So at the beginning you just want to stir these every once in a while to make sure they're not sticking to each other and that you have nice individuated garlic chips. And I think the surface of this hearth is hot enough that if I just put this down it'll be medium heat. Turning peppers. All right we're starting to get there really dark brown starting to carbonize. The thing about the pepper is you have to keep turning it because it has so many sides and this is obviously looking darker than you would want to grill a pepper on say a kebab but we're not making a kebab. The skin is going to come completely off so the skin is sort of the vessel for the heat the smoky flavor but it's also protecting the flesh underneath and then you get this just absolutely silky delicious smoky tender pepper flesh underneath. I'm even going to turn the peppers onto their stem end and stand them up. This big one I'm starting to see juices. Oh this guy's juicing. This guy's not ready. My garlic chips are almost done. There's really nice bubbling. They're looking very thin. They're starting to turn brown and at this point I'm gonna let them finish in the pan which still has tons of residual heat so that I don't burn anything. So what I'm seeing on the peppers is like a lot of tenderness. The skin is starting to bubble and pull away from the flesh. In some spots it's tearing open which is fine. Getting that charred flavor on the flesh is is good too but what you want to do once the peppers are done is put them into a container with a lid. I'm doing this to trap the steam, let the steam accumulate, let the peppers cool down a bit and then I can really easily peel them. My garlic had a beat to cool down a tiny bit. It's still nice and warm in here. There's really nice toasty aromas and from right here I'm gonna add sumac and urfa. Urfa is a delicious chili. It has like a deep dark kind of tobacco-y raisiny flavor. I would use like a not too hot chili in its place. It's also really beautiful because it's almost black so the way that it looks against the bright red flesh of the pepper is really pretty and then the other spice that I'm adding is sumac which has a really bright sour flavor and if you didn't have sumac I would actually recommend like grating the zest of a lime into here. So this is like now giving this smoky spicy garlicky but also kind of vinegary and sour flavor. It's almost like a vinaigrette from the spices and the flavor of the garlic and the oil. This little mixture can just sit. The spices are gonna continue to deepen. Now that my peppers are cool enough to handle I'm gonna peel them but I do like to keep the juices that have accumulated in the bottom here because this is really like pepper juices that leached out of the peppers while they were steaming and that will kind of mingle in with the rest of the marinade. All you really need to do is kind of pinch up on the skin and it should come right off. And if a little bit of you know black little bits stick to the flesh don't worry about it. So that's it and then you can really just tear along the seams of the pepper following the natural shape. I hardly ever like even use a knife for this and the only other part that I want to scrape away is this like little seed pack but these are you know they got so cooked and tender that you can see like how easily everything is just sliding off. So for the salad itself I'll just kind of go one step further and like tear them into pieces like this. What's awesome about roasted peppers is you can use them as a side dish. You can use them inside of a sandwich. You can chop them up and put them in a grain salad or another any other kind of salad. You can chop them up and make a version of like giardiniera like a grilled giardiniera kind of vibe. You can let them get really vinegary. So they're just like really incredibly versatile. I did a video for a skillet pasta where you cook the pasta in the sauce and in that video it calls for roasted red pepper puree which in the video I just buy a jar but if you had these lying around that would be like an awesome leftover during the week dish to make. Let's dress the peps. Put them into this bowl. They're delicious pepper juice. So I'm going to take some of this dressing for dressing in the bowl and then holding some back to put over the top and then just a little flaky salt. The peppers themselves like have not been seasoned at all. They were nudie patootie when they got grilled. I'm gonna add some fresh oregano. Use my hands to toss this all together. It's one of the softest foods. So this could marinate for a couple days if you wanted to. They just would get better and better. So another great do-ahead. They're just going to keep soaking up all of these flavors. Mesmerizing. Absolutely mesmerizing. So basically this made a vinaigrette with the olive oil, the pepper juices, the seasonings, the herbs, peppers with vinegar is like one of the great things and that's kind of exactly what it's missing. So that's going to be the last step. I'm using sherry vinegar. You could use red wine vinegar. You could use cider vinegar. That would be terrific. You could use white wine. We'll use whatever vinegar even balsamic in this situation as long as it's a real balsamic. Oh I'll accept it. Oh my god I want to go swimming in there. Oh my god. I literally like want to dive right into this pool of sauce on the edge. The last little bit of garlic oil that I held back I'm gonna put over the top. This looks so good to me. I want to eat this so bad. I can't look at the juices and not like dip. So even if you're just serving this as a side, have bread around because we need to do we need to be doing this. Saucy. It is so good. Oh my god. Just cleaning up the edges. I'm dead. So I'm adapting this tomato bruschetta a little bit from a recipe that's in That Sounds So Good. The whole concept of this bruschetta is to really pre-season and infuse the tomatoes with olive oil, salt, some marjoram, some chili and as they sit they're going to absorb that and start to release some of their liquids. It's also really scalable so you can use really any quantity or type of tomato. The two key things are seasoning each layer and then using enough high quality olive oil to really impart a lot of beautiful flavor. So if someone gave you some nice olive oil and you wanted a time to use it where it really got to shine, this is a great time for that. It's also a great time for tomatoes and like again just as for the early tomato growing seasons, you know Texas, Florida, Southern California, parts of Georgia, like tomatoes come up so much earlier than they do in the Northeast and you should be able to enjoy your tomatoes at all times. So salting and peppering each layer means that every slice of tomato is getting individual attention instead of maybe just seasoning the top and trying to turn these over. Do or don't be alarmed by the amount of olive oil I'm using but know this, if you are alarmed and you're like I would never do that, she's just like throwing money on those tomatoes. Any oil that is left over is like the most incredible oil for any future vinaigrette, for making tomato sauces in, for putting into dressings, for marinating things. You could honestly just spoon it over like a delicious steak, you could spoon it over a really beautiful piece of fish because it's going to be tomatoey and a little garlicky and it's going to have the delicious olive oil. So whatever's left in the bottom of the platter after you've enjoyed your bruschetta, you save that olive oil, you strain it and you put in the fridge. And I'm also, instead of using basil, which you totally could, I'm using marjoram, you could use oregano, you could use some sprigs of rosemary, you could definitely use any type of basil. Time, I'm into time. So smashed in big enough pieces that I can pick them out later. Most people don't want to eat a giant hunk of garlic like that. In my opinion, you could do this for 24 hours in like a cool room temperature, normal room temperature, not like in a shack and outdoor in the desert of Arizona. Two hours, one hour, four hours, totally fine. So this is a great like hosting trick. If you want to marinate those tomatoes, get them out of the way. They're sitting there, people come over, they're like, oh my god, so beautiful. Everything is like appears to be already, ready already. Then all you have to do is make the bruschetta with some grilled bread, a little rubby garlic oil. We'll do it, we'll see. All right, so every once in a while I might very gingerly and with my little tiny special fairy fingers turn over the tomatoes to marinate them, but don't go in there and go like tossing them all around because you'll hurt them. These are some dry chili darbel. Give them a little squeeze. If you don't like spice, you don't have to do this. You could also just put some crushed red pepper flake and this again is sort of passively infusing the oil and the oil is passively infusing the tomatoes. Tomatoes are tomatoing. I flipped them, they're gorgeous, they're glossy, they're stunning. The color, I can't. So now it's time to grill this bread for the bruschetta. I rubbed it with a little olive oil. This is just, this was a beautiful loaf of miche. We had our grill going, just doing that. So if you are again, you want to make this and you're indoors, just toast the bread and so this is 100% of an indoor thing. Grilled bread is really nice though. I mean don't feel bad about it, but it is nice. Let's do a little flippity-doo. Oh that looks nice. Yeah, I want a crispy chewy situation. I don't want it to shatter in my face and then like tomatoes break apart and everything. A couple minutes is all it takes folks. Then you have your beautiful bruschetta. While these are still nice and hot and crusty, I am taking a clove of garlic. You don't even need to peel it. I just cut the tip off and then if you like this sort of thing, you can rub down your toast with a little raw garlic. I'm into it and like the bread kind of acts as a little garlic grater and then I'm gonna salt the bread itself. This is flaky salt that I'm using because I have the adorable little tiny portable flaky salt, but lately I've, you know what I've been thinking and I'll tell you even if you don't want to know. Justice for kosher salt. It really probably doesn't feel good to have been like the salt on the scene and then just get like a bumped. Gorgeous tomato going right on. I mean the situation in the bottom of the tomato plate is just insane. I mean ever since I said that you should obviously save all this tomato marinating liquid and then use it for all the things I said. I am obsessed with the idea of using that liquid to make a fresh tomato sauce and also if you use that liquid to make the tomato soup in the style of sauce, it would be insane. I would also just drink that. Oh stop. Something about summer. It's really my season. I'm a Leo in case you didn't know. The fire, the heat, the beach, the tomatoes, the eggplant, the light, the glory, the bikinis, the whole thing. It's just really my time. And a little more salt. That looks great to me. I'm really happy. Wouldn't you be so psyched to encounter this on like a grill party potluck because it could be an appetizer. You could throw some cheese on it. You could throw one of those peppers on it and you're just living. You're living your best life. This, this is what life was missing. I'm going to top it off with a little of my dad's red wine vinegar which will just give it that like brightness um at the end with all that sweet tomato flavor. That's where you want to be forever. Should I take a bite? But it's so good. The marjoram, that extra bit of juice also. I need to write that into the recipe. Warm bread. That completes tomato bruschetta. Just enjoy. Enjoy forever more. Every outdoor party needs a cold drink. We're making the mezcal campari margarita or as it is commonly known around here the ola chow. First thing you're gonna do is you are going to rim your glasses because I like a margarita salted on the rocks. If you're not sure if your people like salted or not you can just use the orange peel to do half of the rim. Knock off a little excess and then if they don't like the salt they can just drink from the other side. I have some nice mezcal. If you are not a fan of the smoky mezcal this will work perfectly nicely with regular tequila. Use a you don't need a reposado or anything like that for this. And two ounces. One ounce of lime juice freshly squeezed. Three quarters of an ounce of orange liqueur. I've tried a lot of orange liqueurs. Some of them are absolutely impossible to drink but I've made a lot of margaritas with Cointreau and I don't like a super sweet margarita and I really do like the flavor. So a good orange liqueur. Bingo bango. And I started messing around with this because there was one night where I was really in the mood for a blood orange margarita and I had Cosmo, my child, who's not old enough to bar back yet. He looked up a few recipes and I had this blood orange margarita and it had Campari and I really really liked it. So after that I started messing around with these ratios and it's taken a bit of doing and I landed here. So if you already know that you like really don't like Campari then you could switch that out for Aperol which is a little bit sweeter. If you want to ride this ride with me and take a chance on life you can always increase the amount of agave. If you take a sip after shaking it and it's just like it's got too much of that bitterness just squeeze in another teaspoon of agave and you should be good to go. Delicious. Fill with ice. So this is if you just have a couple people over and you are going to hand make margaritas because the one thing you do not want to do is have a big party and be making cocktails to order. Just going to pause and tell you that I believe in a very long shake. There should be a level of pain involved if you're shaking it for long enough. Last but not least because we're just making these to order there's some fancy globe ice but I'm not going to put the globe in that would be tomfoolery. If you have one of those like ice bags that they make for this purpose now would be a great time to bust it out because you're worth it. Nice. Nicey nice. Look at the color. Last but not least. It's good with lime wedges. I think this little bit of sweetness from the orange is highly welcome. And there you have it. The Ola Chow. Oh I love it. It's got in enough of an edge to remind you that you are drinking alcohol so you don't just like suck it down like a pina colada. Next up I'm going to show you how to big batch this situation and turn it in to a summer slushy. If you want to big batch this and turn it into frozen margarita slushy situation you need to think about 24 hours in advance to let the whole mixture freeze. This is what we're going to do. So this is scaled for an entire 750 milliliter bottle of mezcal. Then zero out your scale. I'll use the rest of the fresh lime juice that I had. A situation like this where you might be going through cups of lime juice just get a high quality fresh lime juice. I really like this one. It's very delicious. I did taste test with it and my parents thought that that when they tasted this that this was the fresh juice. So that's good enough for me. Just whatever you do don't buy the lime juice that's in the glass bottles because those are like pasteurized and they really don't taste good. Zero. And then for the Campari six and a half ounces. So again you're either going to be doing this with a measuring cup and you're going to follow the ounce measurements or you have a digital scale which makes it super super easy. That's a bucket of liquor right there. And the agave. Now the other thing that has to happen because we're not shaking this with ice is that we have to account for the dilution that you get from shaking a cocktail with ice because this is just going to go directly into the freezer. So I'm adding water which is impersonating melted ice in the cocktail. Wow. Fill it to the rim with brim. If you're old enough to know what that is reference like and subscribe. This is going into the fridge or the freezer for 24 hours. So then in a manner that is not scary or freaking anybody out while I do it. Oh my god that was beautiful. You can do this in like a really big bottle or divide it between two empty wine bottles and then put those in the freezer. You can totally do that. This is fun because these lay flat and you can vacuum seal them and then you're just party ready. So my cocktail is secured. It's in the bag as they say. If you don't have the sucker you could do this in a big gallon size freezer bag and just press out the air and stop. You don't want to pull the liquid through the button but now this goes in the freezer. It's incredible and then you it's gonna be like flushy. This is the one that we froze yesterday. It does have enough low ABV liquor and water to like get icy but it's not gonna freeze completely solid. I'm gonna add a little bit of ice because I'm going for like pina. I'm going for pina colada consistency and then blend. It's just a majestic color. My concept for summer is passenger princess but she's also the driver and I feel like this really goes with that and I'm really fond of this because this is like the miniature size of the big giant frozen margarita shape that you would get at like Dallas BBQ. Anyway I'm gonna taste it. That's dangerous. Hola chao. Bingo bango. Okay how fun is that? I asked and you guys told me we want more veggie dishes Carla. We want more things that we can make if we don't have a grill. We want more things that go with all the grilling things. Well you are now set up for the entire summer. You're winning every which way. You are the guest of honor. You are the host of honor. You are getting high on your own supply. You're just having a great great summer and if you have somehow navigated here without also seeing grilled turkey club sandwich you're gonna go look at that video now because this is the grilled main to go with all of the grilled sides and the cold drinks of course. It's time to make the bruschetta. Something just happened to me. Um bruschetta. No it's bruschetta. You've been saying bruschetta. Yeah and then what did I say? I said bruschetta. I said something weird. Okay something happened. All right so bruschetta. Bruschetta. But how do you say it funny Omega? I think that's what happened. But you say it. I don't want to say it right now. No I listen. I think you said bruschetta. I think you said bruschetta. You say bruschetta. You say bruschetta. But do you say espresso? Espresso. Okay it's bruschetta. Just for my, I'm saying that for myself.