Grilled red potatoes

Yesterday was really nice. I got out of work at least an hour earlier than usual. Brian is in his "no work, no school" temporary state, so he was hanging around, and both Jeremy and Melanie were home early for some reason too. This is why we could all be found drinking beers on the porch by 5 pm on a Monday. We got very loungey and nibbled on edamame and pretzels as our cocktail hour stretched on, but eventually figured we'd eat something that could be considered real dinner. Of course once you've been drinking on a sunny porch while the rest of the city battles rush hour, the last thing you want to do is go anywhere to get specific dinner supplies...no, you'd much rather just grill whatever happens to be lying around the house. Melanie had a bag of small red potatoes languishing in her apartment and so we thought we'd try grilling them, and it worked really well:

Took most of a 3 pound sack of small red potatoes and scrubbed them well. Sliced them in half, except that we left one whole as an experiment. Jeremy took them down to their apartment to microwave (we have limited technology in our house), which I believe took 3 minutes. They have a very powerful microwave though, so maybe on a conventional one it would be more like 5 minutes. Anyway, the goal was to cook them a bit so they would not be too long on the grill. They offered just a little resistance when I jabbed one with a knife. Covered them with a 1/3 cup mixture of olive oil and canola oil, then added 1 tablespoon each vindaloo powder and chile powder, and 2 teaspoons each of paprika, red pepper flakes and salt. Mixed it all up really well with the potatoes and let them sit until the grill was hot. Realized I had an orange pepper hanging around in the fridge, so I sliced that into 8 thick pieces and stuck that in with the potatoes as well.

When the grill was hot we tossed on veggie burgers and a bit of flank steak that had been marinating in teriyaki sauce (by the way? the Soy Vey brand called "veri veri teriyaki" is sort of awesomely delicious). When those were done, I hauled them off and put all the potatoes on, lying them cut-side down, along with the pepper strips. The pepper strips were done much faster, so I just pulled them off as they got browned and soft. The potatoes grilled very well--they don't burn easily but get lovely char marks on the skin parts. I think they took about 10 minutes of grilling, with frequent turning and moving around to make sure they got evenly done. And the flavor of grilled potatoes is excellent--a little bit smoky and spicy from all the marinade ingredients. I usually find potaotes insipid, so this was a nice surprise.