Grill Smoked Yellowtail Pizza

Written By Brad English

The perfect piece of fish!

 

Fresh piece of Yellowtail

Sea Salt

A little Pepper

Chopped Garlic

Olive Oil

Fresh Squeezed Lemon Juice

Fire

Smoke

Timing

 

Perfection is not easy and once achieved is no longer perfection because it seems there is always something better coming.  That’s interesting to think about. Have you ever seen the most beautiful girl you thought you had ever seen in your life?  How many times?  Funny isn’t it.

If I want that perfect piece of fish I will take out my Weber Smokey Mountain Bullet and use it as a base for setting up a fire over lump charcoal and then add in some wood chips before laying the fish on the grill.  I just think a gas grill can’t get you there.  The open fire, the coals, the smoking wood just bring something more basic, or raw to the cooking experience.  To me, this is something I notice more with fish than with meat or chicken.  I think fish is simply more delicate than our other favorite proteins.  The timing has to be just right to get it off the grill so it can ease itself to the finish line on the plate.  The flavors are more subtle also, which is perhaps why I notice the wood and smoke flavors so much more.  A perfectly cooked piece of fish is about balance.

I didn’t have time to do this one on the Weber though.  So, as a substitute I used my gas grill and accompanied it with a lot of wood chips in my smoke box.  This baby was thick.  I wasn’t timing it, but I was nervously watching it because I was going to take this piece of fish and use some of it on a pizza.  I definitely didn’t want it to go past that critical moment, and I actually wanted to pull it off the grill before that moment to make sure it was moist.

I usually test my fish by pressing on the thickest part with a finger to sense the resistance.  It’s a guessing game, but you can get a good sense of when it’s done this way with practice.

I laid this thick, beautiful piece of fish down and closed the lid.  I did some more prep for what seemed like moments.  I was nervous about this thing for some reason.  I felt an urge to get out and turn it.  But, I waited.  I cut up some tomatoes.  “You should let it sit there. Wait for it,” I kept saying to myself.  I looked at the tomatoes and decided how many I would slice before I went back to check.  Finally!  I opened the lid and turned the fish.  It was looking good! So, I put the lid back down to keep the smoke rolling around.

After a few more minutes, I did my finger test and decided that this piece of fish was done.  It was time to rest it on the plate, covered in foil, as it finished cooking.

 

Grilled Smoked Yellowtail Pizza with Fresh Cherry Tomatoes and Ricotta

A “Brew in Germania” Pizza Dough – or any favorite dough!

Olive Oil

Halved Cherry Tomatoes

Ricotta Cheese

Torn Basil

Lemon Garlic Aioli Sauce *See below

 

Prep:

The Yellowtail:

Grill it (see above) and set it aside.  This can even be cooled when you put it on the pizza after the pizza has baked.

 

The Lemon Garlic Aioli:

I found an aioli recipe that looked good.  There are tons of them online.  Here is a link to the one I used from About.com Culinary Arts: *Link but you can use your favorite version Make this beforehand and it can sit in the fridge.

Assemble:

Spread your dough

Drizzle with Olive Oil.

Place pinches of the ricotta cheese around the dough.  Follow with enough tomatoes to make sure you balance their function as a sauce and topping. When you do bite into them, you get that explosion of flavor.  *See photos and then feel free to ignore what I just wrote and add as many as you want!  I try to place as many as I can cut side down, because they steam and really hold in the moisture in the oven and are extra juicy when you bite into them.

Add the torn up, or chopped basil leaves.

I was firing this pizza on my grill also.  I used the Baking Steel as the base and my Forno Bravo Stone elevated above it as a refractory element to help hold the heat in when I opened the grill lid.  I also set a fresh fire box of wood chips ablaze to add some real fire and smoke to the cooking set up.

Into the pizza grill it went.

I had to pull this out quickly because the steel bottom was so hot, it would have burnt the bottom.  So, the dough didn’t quite get the rise I was hoping for.

 

The Finishing Touches:

Pull off flakes of the yellowtail and spread around the pizza.  Drip the aioli on top.  In a sense, this pizza is upside down.  The sauce is on top!

Stop the presses!  OMG!  TPII!!!  Owen!  Get over here and try this.  In fact, it was so good, I wanted to make another.  The dough was a little too burnt on the bottom.  So, I wanted to give it another shot.  I started the next on the top deck, the FB Baking Stone, and then moved it down to the steel to finish.  This helped the crust situation and confirmed that This Pizza Is Insane (TPII)!!! I hope you were wondering what the heck that meant.  If not, I feel sorry for you, but I’m impressed at the same time.

The only issue with this pizza was the imperfect grill set up I had to bake it.  I will be visiting this one again and working further toward pushing this toward perfection – which can never be achieved and will therefore allow me to enjoy this pizza over and over again on the journey.

 

Enjoy…

 

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