With which dishes should you accompany your summer grills?

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Do you feel like a fresh and light accompaniment to your grilled meats, but you're running out of ideas? Barbecues follow one another and look alike? We share with you our ideas for summer grill accompaniments that will delight you.

Summer vegetables are grilled

You cook your meal entirely on the barbecue by grilling good vegetables, seasonal of course. Colourful, varied, extremely tasty, no need to spend hours in the kitchen to prepare them. On the contrary, you keep them as raw as possible as in this recipe of courgette cooked au naturel with Kokko which you season with a little salt, pepper and a dash of olive oil or simply these aubergines cooked in the flame and smoked. With always little preparation, we revisit the Provençal tomatoes as in our recipe. The summer vegetables, which make us travel to Provence, are self-sufficient, no need for frills to enjoy them.

Our recipe ideas 

Grilled vegetables and thyme medley

Rainbow of grilled vegetables

Grilled courgette with garlic

Peppers coloured with spices

Steaks de tomate

Skewers of sun vegetables

Peppers in oil

We revisit the classic oriental tabbouleh

We all know tabbouleh, prepared with semolina, which is eaten at lunch break, at a picnic - find our ideas for a barbecue picnic - and to accompany grilled meats on the barbecue. However, the real recipe for oriental tabbouleh does not include semolina! Stemming from the Lebanese-Syrian gastronomy, the real oriental tabbouleh is composed of mint, bulghur and above all parsley, a lot of parsley. Onions and tomatoes, finely diced, are added. This very fresh salad is seasoned with olive oil and lemon juice.

For a version closer to the oriental tabbouleh we are used to eating in France, you can replace the semolina by quinoa. Rich in fibre, vitamins but also in vegetable proteins, quinoa is excellent for your health and is more digestible than semolina, especially as it does not contain gluten. Like a classic tabbouleh, it is mixed with tomatoes, onions, cucumber and aromatic herbs of your choice. More details with the complete recipe for quinoa tabbouleh.

You give pep to your salads with the germinated seeds.

Stars of the summer, salads can be composed in a thousand and one ways. Green salad, tomato, cucumber, corn and all kinds of raw vegetables, not to mention pasta, rice, lentil, potato, etc. In short, you've tried them all. So rather than searching in vain for new recipes, give your own recipes a boost. How do you do that? By decorating them with surprising foods such as sprouted seeds. If you've never heard of them, they are small sprouts of germinating herbs, legumes and cereals. Their nutritional qualities are spectacular because they are extremely rich in vitamins, minerals, fibre, antioxidants etc. and their taste makes it possible to give relief to your recipes. 

For example, you can use fennel micro-plants to add a touch of aniseed to your salad, alfalfa for freshness, wheat germs for their very green taste, radish shoots for spicy notes: it's up to you to test them!

Fill up on iodine with a seaweed salad

Sea lettuce, dulse, sea beans, nori, spirulina, kombu: there are many varieties of seaweed that can be cooked. Some can be found in the fresh sections of organic shops, others in Asian grocery shops where they are sold dried or in flakes. Their nutritional properties are exceptional. In particular, they contain a lot of proteins, omega-3, vitamins and trace elements such as iodine, which is essential for the proper functioning of the body. 

To get started, you don't come back from the beach with a bucket full of seaweed, but you start with the wakame, with a rather light taste, which you can eat raw, after having rehydrated it, as well as cooked. This summer it is cooked in a salad as in these recipes for wakame seaweed salad and Japanese seaweed salad.

With all these great recipes for grilled vegetables, salads and even super-salads when combined with super-foods, this is a perfect opportunity to reconcile vegetarians and lovers of barbecuing around the barbecue!

Posted in: The Kokko lover's diary