Pork tenderloin, butterflied chicken

Two more grill recipes from Bobby Flay, who livens up traditional dishes with fusion elements or adapts classic treatments to the grill.

His Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Guava Glaze is attributed to a Cuban friend and he considers it predominantly Cuban. He suggests apricot jam as a substitute for guava jelly, so that's what I used. The glaze combines the jam with Dijon mustard, orange juice and salt and pepper. There is also a "mojo" consisting of red onion and garlic sauteed in vegetable oil, then adding several cups of orange juice and lime juice with a chopped half of a habanero chile and boiling that down by half, then stirring in chopped cilantro and cumin seeds. So you grill the pork tenderloins, brushing with the glaze (save some to brush on after taking them off the grill), then slice and serve with the mojo drizzled on top. The pork absorbs much of the flavor from the glaze and the mojo rounds it out deliciously with just a little kick from the chile.

We paired this with Sarah Jenkins' Moroccan Salad, which, although it may seem an ocean removed from Cuba, was actually a very harmonious combination. The salad consisting of finely diced and chopped tomato, cucumber, yellow bell pepper, onion, parsley and cilantro, is dressed with lime juice, olive oil and ground cumin. Simple, easy, tasty.

Flay's Butterflied Chicken with Rosemary-Lemon-Garlic oil was less satisfactory. The problem here is that grilling a whole chicken in the manner described by Flay means you have all the fat dripping onto the charcoal and flavoring the meat with that burnt fat smell. Also, even butterflied, a whole chicken is hard to cook through on a grill, and not possible at all in the 25 minutes specified in the recipe. So the marinade was great and the finish with a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese and coarsely ground pepper was a nice nod to a classic Italian treatment, but we will not be repeating this recipe.

Jenkins's shaved fennel salad, dressed with lemon juice, parsley, olive oil and a big pinch of piment d'Esplette was an easy and fresh accompaniment.