Cooking beautiful fresh fish and seafood on the Weber Slate Griddle is a really exciting thing to do. Get creative with a few delicate salads and some flavoured butter to make the most incredible seafood feast for some very lucky people!
Make the flavoured butter. On a board, roughly chop the garlic and parsley leaves, grate over the lemon zest and add the butter, mashing it all up and mixing it together with the back of a knife. Dollop onto a sheet of greaseproof paper and roll into a cylinder, twisting the ends like a Christmas cracker. Place in the freezer to firm up. When you’re ready to cook, cut yourself off a quarter, then slice it up and place in a bowl of iced water – keep the rest in the freezer for future use.
Preheat the griddle. Turn the right-hand burner to low, the central burners to medium and the left-hand burner to full whack.
Trim and finely slice the fennel and place in a large serving dish with the fronds. Drizzle over 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, squeeze over the juice of 1 lemon and season with sea salt and black pepper. Deseed and finely chop the chillies, scatter 1 over the top, reserving the rest for later, and toss everything together with your hands.
Finely slice the tomatoes on a board and season to perfection. Drizzle over 2 tablespoons of oil, squeeze over the orange juice and give it all a good mix with your hands, transfer to a serving dish and pick over the herb leaves.
Score the scallops in a criss-cross fashion, keeping them in their shells. Run your knife down one side of each squid to open them out, then quickly and lightly score the inside in a criss-cross fashion. Season the seafood to perfection.
Snap the woody ends off the asparagus. Place on the right-hand side of the griddle and cook for 5 to 10 minutes, or until tender and lightly charred, turning occasionally.
Drizzle a little olive oil over the griddle, using a spatula to spread it out. Starting from the right-hand side of the griddle, add the prawns, tuna, scallops (placing them scallop-side down) and squid in vertical lines, withthe scallops on the highest heat. Add the flavoured butter, arranging the slices across the griddle and on top of the seafood. Cook for a few minutes, then turn everything over and cook on the other side.
Add the mussels and clams to the hot (left-hand) side of the barbecue and cook until they open, tossing occasionally. When the tuna is golden on the outside and blushing in the middle, the scallops are golden brown with caramelised edges and the squid has curled up and is nicely chargrilled, remove from the heat and set aside. You’re the one in control here, so if something looks cooked, take it off – don’t watch things burn!
Once cooked, transfer the mussels and clams to a serving dish and squeeze the juice of 1 lemon over the top. Arrange the scallops around the edge and scatter over the parsley leaves.
Place the prawns on top of the tomato salad.
Squash, destone and roughly chop the olives. Place the asparagus in a large bowl, dress with the lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of oil, tear over the tuna and scatter over the olives.
Roughly slice the squid into pieces at an angle and squeeze over the remaining lemon juice. Place the squid on top of the fennel salad and scatter over the remaining chilli.
