James' World 2

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Summer is America’s season of pleasure—long weekends, refreshing swims, cold drinks—and the annual coronation of grilling as the seasonal king of cooking methods. It doesn’t feel like summer has truly arrived until you’re outside and your backyard is filled with the heady smoke of a grill. While you might already know your way around a grill, there are plenty of ways to make this outdoor cooking season your best yet. We tapped lifelong griller Bill Briand, a three-time James Beard nominee and the executive chef at Playa at Sportsman Marina and Fisher’s at Orange Beach Marina, for his top grilling secrets.

Grill and grill often

Whatever your favorite kind of grill is, Briand says, cook on it as much as you can while the weather holds out. The more comfortable you are with the grill, the more possibilities you can explore with this method of cooking. “I pretty much grill every night that I’m not cooking in the restaurant,” he says. For grilling novices (or experienced grillers looking for even more delicious and consistent results), Char-Broil TRU-Infrared cooking technology creates the closest thing to no-fail grilling. The magic lies just below the grates: a steel emitter plate retains the natural infrared heat of the flames and radiates that heat back to your food, yielding tastier, juicier meat, fish, vegetables, you name it.

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Grilled chicken breasts mean it’s summertime.  Photo by Char-Broil

Grill Often

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“Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted,” Elizabeth Gilbert reflected in the wake of losing the love of her life. “Grief does not obey your plans or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love.”

Like love, grief swells into an entire inner universe that comes to color the whole of the outside world. Like love — that rapturous raw material for most of the songs and poems and paintings our species has produced — grief lives itself through the grieving and can’t but speak its truth. Unlike love,our culture meets the voice of grief with an alloy of disquiet and denial. We want to make the sadness go away, to lift the sorrowing heart out of its sorrow immediately. Often, we mistake for personal failure our inability to salve another’s grief or mistake for their failure the inability to snap out of it on the timeline of our wishes.

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Art by Valerio Vidali from The Shadow Elephant by Nadine Robert — a subtle meditation on what it actually takes to unblue our sorrows.

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With only 24 hours in a day, most of which are spent working and sleeping, it’s easy to feel as though free time is your most scarce resource. After factoring in everyday chores like grocery shopping, laundry, and cleaning your space, there’s hardly any time left for connecting with loved ones—and doing so is a key component of living a long, well life. The good news is it’s possible to connect while still ticking items off your person-chore list. Cue: errand dates.

Recently, my friends and I started going on these errand dates, which basically just involves hanging out while we tackle items on our respective to-do lists. In the last three months, I’ve gone on close to 10 errand dates with my best friend, my roommate, and my sister. I’ve gone on an errand date to get groceries, another for a car wash, one to shop for furniture, and another to the gym. And I’m a big fan.

“When you’re bringing your friends into things that you have to do already, it’s a way to fit people into your schedule and not feel more overwhelmed and time impoverished, and also connect with your friend and show them that you’re invested in them,” says psychologist and friendship expert Marisa Franco, Ph.D.

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Photo: Getty Images / Tom Werner

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Chef Meherwan Irani’s marinade for these chicken skewers achieves the perfect balance of yogurt, lime, and spices. Cutting the chicken into strips rather than the traditional whole chunks allows the meat to cook faster without drying out, and as an added bonus, increases the surface area in contact with the marinade. The same marinade and technique can also be used for lamb (boneless or chops), steak, or paneer.

Look for jars of ginger-garlic paste at your local Indian grocery store. If you can’t find it, make your own by smashing 6 cloves of garlic with a 1½-inch piece of peeled ginger in a mortar and pestle, or by blending to a coarse paste in a food processor. Dried fenugreek leaves are a savory, aromatic herb reminiscent of maple syrup. Commonly used in Indian street food, chaat masala is a tangy mix of rock salt and spices including dried mango powder, asafetida, and black pepper.

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Photo by Thomas Payne

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