Steak on the barbie

I ordinarily don't eat steak--it's expensive and all that meat can't possibly be good for you if you have it regularly. But once in a while really is a treat! I found these steaks on sale at our local Whole Food on their Friday sale.

This is an Italian twist on a traditional steak. I got the recipe from Chef Fabio Viviani---You can watch his video on steak here.

A tip I learned from Chef Viviani:
1) Don't salt your steak before cooking it. Instead, you freshly cracked pepper. A lot of pepper. The cracked pepper will help create a thin layer on the steak which will seal in the juices. The salt with draw out the moisture in the meat and dry out your steak. If you want salt, add it at the very end!

2) Use a fresh branch of rosemary as your basting brush. Heat activates the oil in rosemary and really brings out its flavor. If you have some rosemary oil, use that!

3) Look for marbling in the steak. The marbling helps lock in the juices--so they will stay inside the steak and not leak out during the cooking process.

A few tips I learned along the way:
1) Bring you steak to room temperature before grilling. For this recipe, I made a mix of chopped garlic and olive oil. I then let the steak marinade in that for about 1 hour at room temperature.

2) Make sure your grill is clean and oiled. Noone wants the reminants of whatever what cooked on the grill two weeks ago in their food. Its best to clean the grill after your last grilling job, when the grills are hot, food doesn't stick as well.

3) Oil your grill before you add your meat. The best way to do this is to bunch up a paper towel and douse it in oil. Wrap it in one thin layer of aluminum foil and puncture the aluminum foil several times with a fork. Use a pair of tongs to brush the grill when it is hot with the oil.

2) Make sure your grill is nice and hot! When heating your coals, use a chimney starter--they are really inexpensive and work great. They take a little bit longer to heat up your charcoal, but it is much better--no one wants to taste lighter fluid on their food!

3) On that note, be sure to use natural charcoal. Some manufacturers will douse their charcoal in lighter fluid for an easy light...Don't but these brands.

4) If you have any natural wood to burn it, use it! Natural wood works really well, and imparts a delicious flavor to meat! The best part is that if you use natural wood logs, they turn into charcoal as they burn, saving you a trip to the store. I will place two logs of wood on each end of the barbeque, and then add the hot coal in between. The heat of the coals will make the logs burn, so you get a good combination of flame and slow heat from the charcoal.





5) Use steak with the bone in. It will help lock in moisture.

Ingredients
1 steak
Freshly cracked pepper
Garlic
Olive Oil
1 rosemary stem
Fresh Thyme
Salt



Bring the steak to room temperature.

Drizzle the steak with olive oil on both sides. Massage the olive oil in.

Cover your steak with freshly cracked pepper. This pepper will help create a seal which will lock in the juiciness and flavors of the steak so be liberal with it.

Fire up your barbeque.
Cook on high heat for 7-8 mintues. Don't be constantly prodding the steak. Just close the cover and let it cook undisturbed.

After 7 minutes, add some fresh thyme to the top of the steak (the raw side) and flip the steak. Brush the top of the steak (the cooked portion) with the rosemary brush. Sprinkle some salt on the cooked side.

Place a meat thermometer inside the steak. The temperature needs to get to 145 F (62.7 C) for 15 seconds.


Cover and cook for another 7-8 minutes.

Once the steak is done, remove from heat and let it sit for 5 minutes or so. The internal heat will continue to cook the steak. 

Serve with mashed potatoes, salad or sauted mushrooms. I found the flavor so intense from the wood fire and the rosemary, that the steak didn't need any seasoning at all. 

Once you are done grilling, clean off the grill while the coals are still hot with a grill brush. Let the coals burn out naturally. The wood you used will have turned to charcoal, so you can use that charcoal the next time you barbeque. 

Mango Ribs

I found a nice rack of ribs on sale at Whole Foods, and I couldn't pass them up! This is a delicious recipe for the barbeque or the ribs can be cooked in the oven as well.

Ingredients
1 half rack of pork ribs
1 bottle of beer


Dry Seasoning
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon Harissa
1/4 teaspoon Ras-el Hanout
1/2 teaspoon Cayenne pepper
1/ tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon ground black pepper


Glaze
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup dark rum
2 tablespoons soy sauce
Juice of 1/2 lime
Fresh mango puree, or frozen puree thawed
1 Tablespoon Guava Jelly (barbeque sauce or Sweet n Sour sauce can substitute)
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Salt



Mix the dry ingredients onto the ribs (both sides). Let the ribs rest at room temperature for 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Place the rack at the bottom of a roasting pan. Pour beer in pan and place ribs on the rack. Add 1/2 cup of water to make sure the liquid doesn't evaporate.

Cover with foil. Back for 1.5 hours.

In the meantime, make your glaze. Add the vinegar, dark rum and soy sauce together and bring to a simmer. Squeeze the lime juice on. Add the cayenne pepper and salt. Taste. The glaze should be pretty spicy.

Now for the sweet element. Slowly add the mango puree. The puree should be free from mango strands. If it is not, strain the puree as your are pouring it into the sauce.

Slowly add the jelly, mixing constantly until the jelly dissolves and mixes with the other ingredients. 

Add more of any of the ingredients to meet your taste preferences. Slowly simmer for 10 minutes on low heat, stirring constantly so that the sauce doesn't stick to the pan and burn. It should be thick but pourable.

Separate the sauce into 3 equal portions to avoid cross contamination: one you will use for a marinade, one for when you are barbecuing, the last you can use after the meat is cooked for additional flavor.

When the ribs are done, remove them from the oven and let them sit for 10 minutes, till they cool down. When you can handle them, cut them in half, so that they can fit into a standard ziplock plastic bag.

Place the ribs in the freezer bag and pour 1/3 of the glaze over them. Marinate for 1 hour.

Finish them off by baking them in the oven for another 20 minutes at 450 or grill them up! Use 1/3 of the glaze when you are grilling them.

When you are eating them, use the last remaining 1/3 of the glaze.

Root Beer Pulled Pork

Okay. I saw this pin on Pinterest for Root Beer Pulled Pork and I had to try it. It comes from another blog called Bubble Crumb.

This is a really simple recipe--put a chunk of pork in a crockpot, add a bottle of root beer and cook on low for 6-8 hours.  Shred the pork with a fork. Add desired amount of BBQ sauce and eat!

True to form, I screwed up the recipe! :).

I mixed the root beer and bbq sauce and added that directly to the pork and then cooked it. It still turned out delicious, but I wonder what it would have tasted like just cooked in the root beer....I guess I will have to try again.

I toasted the buns with butter on the ol' iron skillet! The next day, I had some Chinese steamed buns from Chinatown so I steamed the buns and had it with that....delicious!

Chicken and Vegetable Kabobs

Robyn and I went camping up in Sonoma Coast this weekend! It is really beautiful out there, and I always enjoy a chance to make a fire and sleep under the stars.

Sleeping under the stars doesn't mean we have to rough it with food though!

I made these delicious chicken kabobs and let them marinate overnight in a ziplock bag before grilling them. They were fantastic!

Cooking them over an open fire adds a dimension of flavor. Using untreated all natural firewood and charcoal also adds an additional subtle flavor!


To make a fire, I prefer the criss-cross method of laying down firewood. Place a few bbq chips down on the ground in rows, so they are touching each other. Place dried grass, dried pinecones, dried leaves and dried pine needles. Usually just leaves and small branches that have already fallen from trees.

Make a small tee-pee of the twigs and place the dried grass and needles inside the tee-pee. Light the grass with a match or flint if you are feeling all Bear Grylls.

Once that gets going, lay down two low pieces of wood. Start laying down smaller kinderling in a criss-cross fashion, 2 piece of small wood on each side. This helps create walls for the fire, so if there is a strong wind, it won't blow the fire out. The center should still be open to fire the fire oxygen and room to breathe. You can slowly add your dried grass, pine needles etc into the fire from that above hatch. As the fire grows, the original small wood pieces will burn up. Slowly add them to the fire and they will continue to burn and release heat slowly, creating your charcoal.

These wood pieces then serve as your skewer holders when you are grilling! I covered the logs with a piece of aluminum foil, so the chicken wouldn't touch the log directly.

Chicken Kabob recipe
1 lbs chicken, cut into cubes
Ground Fennel
Harrisa
Ras el Hanout
Vegetable or olive oil
lemon juice

Grind the fennel by hand and add the various spices. Add the vegetable oil and stir.

Take chicken and add to a zip lock bag. Add the spice mixture and seal the bag, making sure all the air is out.

Mix the ingredients into the chicken through the ziplock bag.

Marinate in the refrigerator or cooler for a few hours or overnight.

I don't add vegetables to my meat skewers because I don't want the vegetables to get contaminated. Also, vegetables will cook at a different temperature from the chicken, so you will either have cooked chicken and overcook vegetables, or cooked vegetables and under cooked chicken. I usually put the chicken directly on the hot logs of wood (with Aluminum foil to prevent ash from getting on the chicken) and the vegetables on a higher rack farther away from the fire.