Amuse Bouche

Korean Barbecued Pork Ribs (Jeyook Kalbi Gui)

Lani at Heritage Hill Farm had sent out the email that it was time to decide if we wanted a half pig for next season because they were buying the piglets and wanted to be sure that everyone who wanted one in the fall was accounted for.  I went out and checked the chest freezer in the garage and there is still quite a bit of Bernie in there, so I told her we would take our chances in the fall on a half pig being left, but I did place a definite order for 3 or 4 of her free-range (and I do mean free range, watch your step!) chickens for the fall.  While I was rooting around in the freezer I spotted a package of country style ribs so I grabbed it and started contemplating how would cook them.  Husband is not a huge fan of barbecue sauce and I really didn't want a braise.  I'm all done with braising for the season, these days all I want is something with bright flavors and I really wanted to try my new Tuscan Grill.  I've been dabbling in Korean dishes for awhile now and since husband loves heat and Asian flavors I dragged out my Korean cookbooks to see if anything fit the bill.  While spending a lovely birthday gift certificate at the Mobile Bookfair recently (thanks heather!) I picked up The Korean Table by Taekyung Chung and Deborah Samuels and page 93 called to me.

The recipe starts with using a Sweet Soy base that I had already made when I tried the tofu stuffed mushrooms last week, I wasn't in love with that recipe, a bit too bland for me, but I still had a ball jar full of the sauce. I decided to add some gochujang to the marinade to add a nice kick of heat.  It was perfect.

Around 5:00 I lit a fire in the fireplace so that the coals would die down and the firebox would be nice and hot by the time I was ready to cook.  It was a gorgeous day, sunny and warm when in the afternoon and then later in the day it started to get chilly.  So the windows were open wide and the fire was blazing.  Perfect!

I made two quick banchan, those little side dishes you get in Korean restaurants. Sadly I had no kimchi, but we did make one of our favourites the leek salad.  it is a perfect sharp foil to fatty cuts of meat.

The other one was just some nice ripe on the vine mini tomatoes we had kicking around tossed in some mirin, soy and rice vinegar and I also made a pot of sticky rice in the rice cooker to go with the pork. 

Listen up, right now I am going to tell you an important thing to remember when you make this recipe! Double the sauce.  Double it. Just do it - these are amazing, sticky, gingery, perfect little barbecued morsels of pork.  You boil the marinade and use it as a glaze and it is amazing over the rice as well.

Bernie never tasted so good.

Barbecued Pork Ribs

Make the sweet soy base:

Sweet Soy Base

1/2c water

4 sliced cloves garlic

6 slices peeled fresh ginger

1 t black peppercorns, crushed

1c soy sauce

1/2c light brown sugar

1/4c red or white wine (I used Shaoxing)

Combine water, garlic, ginger and peppercorns and bring to a boil.  Lower heat, simmer 10 minutes.  Add soy, brown sugar and wine.  Return to high heat and boil for 2 minutes.  Remove from heat, allow it to cool.  Strain it and store tightly sealed in the fridge.

For the ribs

Marinate 2-1/2 to 3 lbs of country style or meaty St Louis style ribs in the following mixture.  (I did it for about 8 hours, but I could see overnight doing quite nicely as well).  The ingredients below are for a single batch.  Like I said above, I would highly suggest doubling it.

2/3 cup of the Sweet Soy base

1 apple, grated (leave the skin on, we had jazz apples

5-6 cloves of garlic minced.  I used the microplane

2 T dark sesame oil

1/2 c of minced scallions (green onion)

2 TBS of peeled, minced ginger.  I have a ginger grater which really breaks it down nicely.  I am sure in the end I had at least 3 TBS ginger

1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper

2 TBS gochujang (Korean red pepper paste)

Fire up your grill. Remove the ribs from the marinade.  Pour the marinade into a pan and bring to a boil.  Boil 1 minute.  Now you can use it as a glaze and as a sauce. Grill your ribs until cooked to your liking (all depends on thickness and how hot your gill is.  Turn them every 5 minutes and brush with the glaze until they are cooked. Mine took about 15 minutes. 

For the Leek salad:

5 - 6 leeks

2T Korean ground chili (in a pinch use Aleppo pepper if you can find that)

2T sesame oil,

2 clove garlic

1 T cider vinegar

2.5 tsp sugar

4 tsp toasted sesame seeds

In a bowl mix the chili powder, sesame oil, minced garlic, cider vinegar, sugar and sesame seeds.  Season to taste with salt. Cut your leeks in half lengthwise and then across into half moons.  Soak them 15 minutes in cold water.  Lift the leeks off the water so the sand that has settled in the bottom is not poured on top of your leeks.  Place them in a clean bowl and add the dressing.  Stir well.  I let these marinate for about an hour stirring occasionally. Taste them and sometimes I add more salt, vinegar or sugar depending on how potent the leeks are.

Enjoy!

Grilled Garlic Scape Pesto Pizza

There I was trawling through my Google reader feeds when I came across the revelation.  I clicked on Dorie Greenspan and I looked up at husband and said "That's it!". He peered back over his tea with bleary what now crazy woman face. Now go look at that link, she had made a gorgeous fresh pea green garlic scape pesto.  I don't know why it had never occurred to me to use these gently garlicky tops in a pesto, but I knew I had a bag of them in my upstairs fridge just itching to be used.

I took them to work that day and using her recipe as a jumping point, I made mine with the traditional toasted pine nuts and a mix of Parmesan and Pecorino Romano cheese.  When the pesto sits for a few hours for the flavours to mingle and you taste it, there is the immediate punch of garlic and then the fresh green vegetal taste of the scapes, the garlic mellows quickly and the stuff is completely and utterly addictive.  I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but the next morning while I was picking up a few items for class at Whole Foods the idea struck.

Pizza.

I had a late night ahead of me and wouldn't get home until at least 8:00, so I did the lazy man's thing and bought one of their pre-made pizza doughs and I thought about pizza combos over the day.
When I finally got home I raided the fridge and decided on the toppings while I heated up the grill.
I had some Il Tartufo (Pecorino with Truffle) and a few other odds and ends hiding out in the cheese drawer so I grated them fine, I tore up a few fresh mozzarella balls, sliced some sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil and sliced a few tissue paper thin slices of guanciale that I quickly rendered in a pan to make them slightly crisp like bacon.  I pulled my dough into shape and got a big spatula ready.
When the grill was screaming hot I poured some canola in a bowl and dipped in a paper towel and using tongs I ran this over the grill grates.  Once the oil dries I did it a second, third, and forth time.  I read this tip in Cooks illustrated and it really does help to make it non-stick like seasoning a cast iron pan.

I plopped the dough onto the grill and after a minute I started sliding my large thin metal spatula under the edges to loosen it, after another 30 - 40 seconds I flipped the dough and gave the second side the same treatment.  You are just setting the dough at this point.

I slid it off the grill onto a sheet pan and put on the toppings, leaving the cheese off until it was in place on the grill.

I carefully slid it back on the grill and put on the cheese, turned the heat down and capped it with the sheet pan.  My indoor grill has a flat lid, not a domed one, so I have to come up with tricks to cover things.

Every few seconds I would peek to see if it was ready.
The heat under it is low so the crust doesn't get killed, but the toppings get enough heat to finish melting and the dough finishes cooking through. After  1 - 2 minutes I slid it off onto a board and dinner was done.

Food fast, not fast food.  The rest of that pesto is tucked in the freezer to stop me from sticking a spoon right in.  Good stuff!  Make some now before the scapes are gone for another season. 

Stuffed pork Tenderloin Part III Hardwood Smoked

 

The idea began to seep into the back of my brain around 1:30 as the clouds thickened and began closing in and the winds that were drying my sheets earlier suddenly turned colder. My plan of dragging the Weber closer to the back door and setting out some chairs suddenly looked less appealing with every degree that dropped off the thermostat.  All day I had been considering the taste of a nice grilled pork tenderloin over some hardwood charcoal, but the idea of doing it in a coat and gloves just didn't appeal.  I have a gas grill in the kitchen, but i really wanted the smoke.  I looked over at my kitchen fireplace and the stack of hardwood in front of it and the wheels began churning.  

At first I started scouring the house for metal.  I was looking for something i could use to build a tripod in the firebox to hold up the grate to my Weber kettle grill.  I was wandering around muttering, metal, I need metal under my breath.  Husband looked up at one point and said, "Metal? What do you want metal for?" Never mind I said, you'll think I'm nuts.
As I was sitting at the table and watching the chipmunk race across the back garden over the stones it hit me.  Bricks!

I have tons of spare bricks around here from past gardening projects. They would be fireproof, for at least a few fires, and I could get the height I needed to be over the grate that holds the wood.
I donned my raincoat, grabbed the garden trolley and started stacking bricks.
I dragged them into the house and rinsed them all off in the sink and started building the structure.  I went out to the garden and got the grill from my Weber kettle and laid it on top. Husband just came up from the basement, shook his head and laughed.

I found my cast iron pan (I need to remember to bring Grandma's 20-inch one back from Maine after the summer) and even though it is fairly small I figured I could just put a curve on my dinner plans to get it to fit in the pan.

Then I had to decide what I was going to do with my tenderloins. 

I started raiding the fridge and I decided to take the two tenderloins and put a stuffing in the middle, wrap it in a bacon blanket to keep it moist.  I found some double smoked bacon  that I finely diced and it went into the pan with a little olive oil.  When it started to smell nice I added 2 finely minced shallots.  When they were translucent I added a few crimini mushrooms I had left over that I minced fine.  Over in the fruit bowl I spied an apple so I peeled and minced that and in the drawer in the fridge were a few clamshells of herbs so I chopped some fresh sage and thyme and tossed that in as well with some salt & pepper. 

While this cooked down I went to the upstairs fridge and brought down a bottle of French hard cider and popped the cork.  When the pan started to go dry I poured in a few TBS and let it reduce, stirred, added a bit more, let it reduce and then I tasted it.  I had some garlic confit in the fridge as well so I added a bit of that, but you could easily add a few minced garlic cloves.

While this cooled I made a bacon blanket and put the two tenderloins in a yin and yang fashion, thick end to thin, thin end to thick and seasoned them with some salt and pepper.  I pressed the stuffing on to the bottom tenderloin, laid the other on top and then wrapped the bacon around and tied it up to hold it together.

In order to fit this in the pan I had to give it a curve which made some of the stuffing fall out, but I figured it would all just become good pan fond in the end for a sauce.

I threw in the rest of the the thyme sprigs, some garlic confit and poured the cider in the pan and onto the grate it went.  In total I think it took a little over an hour to cook and I flipped it once, added chicken stock to the pan periodically to keep it moist and to prevent the fond from burning.  I did flip it once just to see what it was looking like underneath and to get a nice sear on both sides. That is the picture you see on top, the picture below is when it was finished and resting on the board.

When a thermometer hit 137F I pulled it and let it rest on the board.  I strained the juices in the pan and tossed in a little oil and 1 minced shallot.  When it was soft I poured in some calvados and reduced that, then in went the pan juices and a shot or two of cream to bring it all together.  I think I might have added a squirt of lemon juice to brighten everything up and they seasoned with some s&p.

I wish you had smell-o-vision because this was incredible.  Bacon-smoke-apple-scented heaven.  The inside was perfectly moist as you can see from the picture and the pan sauce, oh the pan sauce redolent of smoke and onion, garlic and thyme, bacon and calvados, a definite repeat. 

My only advice to anyone with a fireplace is to rig it up right now, cook in it, you just may never use your grill again.

**Stuffed pork tenderloin I and Stuffed pork tenderloin II

Middle Eastern Flames

Day 3

Zucchini and summer squash grilling for Chris and Doc's White Bean Salad with Roasted Red pepper Dressing

Lamb Kefta on our ingenious creation of two bamboo skewers wrapped in foil to make lamb lollipops that don't burn.

My truck as Sun Tea stand. Note the bottle brewing on the back deck.

Tomorrow?
We talk about how much we love East Coast Grill.

Rocking the Ribs

I assure you these ribs are gonna be soooooooooo good tonight.

Not only did everyone in class make a rack, but both Nay Nay and Ash cruised by at separate times to inquire if there was a spare rack to be had, I stopped by Whole Paycheck and picked up a few racks for hubby and I so all told we made 14 racks of baby backs and a half chicken for my kosher girl.

Racks were rubbed liberally with a serious spice rub we made and then a bit of brown ale was lovingly poured around them, they were wrapped in lovely foil blankets and set in a low and slow oven for 2 to 2 1/2 hours.  The BBQ sauce was assembled by all and we finished them on the grill with a slathering of sauce and a bit of browning action.

Here is Doctor D one of my peeps with his very stylish onion goggles.  He had just finished chopping scallions for his Southwestern potato salad with chipotle in adobo sauce.  Uh huh...they all said it was yummy.  Of course he continued to wear them while we went out and grilled as well.  I think he just likes them.

Corn, on the grill.  After?  Smothered in mayo, chili powder, salt, lime juice and cotija cheese.  Seriously try it.

I have just showered the smell of the 14 racks of ribs off my person and sent the laundry down the magic chute.  I think it is time for a nice Campari Gin & Tonic.

Tomorrow? 

Middle Eastern BBQ.

Oh and Flummel, this is my view from work, not quite as lovely as yours, but oddly rather soothing.

BBQ Pit

Starting tomorrow for 5 days at create a cook it's BBQ Pit.  I am so excited!  We've rented a 50" long grill and the field trip Thursday is to East Coast Grill.  Sadly, my grilling God, Chris Schlesinger won't be there, one of these days though I'll finally get to meet him in person and have a little food chat, maybe act all groupie and get him to sign my books.  Sadly I lost my copy of Salsas, Sambals, Chutneys and Chow-Chows to the great dishwasher disaster circa 1995 - long story - but I always scour used book stores to find a replacement copy.  In fact Friday I picked up a copy of Quick Pickles at the Book Fair.
I have all the other books he did with John Willoughby as well.

What are we making next week?

·    Sate chicken with peanut sauce
·    Chicken and vegetable Yakitori
·    Fragrant Malay Rice with mixed Fresh herbs and edible flowers
·    Scallion Pancakes
·    Savory Watermelon and Pineapple Salad
·    Macadamia Nut brownies
·    Creamed Cornbread
·    Banana Papaya Fool
·    Grilled corn on the cob cotija cheese and lime
·    Watermelon-Strawberry Aqua Fresca
·    Mock Kansas City Ribs, Rub and BBQ Sauce
·    Mesa Grill Potato Salad
·    Uncommon Carrot-Raisin Slaw
·    Grilled lamb Kefta
·    Sunny sweet tea (hope for sun please)
·    White Bean Salad with Grilled Squash, Zucchini and Roasted Red pepper Dressing
·    Fattoush
·    Pita breads
·    Grilled fruits with Balsamic Reduction glaze
·    Burgers galore (make our own Ground beef from Chuck Roast) with the fixin's
·    Ziti with Grilled Gazpacho Sauce and sausages
·    Grilled chicken and sausages with peaches, peppers, pecorino and black olive vinaigrette
·    Grilled Fresh mozzarella and bread skewers
·    Chocolate Pizza

I'm thinking those will be some pretty happy 11 - 13 year olds, and maybe a few parents as well.
Any recipes you want?  Pictures of what we make?  Let me know, I'll try to oblige.