foodiefanatics

Dinner last night was an adventure.  The menu included tomato and basil bruschetta (from Cooking Light, 6/08), avocado, mango salad (from one of Rick Bayless's cookbooks, but I don't know which one) and pizza on the grill from Cook's Illustrated (7/05).  All the food was great. The bruschetta has a quickly cooked tomato topping with capers and balsamic vinegar, and I chopped up some fresh mozzarella as well. It was flavorful and the toasted bread rubbed with garlic was crunchy without being hard.  No problems making it either.  The salad was fantastic. I had some difficulty procuring the pepitas--strangely the only ones I could find were lime flavored which probably would have gone. I bought them but at the last minute decided to substitute some spicy pine nuts I had instead.  The dressing was great--flavorful but mayonnaise like even though there is no mayo in it. Must be the effect of the blender.  This course was also great. Light and flavorful for the hot weather. The final course, however, was where the fun began.  I made the dough, split it into fourths and rolled out the first of the four.  Looked good. I happened to glance back at the recipe and it said to roll the dough out in parchment paper. So I did. I had, neatly stacked, all three pizzas in parchment and then the one I'd rolled out on it's own on my pizza paddle. I put all the topping ingredients on a tray and headed outside to the BBQ.
The magazine says to cook with all burners on high.  Well, the pizza bottom was charred in about 22 seconds. we quickly flipped it, through on the toppings and had to take it off in a minute. Needless to say, the toppings were still raw and the crust was overcooked, but still tasty. Okay, turn down the grill. I go to get the second crust out of the parchment and it is stuck like glue. And I mean  that literally the mess was horrendous. No luck, throw that away.  Meanwhile, of course, everyone is waiting for dinner.  The third one I meticulously use my fingernails to scrape off the parchment and end up with ripped up, scraggly mess that we are still able to turn into a kind of sort of pizza. THis time, we cook on the lower temp and it works better.  For the fourth one, I get a brainstorm. Put it in the freezer.  Which works wonderfully. AFter about 20 minutes, I can easily remove the crust from the parchment. The final pizza we cooked at about 450 on the grill for 2 minutes, flipped over and cooked at 450 for about two minutes, then turned the grill off, put the lid down and let the pizza sit for another two minutes to melt the toppings. Finally, it worked. Of course, by now, dinner is long over and I ended up putting the pizza in the fridge. (by the way, the recipe did say to coat the parchment paper liberally with flour--a step that I overlooked!)

Does that food look gross? Maybe I need a food stylist?  Despite appearances, all the food turned out good with the rolls and the peas as better than good (the rice needs more umph!).

These are the peas cooking. My daughter says they seem like baby food.  She's not so fond of that!

Sunset magazine August 2006 has a great recipe for Bart's Ultimate BLT. This sandwich rocks.  It's made with applewood smoked bacon (the recipe says thick cut, but we like the thinner better), tomatoes, arugula, fresh mozzarella and basil aioli.  Make sure you get some good artisan peasant bread. I used my own basil aioli recipe made up on the fly: about 2 T finely chopped basil, scant 1/2 cup mayo, 1/2t chopped or crushed garlic and 1t lemon or lime juice. If you have time, let the aioli sit in the fridge for at least an hour.

Tonight I'm venturing kind of/sort of into the caribbean to do a beans and rice dish (made with pintos instead of the usual kidney beans) with lots of chile and coconut milk. I'm serving it with a sweet pea puree, a simple dish of peas, jalapeno and a little butter, and some yeast rolls (kind of strange accompaniment but wanted something to dip into the red beans and rice). I made the brownies from the Essence of Chocolate cookbook. See my review in the recipes section.

Had a great Heritage Zin from Cline last night. This 06, 15% alcohol was flavorful but light for a zin (not a fruit bomb).  Flavors of berry but also, what I called, mushroom. My husband wasn't so keen on that flavor, calling it strange for a zin, but I liked it.  It went well with the BBQ ribs we cooked.

 Sweet and spicy carrots were quite yummy, but my daughter said they tasted like carrots in lemonade and she really didn't like that combination. I substituted creme de cassis for the Elderberry liquor. 
Potatoes were tasty and had a nice, crispy crust on them. I did not peel the potatoes. See a picture of the potatoes below.
The ribs, well, they were an adventure starting with the new grill which I couldn't get on only to discover after much grumbling that the dumb thing was on already!  Okay, first hurdle overcome, now I had to figure out how to put on the hickory chips without a built in smoker on the grill. AFter doing some reading on it, I soaked the chips for 20 minutes then wrapped them in an "open roll" of tin foil which I took to mean, wrapping them with tin foil but leaving the top part open.  While they were soaking, I preheated the grill to "indirect medium" which meant (I hope) preheating the grill with all three knobs on, then turning of the middle and turning the top and bottom to medium. I put the meat in the middle (according to the Weber directions), put in a pan of water, shut the lid and ran back to re-read the directions.  It didn't give a temperature for the ribs so I wasn't sure I had indirect medium. And they seemed to be cooking too fast and the temperature was 400. So I reduced the heat somewhat. Still, I think they cooked too fast. One smaller rack was done in an hour (the recipe said 1.5-2 hours). The second rack I way overcooked.  So, this was not a big success. Hopefully, I'll have better luck (or have learned something) next time (see picture below).
The blackberry pie was great! I'll post the pie crust recipe in recipes. It turned out beautifully flaky. We topped it with whipped cream.

On today's menu:
sweet and sour carrots (food and wine, 6/08)
skillet potatoes with olives and lemon (gourmet 8/07)
Kansas city style ribs (weber's big book of grilling)
Blackberry pie, using the berries from the backyard (Levy's Pie Bible with my mom's crust recipe--don't like Levy's butter crust, too tough!)
We're baptizing a new weber grill tonight. I'll post about the food and the grill tomorrow!

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