Full disclosure: We're burnin' shit 'cuz I recently upgraded from my dearly departed Weber Go-Anywhere gas grill (they value-engineered a $70 grill to the point where it no longer cooks) to a thumpin' $250 Magma Newport.
Also full disclosure: I much prefer charcoal to gas, but charcoal is explicitly verboten by my CC&Rs. Love the one you're with and all that.
1A) Cook something - anything - over some form of open flame. Although this challenge is clearly intended to let me fuck with my new barbecue, it's also November which means those of you with fireplaces hop to. Worthy of note: tortillas warm up better on a gas stove if you bypass the pan entirely and go straight for the burner; also peeps brulee are fucking delicious. S'mores? Hobo stoves? throw down, baller. If'n you wanna cook duck l'orange rawk on, so long as combustion products visibly lick your entree at some point during cooking.
1B) Edibles that are on fire are equally acceptable. I'm a big sucker for Baked Alaska, personally speaking. Bananas Foster and Cherries Jubilee are, in my opinion, overrated... but here's your chance to prove me wrong. A friend inspired me to make a drink called a Molotov Cocktail that involves caramelizing a sugared rim with a flaming float of 151 - it has the dual advantages of knocking you flat on your ass and glazing your upper lip with molten sucrose should you drink it without caution.
2) Photos are your friend. FINAL PHOTO OF READY-TO-EAT CHARRED DELICACY IS MANDATORY
3) Sticky that shit
4) Entry starts NOW and ends Tuesday Nov 18 at Midnight PST
5) Subscribe to #grubski 'cuz group shout-outs are tedious and lame and The Crew is busy with more important things to streamline it right now
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The Last Shout Outs:
veen, Complexity, _refugee_, flagamuffin, zebra2, rjw, wasoxygen, humanodon, ghostoffuffle, rezzeJ, thenewgreen
Well done and badged for taking the challenge to the extreme. I have to know how it tasted though? How long did the process take? Would you recommend trying it for anything beyond the novelty? Also, nice plate ware.
Actually, it was cooked to perfection. Still, it was a simple chicken, seasoned only with salt and pepper, and liberally coated in olive oil, so it wasn't that good, because how good can roast chicken actually be, right? Both my mom and my mother-in-law were in attendance, so I was hen pecked (sorry about the pun) to the bones by the time the things was fully cooked, and my mother-in-law still protested that it wasn't done (to the point where I just had to say, "Well don't eat it then; I'm done with this conversation!!!" It was fully done, and double checked by a meat thermometer.) It took about 1:30 to cook, which is a lot longer than I expected. That was because to make this work, the fire has to be blazing fucking hot. It got there eventually, but it took longer than expected. In the process I burned about 12 decent size logs (anywhere between 3" and 6" in diameter). By the time the end rolled around, I had a hard time getting close enough to the fire to spin the chicken, and I lost most of the hair on my fingers. Once it was that hot, it cooked pretty quickly. I basted and spun the thing pretty often, and the skin crisped up nicely. All in all, it was fun, but if I ever do this again, it will be with a more interesting meat (lamb roast, for example) that stands on its own better.
From last night: grilled fish in teriyaki glaze over rice. If the vague, MRE-sounding title leaves you cold, it's because to do this right, you should use top-notch ingredients, specifically good salmon. But the season is more or less over, and I don't have the cheddar for that kind of opulence, so instead you get GRILLED FISH OVER RICE instead of something sexier sounding. Step 1: ingredients. For sauce mirin, sake (you can do without if you're looking to cut cost further), sugar, soy sauce, fresh grated ginger. For fish if you have money, buy good fish, wild king salmon is best. If you're me, stumble over to the Fred Meyer across the street, find the cheapest, least questionable fish you can, wish you had more money, cry a little bit. I ended up with rock cod. The sign said "wild," and I had no choice but to believe it. It was less than $5 a pound. I don't want to know why. For pickled veggies bunch of radishes, rice vinegar, sugar, salt. Rock cod: not sexy at all. Step 2: pickled radish. Slice radish up, dump a bunch of unseasoned rice vinegar over the pieces in a tupperware container. Add salt (2 t), sugar (2 T). Let it sit refrigerated for a long time. Step 3: sauce. Mix 1/2 c mirin with 1/4 c sake. Gently heat, add 1/4 c soy sauce, 2 T sugar, a generous helping of grated ginger. Stir, reduce for about a half an hour give or take. Step 4: rice. If you have good rice, rinse under cold water in the sink for a few minutes until water runs clear. Then, with water running, "polish" the rice for a long-ass time. Ten minutes, maybe? Throw in rice cooker, forget about it until it's done. KB, I'd be lying if I said I didn't covet your stainless steel rice cooker. Fine looking machine. If you don't have good rice, rinse but don't polish. With good rice, polishing makes for a more tender, well-defined grain after cooking. With bad rice, it makes for mush. Step 4.5: drink, watch The Wire. Step 5: fish. Rinse off your cheap-ass fish and pat dry. Brush with home-made teriyaki sauce. If not for the nature of the challenge, I would have oven-baked at a high temp to get a good glaze, but in order to follow the rules, I just threw it on the grill. Grill at moderately high temp for five minutes per side. Careful not to overcook. Dear KB: thanks for picking the coldest, darkest week of the YTD to throw up a grilling challenge. Not pictured: me shaking my fist at the frigid, formless void above, cursing. Step 6: plating. Throw hot fish over rice, add a side of pickled veggies, drizzle with some reserved sauce. Crumble some dried seaweed over it if you've got some handy. Enjoy. Given how cheapo the fish was, tasted real good. Want to try again with good salmon when I'm wealthy.
Nice! Bueno on The Wire, bueno on the Fred Meyer shout-out. Know what kind of salmon you can get in Los Angeles? "Salmon." It's like ordering "coffee." If it makes you feel better, I'm jealous. I did my grilling in shorts. It's finally gotten down to the 60s down here. Which means it'll probably shoot back up to the 80s for Thanksgiving. We once roasted a turkey in 92 degree heat. It sucked.
Just finished season 3 tonight for the second time. Same thought this time around as I had the first: this show is Shakespearian. Don't know if I'll ever see TV this good again in my life. GoT is entertaining and all, but The Wire? That's HBO's golden age, right there.
The Wire is abso-fucking-lutely spectacular. I'm just kind of agape when I watch it. Generation Kill is pretty good, but it isn't quite The Wire. I suspect you missed this. There followed an anime club discussion. DO NOT GO HUNT FOR IT YET because Madoka Magika is something you have to just walk into, knowing nothing. But if you do, holy fuck. I am not a great big anime fan. I like Miyazaki. There are a couple others I tolerate. And I can say with no hesitation that Madoka Magika is one of the top three or four things I've ever watched. Give it through Episode 3. That's 66 minutes of your life. If it doesn't suck you in like a black hole I'll be amazed. By the bye? Thanksgiving day, the day I brined the turkey, it hit 87 on the porch.
Alright, I'll give it a crack. But it'll have to wait until I'm finished with the last two seasons of The Wire- can't leave something like that mid-stride. Thanksgiving at 87 degrees I could maybe wrap my head around. Christmas in that climate? Don't know if I could wrestle back that kind of cognitive dissonance.
You won't have to wait for shit, yo. The Wire came out a year apart. You're supposed to wait between seasons. Madoka Magica, meanwhile, is 12 20 minute episodes. In other words, the equivalent of four episodes of The Wire. Just do it. It's on Netflix.
Grilled Portobello/Ribeye with Fire Roasted Tomato bisque, Fire roasted Jalapeño potatoes and grilled asparagus There are a few components to this dish, but if you make ONLY ONE of them, make sure it's the Roasted Red Pepper Bisque. It's delicious. First, take 4 red bell peppers and place them on your grill for about 20 minutes, turn them to char on all sides. When they're done charring, they should look roughly like this: Now you want to peel the skin off of the peppers and take out the stem/seeds. Next step is to chop up 2 carrots, 2 celery stalks, 1/2 an onion and 4 garlic cloves. Get out your olive oil, your garam masala, your cumin and your salt and pepper, parsley and chicken/veg stock. Here is your prepped fixings: COMPONENT 1 Step 1: Put some olive oil in your pan and brown those onions, then add in your garlic till it is translucent. Step 2. Add in your roasted peppers, 1 tbsp cumin, 1tbsp garam masala, handful of chopped parsley and 3 cups of stock: Your pan/pot should look like this: Now, take your handy-dandy immersion blender and blend that soup together, adding salt and pepper to taste and about 1/4 cup of heavy whipping cream. COMPONENT 2: Take some potatoes and peel them. Then boil them till you can break them apart with a fork. Now, put them in a bowl with some butter and mash them up. -You now have mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes? That's boring as hell Steve. Well, okay, let's spruce those badboys up: Take a jalapeño pepper, take out the seeds and cook it over an open flame. Why? Cuz fyyyuuurrr: Now take some butter, add in your jalapeño and three asparagus. After about 3 minutes add some parsley, some sour cream and some red-wine vinegar: Remove from heat, place in a bowl and add some salt and a little bit of heavy cream. Use that immersion blender and go to town. The result should be a very salty, slightly spicy asparagus tasting sauce: Add this to your potatoes and get out that blender again. -Damn, that = some damn tasty potatoes. But that's still kind of boring. Okay, you remember those lentils we made a few weeks back? Well, I had leftovers and I thawed them out. Set your oven to bake at 450 for 20 minutes: I put the lentils at the bottom of a glass baking pan, put those potatoes on top of them, then a layer of cheese. I topped it with two asparagus spears. Why? Because it makes it look pretty: COMPONENT 3 Remember that grass-fed ribeye steak that you put in a ziplock bag over night with salt, pepper and sesame oil? You know, the one right next to the portobella mushroom cap you put in a bag of salt, pepper and sherry vinegar: Well, they're both ready for the grill and so is the asparagus: Now, they're grilled to perfection, you have all of your components and it's time to plate: 1. put down a bed of that lentil/potoato/cheese/asparagus casserole. -super tasty btw 2. place your ribeye (or portobella) on top of that. 3. drizzle your roasted red pepper bisque on the plate 4. Add grilled asparagus 5. garnish with goats cheese and parsley 6. Enjoy! Overhead shots: BONUS: The bisque makes an awesome lunch too. Honestly, this was a delicious, delicious meal, but if you only take one thing from it, make it the bisque. So damn good. I'm sorry you can't eat Bell peppers KB. Drizzle the asparagus (which had Olive oil on I prior to grilling) with fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper. Edit: Lemon juice is a good idea for the bisque too. Edit 2: This immersion blender is a god-send:
Thanks, I'm going to start using that blender more often and making more soups etc. I've never been big on making soups, and it's time I start. Need to make my own stock.
Win this sucka and make #7 be "cream of x." I'll withdraw just so I don't have to do another pork product. Immersion blenders make Vichyssoise really simple. Growing up, that recipe meant several hours' worth of dicing. I hated it.
Also, for the record, I was using siri voice to text and got emulsion instead of immersion. Thanks for the fix. But yeah, they're pretty kick ass. I've been making all sorts of "garnish" sauces of late with it.
Hot damn, people, it's f'ing Saturday and nobody's got anything up? for shame So check it. I'n'I made a pork loin. It's stupid easy, stupid cheap and stupid delicious. The total meal cost is like $16 and it feeds like 7 people. There's all sorts of fancy _wageraging boojie shit but the actual food is crazy cheap. We be makin' Allrecipes' rubbed and grilled pork loin. Worse than that, the recipe is by the National Pork Council. So hail corporate and all that but it's fuckin' delicious. Hello porkness my old friend Now - you don't have to cut off the fat. But I do. Because I don't like to eat it. It probably makes it moister and shit but this sucka's plenty moist. One thing that is worth doing: Truss that sucka. As in, wad it up into as football-like a shape as you can. PROTIP: there is nothing that makes you feel quite so accomplished in the workshop as running out of solder, and nothing that makes you feel quite so accomplished in the kitchen as running out of kitchen twine. Therefore, truss with abandon. We must now mix up our spices. If you read the recipe, you'll notice it's pretty much sugar, two kinds of cheap-ass seasoned salt, cheap-ass paprika, cheap-ass chili powder and coriander. I keep my coriander whole. Then I grind it. It's laborious. Mix that shit up Now you get messy. Take off rings, watches, anything you don't want to be gross. 'cuz you're rubbing the roast down with olive oil and then sprinkling your spices on it and then spreading it around with your hands. in-process pictures not provided because I don't want my Canon to smell like paprika forever. You can let it sit like that. Or not. Because I had a shit ton to do today, I rubbed the meat, then went to pick up my daughter, then got the mail, then folded some laundry, then started the warfare. So spices sat on it for like 3 hours. yum. The recipe calls for all sorts of fru-fru direct/indirect bullshit. To be honest? I hit it on high for 10 minutes a side (as in, top and bottom) with the lid on then on low for 15-20 minutes a side until it hits 165. (behold: crazy-stupid-cool grill. "High" is stupid hot; "low" is "medium" on my old grill.) Note that this can be done on charcoal just as easily. It can probably be done on an old shopping cart and some busted up pallets. It's a bomb-proof recipe. But it's also only meat. So we're going to take our $0.33/lb russets, scrub 'em down, cover 'em in olive oil then sprinkle with salt and pepper: Ahhhhhh. So your cooking time will vary. Note that in here I had to feed my kid, put her in the bath, then deal with her mom wanting to Skype in the middle of it, then get her in jamies, then read her three stories, then put her to bed, then tell my wife I was too involved in cooking to talk to her at the moment. In between, the roast hit 165, the potatoes were done through, and I turned that shit off and let it sit out in the barbecue for a while. Was it a disaster as a consequence? HELL NAH This is 4 lb roast and like 8 potatoes. 3 lbs and 6 potatoes went downstairs to our friends who just had twins like 3 days ago. Here's half the rest, with potatoes, Tillamook cheddar, chives from the window box and apple sauce: Here's all that and $600 in crystal because when in doubt, tart it up. (Because when you have a full set of Arnolfo di Cambio Cibi that you bought on eBay for a song, show it off whenever you can. Why? Because Blade Runner) GAUNTLET THROWN
HELL YES. Damn dude, I'm looking forward to that post. That's a hell of a preview.
It's highly unlikely I won't be able to participate this round. Turns out the honey loves grubski challenges, so much so I feel bad even thinking about doing one solo. But, we've been short on hangouts this week and don't expect we'll be in a place we can cook together before the challenge end. This upcoming weekend should be all clear for whatever comes next, though. Plus I was kind of busy this weekend with my theater thing
1 oz vodka 1 oz gran marnier 1 oz Bacardi 151 1 lime wedge Shake vodka and gran marnier over ice with juice from lime wedge. run rind over rim of martini glass; dip in baker's sugar. pour gran marnier/vodka into martini glass. Using the back of a bar spoon, float 3/16"-1/4" of Bacardi 151 on top of mixture. Light Bacardi. Serve flaming to customer, advise them to wait until the sugar starts to smell like caramel prior to extinguishing flames Then advise them to wait an additional 30 seconds so that caramelized sugar loses its commonality with napalm. Enjoy.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/absinthe-history/ I haven't done a lot of research on this one, but I also haven't found anything that's said "wormwood is not a thing to ingest." I know gin is worse for you in general because the juniper essential oils will fuck with your vascular system and I know absinthe is worse for you in general because toxicity, but I don't know how much worse, ya kna?Although Ponchon’s skepticism became less organized as the poem progressed, his initial point is well taken. It is still not clear how much absinthe was too much. The human dose-response relation is difficult to assess from available data. The binge drinker experienced hallucinations from acute intoxication; the chronic imbiber suffered some irreversible brain damage to an extent dependent on the amount of absinthe and the frequency of consumption as well as the age, nutritional status and general health of the imbiber. Upset stomachs were common in habitual drinkers, particularly those whose diets were less than adequate.
Hmm. I wasn't sure if it was a sliding scale or a case of needing to reach a tipping point for everything to go sideways and shitty. I skimmed that SciAm article (did Mr. van Gogh shoot himself? Really? The case for murder is way more plausible than I was expecting) -- but it was written in '89. According to Wikipedia, absinthe's good name was somewhat rescued in the '90s (legalized again, for example) thanks to some revisionist thinking regarding its toxicity. I don't know the details. I do know it's still a very different and less toxic product in the US (but thenewgreen swears it's not as good). So I don't know. Still handy when you need to sneak a flask in somewhere intolerable (a football game you don't want to be at, for example) but get much drunker than one flask should deal.
I'm an absinthe enthusiast too (thenewgreen and I have had at this point like six conversations about corpse revivers), but I can't help myself sometimes. Also if you're at/hosting a party, taking a flaming absinthe shot is a really easy way to impress drunk people.
Fuck. Traveling this weekend. I'm gonna try to participate on Friday, because there are very few things I enjoy more than fuckin' shit up with fire. I've cooked many times with an old school pit roast, which if you've never tried, is, objectively speaking, the best way man has ever invented to cook anything whatsoever. It's a bit chilly up here this week, so cooking outdoors is not quite so desirable. But I have a shit load of dried oak to burn in the fire place. I've never tried cooking in a fire place, but that has to be a thing, right?