Scenes from Sunday BBQ

One of my favorite things to do in the summer is hang out with friends in the sun over tasty BBQ and a beer. Really, I don't think it gets much better than that! Last summer, inspired by friends, we realized that we didn't have to wait for other people's schedules - we could just grill in our backyard every weekend. We normally cook big batches of stuff on Sundays anyway to prepare for the week, in the summer we just shift it outside to the grill. Christian's my best friend and I really love hanging out with him - which is why we're married, duh - so what better way to spend your Sundays than experimenting with grilling stuff and drinking beer with your best friend while listening to classic rock?

We typically do our Sunday grilling initially without a specific plan, but based on what our neighborhood market has on special that week and what's in our CSA box, and then develop a plan around what's on sale. I have to admit that usually we hit the market on Saturday and marinate the meat overnight - but this week we were feeling too lazy to go to the market on Saturday, so instead we went on Sunday - and decided to go with rubs instead of marinades for the pork ribs and steaks they had on sale. (Hey, at least this is a realistic food blog... and we're real people who don't always feel like cooking!) Am I the only one who likes buying interesting rubs/sauces/etc... but then hoards them without using them because I'm saving them for some magical special occasion? I'm trying to break from this habit because I realize it's silly, especially after reading this - it's worth a read - http://www.happyhealthylonglife.com/happy_healthy_long_life/2010/05/to-life.html . And given the fact that I was so ill for so long - guess what, there is a special occasion, it's called "life"! So we decided to try out a bunch of rubs we've been hoarding. We also grilled up some peppers and some gorgeous CSA eggplant. Dessert was a grilling tour de force that deserves its own post (coming soon!)

Our awesome neighbors happened to come home in the midst of our grilling (we share a backyard), so we ended up hanging out with them for a while (hence a lack of pictures of the finished food - I'd rather live real life as it happens, instead of breaking the flow of life for the sake of the internet...) But otherwise the pictures are fun, so without further ado, we present: Scenes from a BBQ.

Pork ribs rubbed with a smoked chipotle & black tea spice rub from a little store in Palo Alto

Pork steak with an herb mix Christian brought back from a conference in Greece (I'm as jealous as you are)

Another one of Christian's Greek herb mixes - this one has more red pepper

I think too rarely do we truly appreciate how gorgeous fresh produce can be

I've learned a lot about the joys of "hanging out" from this stray cat who shows up every day around 7 because he knows that at least one of us is often outside around that time. He doesn't even beg for food, he honestly just likes... hanging out with us.

We know he's happy to see us because he does this slow-blinking/squinting thing at us that apparently means that he likes and trusts us, in cat-speak. And NO, I do not touch him - that's gotten me into enough trouble already!

Christian's been talking for a while about how he needs a "manly apron" - so this was my gift to him.

This is the closest I get to camping, honestly

Dessert post to follow shortly! (Think: grilled fruit chocolate fondue, with some twists - like dulce de leche...)

What to do with shishito peppers

Shishito peppers have got to be one of my favorite foods. I love how it's like playing pepper Russian roulette - one in every ten peppers is spicy, according to Wikipedia, but in my experience it's often closer to three or four out of ten! Seems to vary on the batch though. They're related to the Spanish padron pepper. We usually get them at our local Japanese market, so you can imagine my excitement when they were in our CSA box this week. I called them up and requested two extra pints.

Ready for business!

My favorite way to make these is to grill them - usually in a pan, but we've threaded them on skewers and made them on the grill as well. First up - wash them thoroughly, and most importantly, pat dry! Otherwise you will regret it when it's grilling in the pan, and the hot oil is sputtering in your face. (Hypothetically)

Drizzle with a little oil. I did this in a separate bowl to minimize oil in the pan, but Christian reminded me that I could have used our new olive oil pump spray thing - will do that next time.

Ready to go!

Toss in the pan. Make sure you turn up the heat to HIGH - or at least close - you really want to make sure these peppers grill and not sautee.

t=0

Personally I like my peppers on the dark brownish, blistered, exploded and deflated style, but you can adjust to personal preference. Keep a close eye on these, but at the same time, you don't want to stir *too* often - you want them to blister and char in spots. Stir occasionally though so they cook on all sides.

Starting to blister

Like I said, I like mine really on the done side - these aren't burned, I swear, they are delicious!

How I like them

This should take 5-10 minutes, depending on the batch. Remove from heat, sprinkle with sea salt, and you're good to go!

Delicious!

Someone decided to start in on the bowl before it even hit the table.

He was totally caught green-handed, looking guilty.

These were delicious! I was a little disappointed though that the CSA ones were so mild - not a spicy one in the bunch. I really like the batches where it seems like 5 out of every 10 is a mouth-scorcher - and you're cursing and crying and drinking wine to kill the pain which only makes it worse... and shoveling more peppers into your mouth... until you're a sniveling mess... and it hurts like a mother... but when they are done, you talk about how fun it was.

Maybe it's just me. Christian said he didn't miss the spicy ones...

Veena

Fiesta Prawns! In a Garlic-White Wine-Butter Sauce

We've been trying to cut back a little on going out to eat (San Mateo has so many awesome restaurants such a short walk from us that it's always tempting... some people call it "Date Night" but we call it "Tuesday"...) But the reality is that we like artisan cocktails, so throw in a few of those with your meal, and it adds up quickly. I thought about it and realized that since we're both well-versed in the kitchen, we could easily splurge a little on raw ingredients, invest in some premium liquor (we have one heck of a homemade infused liquor stash already, maybe another post...) - and we can have a restaurant-quality meal at a fraction of the price, complete with al fresco dining in our backyard if we choose.

So I tried to ignore the voices in my head screaming "Sushi!" (which is better than what they're usually screaming...) Fri night as I made my way home from sweltering Palo Alto, and instead thought about the prawns stashed in our freezer. Shrimp/prawns are awesome because they're delicious and you can get a gourmet-style meal that's fast - shrimp cook in ~5 minutes, pretty amazing! Christian suggested using up our CSA haul this week (squash, red onions, garlic, sweet peppers) and we were off!

Somehow we ended up with 12 heads of CSA garlic. We used an entire head in this dish. Peeling was kind of a pain, but I love garlic so it was worth it. (Note to self: learn those clever hints to peel garlic faster - this was actually the most time-consuming part). 

I <3 alliums. Most of this is from our CSA (the rest of our CSA garlic wouldn't fit!)

Cooking this was simple. You could almost certainly do this faster, but I was trying to coordinate the cooking of all these vegetables without overcooking anything so they still remained slightly crispy, so I used lower heat than I usually do (working on my patience here!) which actually worked exceedingly well.

Started with chopping a whole head of garlic and heating it on very low heat in as much oil as I planned on using for the whole dish. I wouldn't even call this "sauteeing" - more like a very gentle heating, allowing the garlic to perfume the olive oil. I think I got this from Mark Bittman. You don't want the garlic to really turn brown at all here, really just perfume everything. This was probably ~10 minutes - during which I chopped everything else, and make sure to keep an eye on it/stir occasionally.

Chopped all the squash/sweet peppers we had. Christian chopped the red onion, added it to the garlic after probably about ~10 minutes, kept the heat on very low. This worked well in the final dish, since the onion was still a little crispy. After a while, threw in the sweet peppers as I worked on peeling the prawns.

Fiesta!

Got distracted and added the squash later than I meant - oops! Would have sped things up a bit. You really want to keep the squash a little crispy here - which is why I was delaying adding them initially - so be mindful to not overcook. Turned up the heat though as we really had a pile of veggies at this point.

Last summer we had a ball slow-roasting tomatoes from the farmers' market (these are amazing!) - we would buy pounds of them, slow-roast them (another post on these to follow?), and use them in all sorts of recipes. The flavor really develops in an amazing way. Faced with the end of the summer, we froze a lot of slow-roasted tomatoes so we could continue to have a taste of summer whenever we wanted. We threw in a healthy dose of them here too.

Tray of slow-roasted tomatoes from last summer

So while the squash seem nowhere near done, throw in the prawns. Added some butter for flavor (~2 tbsp?) and a healthy dose of white wine too (1 cup?) Shrimp cook quickly, so be careful not to overcook them, but also make sure the wine boils down.

The HerbMaster (Christian) chose the herbs to accompany this - tarragon and parsley fresh from our garden.

HerbMaster with his lemon verbena harvest last year

Completed dish:

And dinner is served!

This made an awful lot of food (I love leftovers!), was definitely restaurant-quality (and restaurant shrimp seems to be ~$20/plate, so...), and was the perfect summery gourmet fare for a nice Fri night dinner. :) Really, how can you go wrong with prawns in a garlic-white wine-butter sauce, with CSA veggies and herbs from your garden? You could sub in any veggies you have on hand here. Delicious and easy!

 Veena