Bucky's Barbecue and Bread

caipirinha salmon

Curt — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:51:57 +0000

Before I say anything else, go to your local seafood supplier and get some wild caught salmon while it’s still available!

It won’t be here for long, so take advantage of it while it’s here. Wild caught salmon is the way to go. Copper River salmon is gone, but there’s still some great stuff coming in from Alaska this season.

We picked up a fillet of Sockeye salmon yesterday, and I wanted to grill it right away while it was at its freshest. But the question was how should I fix it?

Grilling was the obvious choice, but I’ve fixed salmon the same way for the last couple of years. Recently, I found a drink that I really like called a caipirinha, made with cachaça, a liquor made in Brazil similar to rum but made only with sugar cane. In other words, good! Add lime, sugar and ice, and you have a caipirinha, Brazil’s national drink. I thought those same flavors would go with the salmon.

I poured a bit of cachaça on the salmon, added cane sugar and lime juice, salt and pepper, and let it sit for a while as the Bubba Keg grill heated up. I also halved a couple more limes to grill to add some grilled lime at the end.

I grilled the salmon for a few minutes skin side up just to get started, then flipped the whole thing over for about 5 more minutes, until the salmon was about medium rare to medium, not overcooked (that would be a horrible thing to do to salmon like this!).

Served with a bit of juice from the grilled limes and accompanied with a caipirinha… What a great Sunday dinner.

I’d love to hear how you grill or smoke your salmon; I’m getting more!

father’s day winners!

Curt — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:28:32 +0000

Sorry for the delay, and lack of photos, but my computer is down, and I’m standing at the Apple Store typing in the winners.

I got a lot of great stories, some here, some on Facebook, some in email. Here are the winners, though. I’ll be contacting you to get your info to send the prizes!

In no particular order:

Edgar Smith with the Yorkshire pudding story
Rebecca Forrest with the fireworks story
Cresciencio A. E. with the dog eating the tri-tip story (this had to be a winner… the dog won!)
Bryan Sherman with the hot metts story
And the final winner, Michele P., with the story about the Weber in the mobile home! A classic, and, again, the dogs win!

Thanks to everyone for playing along. I think it’s amazing how those stories stick with us. I can name any number of stories about my dad, and they all make him mean that much more to me.

bba challenge 4 - brioche

Curt — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:17:33 +0000

With the addition of Dreyfus Dog to our family, I skipped the third week of the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge. Bagels would have been a handful with a new puppy in the house, especially one that already ways 68 pounds! He’s doing well, though he still hasn’t gotten the cats to like him yet. I think it will happen still.

Week 4’s challenge was brioche, and there are three versions listed in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice, and I chose Rich Man’s brioche. The differences are the amount of butter in the dough; I went all out!

The dough is actually pretty easy to make; it doesn’t require an overnight poolish or anything. The starter has to sit for only about 20 minutes to get the yeast going, then it’s ready. The recipe makes enough dough to make four smallish loaves, and it has 4 sticks of butter in the dough.. that means that each loave has a stick of butter already in it!

I made 2 loaves in brioche pans, which are round and fluted, getting larger from the base.

Then I put some cinnamon in the dough and mixed it a bit more with the other half of the dough. I divided it into thirds and made strands out of the three parts, coating one with cinnamon, too. The three strands were braided together and baked as a loaf after rising for about 90 minutes.

The loaves do so well on the Big Green Egg; oven spring is amazing (when the dough goes into the oven/cooker, it ’springs’ up and expands). The braided loaf came out looking great, except for one thing… The cinnamon on the one strand kept the outside from browning right. The rest of it turned out great. It could have actually used more cinnamon in the dough, though, but I liked it.

I thought the Greek Celebration bread made good French toast, but it has nothing on brioche!

I’m deciding whether or not to do the challah bread coming up, as it’s similar to breads I’ve already done… If I do, I’ll post on it next week!

Meatloaf for those that don’t like meatloaf

Curt — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:19:34 +0000

My wife is one of those that doesn’t really like meatloaf, so I did my best to make a meatloaf that even she would like. I was cooking for 9 people, so I made 2 meatloaves (that’s an odd word!). To make sure it wasn’t just you mother’s meatloaf, I added a bacon lattice and smoked the meatloaf.

I started with Vidalia onions and Anaheim chiles. I got the Bubba Keg grill going at a medium temperture while I sliced two large onions. I put the onion slices on the hot grill along with the whole chiles. In fact, I put the chiles over the hottest part of the fire. I just wanted to cook the onion slices so they were soft, and I roasted the chiles until the skin was dark to black.

Back into the kitchen, I diced up the onion, then peeled the skin off the peppers and diced them up, too. I added 5 pounds of ground chuck, 2 pounds of ground sirloin, and 2 pounds of ground pork. To that, i added about 1 1/2 cups of breadcrumbs and four eggs. I also went out to the garden and got some fresh basil, thyme, oregano, rosemary and Italian parsley to chop up. With my hands, I mixed everything all up.

In one meatloaf, I stuffed the middle with a bit of grated cheddar cheese for the fun of it, then I formed both loaves and put a bacon lattice over them. You might ask what the difference between a bacon weave and a bacon lattice is… That’s easy! A bacon lattice has space between the strips of bacon, and a weave has the bacon strips touching side by side in a tight weave.

The meatloaves went on the Bubba Keg for about 2 hours at 250, until they reached an internal temperature of 165 degrees F. Just before taking it off the grill, I brushed the top with some Javacue Sauce and let it cook onto the meatloaf a bit.

We took the meatloaf to our small group from church, and almost everyone enjoyed it. One person had a childhood thing about meatloaf and won’t eat it. However, someone else hadn’t been eating much of anything, and they devoured more food than I’d ever seen them eat before… which in turn made me feel good!

I think this worked for non-meatloaf lovers for a couple of reasons. 1. It was smoked, which just adds a flavor that can’t easily be matched in the oven. 2. I didn’t overdo the breadcrumbs, so the texture didn’t get that weird feel that some meatloaf can have. 3. The grilled onions and roasted chiles added a different element that just sauteeing them wouldn’t have done. And 4., the fresh herbs, in good quanity (a couple handfuls of herbs), added a freshness that’s tough to find in meatloaf.

It’s worth a try, and it makes great leftovers!

father’s day giveaway!

Curt — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:40:53 +0000

Let’s get right to this… I’ve got something fun for Father’s Day! Five free MUG Root Beer Grilling Kits!!! Details on the giveaway are found at the bottom of the post…

The kits include:

A MUG Root Beer cooler
A MUG Root Beer apron
The ingredients to MUG Root Beer Southern Specialty Brew-B-Q Sauce

I’m going to tell you all a secret… I don’t generally drink pop, soda, whatever you want to call it. I used to drink a lot of it, but gave it up 5 years ago last month. I just don’t like it anymore. That is, except for root beer! It’s got enough flavor to be more than just sugar water, and MUG is a great example of root beer.

And this sauce looks really good; I’m going to try it this week myself!

Okay, here are the giveaway details:

Leave a comment here with the funniest grilling story you remember about your dad! It’s that easy. The five that make me laugh the most win!

Here’s my best Dad story (though there are more… sorry, Dad!)…

My dad had this great redwood cart he’d built for a Weber kettle grill, back in the late 70’s. We were having burgers one day, and he went to open the lid, knowing nothing about flashback or anything like that. As he lifted the grill lid, the air that caused a big fireball to shoot up, singing the front of his hair and pretty much removing his eyebrows! He wasn’t burned, just his hair singed. And he looked pretty funny until his eyebrows grew back.

Winners will be announced on Father’s Day, so hurry up with your stories!

No Excuses BBQ is also running a giveaway with MUG Root Beer, with a different take… To win there, give them the reasons your dad deserves to win!

Bacon networking

Curt — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:21:42 +0000

Let’s face it… Bacon is the new black. what used to be just a side dish with breakfast now gets used in ways we would have thought nuts 15 years ago.

I’ve had bacon in a chocolate bar, fixed bacon wrapped fresh figs and pig candy. I’d even seen bacon topped cookies.

I wanted to go one further, though. I made my favorite chocolate chip cookies and added 1/2 pound of crispy bacon!

I didn’t want all this bacony cookie goodness just sitting around, as I don’t need to eat all of that, so I asked some Twitter friends if they’d like to try them. Parker Flats was offered up to host at the Schwartz’s, so several of us were off to downtown last night!

The verdict on the cookies was that they were good, but they could have used even more bacon! I was afraid to overpower them, but next time I’ll double up the bacon! I also had some pig candy, made with brown sugar and ancho chile powder, which didn’t last too long once people tried it, and a loaf of brioche, which went really well with some cheese spread Carla and Tom of Hoperatives. They also brought some really hoppy beer, Party Town’s Rye 75. Hoppy, with shot of rye at the beginning.

This was my first time getting together face to face with Cincinnati Twitter friends, and we had a great evening. A couple I hadn’t talked to before were there, Annamarie and Scott, and Bryan Sherman came by, one of the guys that joined me for lunch last week at Jim Dandy’s BBQ. The weather was good, and the Tweetdeck was opened up to a breeze, with the Reds game playing in the background.

Now I just have to talk all the Cincy people into coming out to the country this summer for a get together. Maybe a barbecue happy hour of burnt ends and beer will entice them out!

take the cake cafe - lunch in cincinnati

Curt — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:53:44 +0000

Last month, my wife and I had lunch with my aunt and uncle from Dallas, when they came up to Cincinnati for a wedding. On twitter, I’d asked where a good place to have lunch would be, and several people answered that Take the Cake Cafe, better known for their cakes, also had the best lunch in town.

The lunch was really good; I think three of us had chicken salad, and my wife had quiche. However, I was more interested in spending time with Mike and Emily than the food we were eating. I had a lot of catching up to do, and still do, but the lunch was really a great time to talk with them.

I wanted to get back to the cafe again so that I could pay more attention to the food, which we finally did today! The cafe is in Northside, a progressive community north of downtown Cincinnati, with lots of locally owned businesses, a farmers’ market on Wednesday evenings in the warm weather, and lots of interesting old buildings. The main strip along Hamilton Avenue has a wide variety of businesses, including Take the Cake Cafe.

We got there just after noon, after visiting the Findlay Market Farmers’ Market and getting a bunch more perennials, some fresh garlic, baby carrots and beets, and some sugar snap peas (which means veggies are starting to make it to the farmers’ markets!). The cafe was busy, but not overcrowded, and the menu looked great; it changes daily, and Twitter seems the best way to find out the day’s menu.

The look is semi-industrial, as it’s a working bakery. Seating is community style; find a seat and sit down. There are also stools along the counter, and the counter is filled with the day’s pastry selection.

Today’s menu included shrimp bisque, pizza bread pudding, and chipped beef and a poached egg on homemade biscuits (these looked so good, I got one just to take home).

My wife decided on a salad of blueberries, spiced pecans and goat cheese. She got the goat cheese on the side because she doesn’t generally like it, and I enjoyed it instead (it was great!). I had a spicy chicken and black been wrap with a salad. It was nicely spicy and really good. My wife thought the salad was very good, but could have used more blueberries.

To finish lunch, my wife had a cream puff, which was filled with pastry cream. She really liked it, and, while I was paying for lunch, she talked to Gail, who made the cream puffs, and they talked about doing coffee cream to fill the puffs, which means I’ll have to get down to TtC again to try those!

I got 2 small desserts because I couldn’t decide. I brought home a fruit tart and had a peach tart there. The peach tart was… fantastic. They used shortbread for the crust, and the peaches were oh so good. I have no doubt the fruit tart is also good.

I don’t really do restaurant reviews here, but I do like to talk about places I eat now and then. The only downside I see with TtC is that it’s 45 minutes from home! I’ve had lunch at lots of places in Cincy, and I have to say this is my favorite place. The meal was just right. Other places have good food, but I tend to either feel it’s way too much, or it’s just ordinary. Take the Cake offers not only great looking cakes and desserts, but lunches that are really tasty, and the neighborhood is interesting and fun, too. Is it the best food? I don’t know. Is it the best location? Probably not, but maybe. It’s the whole package that works, I think, as well as friendly staff and customers.

If you’re in Cincinnati and don’t give Take the Cake Cafe a shot, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

Other Take the Cake Cafe reviews:

Wine Me, Dine Me

Food Hussy

it’s farmers market season again!

cemcadams — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:59:56 +0000

We’ve had a hectic week! If you are looking for the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge Week 3 (which is bagels), I didn’t get to it… But I have a good excuse: we rescued a 10 month old black Labrador Retriever named Dreyfus! He’s slowly getting integrated into the family, meaning Bucky and Petey still hate him, but they’re getting better. He gets very excited when he sees the cats, and chases them. It seems to be out of fun, not out of wanting to eat them! I have a feeling Bucky will let him have it with a claw or two to end that soon, though I hope nobody gets hurt! We’re praying that the animals get along so that Dreyfus can be part of the family.

I know some parts of the country have earlier growing seasons than Ohio does, but late April to early June is when we see most of the farmers’ markets opening here. The markets are already popular in most places, and are generally getting more popular, though there also seems to be some non-foodie confusion between farm markets and farmers’ markets.

The different between them to me is that farmers’ markets offer booth space to multiple farmers to sell their best offerings, and several producers will be at one market. A farm market is generally a market on a farm, selling only what that one farm wants to sell. This usually means, it seems, higher prices and non-farm stuff like decorations, etc. I generally greatly prefer farmers’ markets for the variety. The exception to this is going to orchards; I’d rather go directly to Stolz’s Fruit Farm north of New Carlisle, Ohio, or similar orchards, than to go to somewhere that apples have been transported to. There’s just something about being on the farm where the apple trees are that I love.

Anyway, we recently went back to Findlay Market in Cincinnati, the country’s 2nd longest running open air market. The farmers’ market is open on Saturdays and Sundays, from April to November. We also have been to the Lebanon Farmers’ Market, which is open on Thursday’s from noon to 6:00.

This time of the year, the farmers’ markets typically have plants more than produce, though strawberries are showing up now, too (great strawberries!). We’ve found that we can get young herbs at good prices, and a great variety. Even better, we found a booth that had perrenials for… $1.00 each! sure, they’re small, but they grow fast. At a local garden store, perrenials are anywhere from $7 up, often in the $12-15 range, so I figured we can plant about ten times the plants this way than going to a garden store. Sure, it will take longer to see the finished plants, but that’s ok, too. Even just a year in one of our beds has shown a huge difference, so it won’t really take all that much longer.

What I find I really love about farmers’ markets is the connection to the producer. You can generally talk to the person that got the items ready for sale, whether it’s annuals, herbs, green onions, honey, meat or fresh eggs. If you have questions, they are the ones that can give the answers, usually.

Findlay Market is a great farmers’ market for a couple of reasons. One, it’s a larger farmers market that attracts very good quality vendors. Two, Findlay Market is there, which is fun all on its own. We always take time to go to Kroeger & Sons while there, and got camel sausage on this trip (yes, camel!). As we walked around, we found a group of men that got together to relax in the morning as well as lots of Cincy people enjoying the morning on a great May weekend.

We also love the North Market in Columbus (it helps that Jeni’s Ice Cream is there). If you haven’t found your local farmers’ markets, find them and try them all out, then pick your favorite! If you do, let me know what your favorite local farrmers’ market is (I’m very jealous of Napa Valley, San Fran, Seattle and all those very cool markets that we don’t have here).

bba challenge 2 - artos

cemcadams — Tue, 26 May 2009 03:33:11 +0000

Since this was a holiday weekend, I extended my own deadline for doing the second Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge, Artos, or Greek Celebration bread, and finished it today.

I started last night by putting together Peter Reinhart’s standard poolish of flour, water and yeast. It sat overnight in the fridge, and I took it out this morning to get up to room temperature. I like to get all my ingredients ready, so I pulled up the recipe and saw I needed a couple of eggs, olive oil, milk, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and cloves. Other than that, I just needed the typical flour, yeast, water and salt.

I think the humidity was affecting the dough when I mixed it, because I needed to keep adding flour to keep the dough from being too loose or wet. As I kneaded the dough, I added extra flour until it stiffened up a bit.

There are variations listed in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice that can add raisins or dried cranberries. The Christopsomos form takes the standard boule (round loaf) and adds a fancy cross of dough over the top of the bread. I decided to do the Lambropsomo shape, which is braided, but I didn’t add any of the extras to the dough, partly because I don’t care for some of them, and partly because the dried cranberries I had in the cupboard were a year out of date!

To braid the dough after the first proof, I separated the dough into three equal parts and rolled each section into equal length strands, then simply braided them together. I thought this would be tougher to do, but a three strand braid is pretty easy.

I got my XL Big Green Egg going about the time the first proof was almost done. The BGE set in at 350 and just stayed there and wouldn’t budge. At the end of the 2nd proofing, I just took the loaf out to the BGE on a peel. After 20 minutes, I turned the loaf around.

I knew the loaf was good sized, but the oven spring this thing got on the BGE was amazing! It had doubled in size again! This was a big loaf o’ dough! And on the BGE, it took a bit less time than in a typical oven. After just over 30 minutes, the internal temperature was at 191, so I took it off and let it cool a bit.

However, the bread smelled soooo great, I couldn’t wait long. We had friends over for Memorial Day, and we all tried it a bit. I really liked the first BBA bread, Anadama bread, and thought I’d do it again, but this bread puts it to shame! Man is it good! Just carrying the bread in on a peel from the BGE, I was surrounded by the aroma… oh man!

So far, I’ve tried peanut butter and jam on it (great), and toast with butter and honey (great). I’m expecting French toast to be even greater, and I think even a good ham and cheese panini would be delicious on this stuff.

Next on the list for the challenge is… Bagels!

san marzano tomato taste test

cemcadams — Sun, 24 May 2009 22:27:59 +0000

If you watch chefs on TV lately, just about any time they use canned tomatoes, they seem to be using San Marzano tomatoes. This is a region on Italy that produces plum tomatoes. They’re more and more available at your local grocery store.

I’d been told to watch out for imitations that state ‘San Marzano Region’ or ‘San Marzano Style’. This means they’re not really from San Marzano, but trying to cash in on the name.

I had wondered if this is all hype or if these are really the best tomatoes in the world or not, so my wife and I did a bit of a taste test. I got three cans of tomatoes: one was certified San Marzano (La Valle), one was San Marzano Region (Belle Terra) and the last was from California, and just marked ‘Whole Peeled Plum Tomatoes’ with no San Marzano claim.

I chopped one tomato from each can in small ramekins and put a post-it note marked with A, B or C on the bottom. A was the California tomatoes, B was the San Marzano Region and C was the San Marzano tomato. The ramekins went on a tray, and I had my wife try them without looking at the letter under the dishes. She told me her results, and I asked her to do the ol’ shell game to rearrange them for me. I then tasted them and told her my results.

Yeah, I know this is anecdotal, and a small sampling, but we did both have the same results. And they were:

B - San Marzano Region Tomatoes
A - California Plum Tomatoes
C - Actual San Marzano Tomatoes

So, I have to wonder a couple of things. Are our results due to the samplings we had (maybe the cans weren’t good examples of the tomatoes)? Or are the TV chefs paid by the San Marzano import companies to pump up their sales? I don’t know, and I’m certainly not accusing anyone of anything, but my conclusion is that plum tomatoes are plum tomatoes for the most part. The San Marzano tomatoes were clearly our last place tomatoes in this test.

Maybe I just need to try it again, with a different brand. But until then, I’m not going to jump on the San Marzano boat.