Prep, Prep and more Prep.

This one took a bunch of work to get it done.  The dinner turned out very good.   We did lettuce wraps with peanut sauce, fried rice and egg rolls.  Everything was fresh and not frozen out of the box, like we normally do our egg rolls.  Yeah, we cheat but not on Sundays.  The peanut sauce was different. Like I said a lot of prep but, it was tasty. 

I think next week we will do sea food.    

Chicken under a Brick (ok two bricks)

Why would you put a chicken under a brick?  To cook the other side.  Ha.  Ok not funny.  It is suppose keep the chicken moist.  It turned out great.  The hard part about this was turning a whole roasting chicken into a flat piece of meat on the grill.  Two words "good scissors".  The technique is called Spatchcocking.  Fancy term for “ cutting out the backbone and laying it flat.  It was kind of yucky but it worked well.  It laid flat on the grill and cooked up nicely.  I used olive oil, salt, pepper and some fresh thyme to season it with.  It looks kind of strange. 

To go along with this we grilled some sweet corn and baked some fresh squash from a friend’s garden.  Thanks Cecilia.  It was good.  The dinner turned out a bit yellow looking but was very good.  For the second week in a row I was able to have a good beer to go with this.   Stone IPA.  It went very well.   

Lauri and I were taking about next week and what to do and we decided that we are going to start doing a regional theme dinners.  Asian, German that kind of thing.  Let’s see what we come up with next week.  

The best so far

This meal turned out just perfect.  We are starting to get good at this.  First off we had two very nicely marbled rib eye stakes that we let age in the frig for a few days.  A little rot adds to the flavor.  We seasoned them with a burber rub, no not carpet, first thing that came to my mind.  It is sea salt cracked pepper, paprika, onion and garlic.   I grilled them over some hard wood along with onions, bell peppers and a couple of whole garlic cloves.  Lauri lightly toasted some bread and  olive oil.  We used the garlic cloves as a topping for the bread.  Great stuff for some bad breath.   To accompany the meal I found some barley wine ale that complemented the meal perfectly.  It was just enough to cut the garlic and really bring out the flavor of the steak.  It was a great paring of food and beer.  

For Desert Lauri baked a yellow cake and served some fresh strawberries over the top.   Just enough to top of a perfect meal .       

I think next week we do something with chicken.  

Until next week.

Good Stuff!!!

Enough with the grill, well almost. Sunday was baked ziti with hot Italian sausage and three types of cheese. Rich and hot.

Lauri and I made a deal a few weeks back. She was cooking whole wheat pasta. I know it is good for you but it tastes like the inside of a feed bag and never seems to be done. It ends up like paste in my mouth, no matter what is on it. Leftovers, forget about it, it has to consistency of paste again after being heated. Our deal was when we had Pasta, it would be the unhealthy normal starchy stuff and when we had rice, I would have to deal with the brown stuff from now on, except for with Sushi.
Any how the Ziti was great and so were the left over’s. We had it with a tossed salad and garlic bread, slightly burnt and a good bottle of Merlot.


Here is where the grilling came in. I BBQed Ice cream. I did it. Yep, we have pictures. It works. It took a lot of prep work and a trip to the hardware store for the bricks, but it worked. The sad thing was it was not really that good. Kind of bland with a hint of hickory smoke. I used vanilla ice-cream and coconut. It was not very flavorful. Next time I think I will use something else. Not sure what. Suggestions?

We are having a lot of fun doing this and it gives us something to kind of plan for the week ahead.
We are still looking for dinner guests to share this with. Next week I think we will do something with beer and beef. MMM beer..