dave's not here

simple yet oh-so-delicious steak dinner

Warning: This post contains pictures and descriptions of meat and my enjoyment thereof. Vegetarians and vegans please proceed at your own risk.

I’ll probably redo this post at some point because most of the pictures are blurry. I think I had the camera in between settings or something. In any case, this is sort of my signature “I’m-lazy-but-hungry-for-something-fancy” dinner (it’s relatively quick, easy and delicious) so it’d be nice to have pictures that do it justice. In a nutshell, this is a simple, rich-tasting dinner that includes grilled steak and potatoes, steamed asparagus and sautéed mushrooms and onions.

Here’s what we start with:

About the steak: A number of years back, I made the jump from sirloins to rib eyes and I’ve never been able to go back. It’s a pricey decision, but it’s worth it. It’s not like we eat steak everyday. Anyway, to give you an example, the steaks in the picture above are from Costco and cost about $26.00. Now, it’s way too much for us to eat in one sitting, but leftover steak never goes to waste in our house (aside: the leftovers from these steaks were turned into steak and olive quesadillas for lunch the next day. I should have taken a picture of those too…). Costco steaks come in pre-packaged amounts but they have some of the best quality meats for a good price. Their beef tenderloin is good too.

The other ingredients: So what else’ve we got? Some mushrooms and onions, both of which will be sautéed; a few white potatoes; asparagus, and some olive oil and fresh garlic. And of course a good red wine. By good, I mean something tasty and cheap — that’s a $12 Malbec from Argentina there.

the secret to a good steak

There are three secrets to cooking a good steak:

1. First, choose a steak with good marbling: fat = flavour. This is harder to do with leaner cuts of meat, which is why you’ll often see tenderloins wrapped in bacon. But don’t shy away from a bit of fat — you won’t regret it.
2. Second, let them rest. Before you cook them, let them stand at room temperature for 30-40 minutes depending on their thickness. If you’re seasoning them, do so about 15-20 minutes before they go on the grill. Any sooner and salt can start to draw moisture out of the meat. You want to let them rest again for about 5-10 minutes when you take them off the grill, so that the juices can ease back to the edges of the meat.
3. Third, olive oil. There may be lots of ways you can marinate steaks, or slather them with barbecue sauce and whatnot, but a good cut of meat needs no extra flavouring other than some salt and pepper or a simple steak rub. But oil it first, both sides. You won’t be disappointed.

Here are my steaks after being seasoned (the picture sucks. Nice foot, Dave):

I use Montreal Steak Spice (also from Costco) but I’d like to experiment with my own steak rubs. It’s just hard to deviate from a good thing (seriously, what I’m describing here is awesome when it’s done — why mess with a good thing?).

the “fixins”

I also season the potatoes with olive oil, coarse salt, ground pepper and a secret rub (it’s only secret because I can’t remember what I put in it…paprika, cayenne pepper and some other stuff). Cut the potatoes in half and toss them in the mixture and let stand for 10-15 minutes.

Here are the mushrooms prior to preparation:

Interestingly, I actually start the mushrooms and onions before the steaks. On a hot grill, steaks really only take 5-6 minutes a side for medium rare. I like rare, so it takes even less time.

The mushrooms are done in olive oil with ground black pepper, onion powder, a dash of rimmer (the Caesar spice), some granulated garlic to start and some fresh minced garlic added after about five minutes. Speaking of garlic, here’s a cool tool I picked up a couple years back. Put garlic in:

Give it a couple of twists and “voilà!” — minced garlic:

For all the trouble that goes into the mushrooms, the onions are just done in a blob of butter over medium heat. Here’s a shot of everything on the stove. The asparagus are steaming in the back pot; start them with about 5 minutes left on the steaks.

The potatoes, meanwhile, need about 20 minutes with the lid down, so start them first and then drop the steaks on with about 10 minutes to go:

There’s no actual pictures of the steaks cooking because once I get to that point, I’m pretty busy coordinating everything, and I forgot to take a shot.

the reveal

Here’s the steaks and potatoes resting (again, the picture stinks):

As mentioned, these were big steaks, so we wouldn’t just do a “one each” kind of thing. Instead, I like to treat them like wee roasts and slice them across the grain for serving. That way, everyone can have exactly as much as they want without feeling like they have to eat a giant piece of meat just because it was put on their plate. Here’s the final presentation:

That was for Dex. I ate a lot more than that. And Cath ate somewhere in between. But we were all full. And the wine disappeared too.

If you have any questions or comments, let me know. I’d love to hear how other people cook their steaks.

jerk pork

Sexual innuendos aside, this is a labour-intensive yet very satisfying grill project. I did it for the first time last year for our annual Father’s Day bust-up (aside: Father’s day is in June, Cathie’s dad and my dad both have the same birthday, June 26, and my birthday is July 6, so we usually just get together sometime in late June/early July and celebrate everything at once). It worked out well enough last year that I decided to make it a tradition because, really, I don’t get many chances to grill huge slabs of meat for a large crowd.

preparation

Prep work started on Saturday afternoon. A lot goes into jerk pork, not the least of which is a 7-9 pound shoulder ham. I picked one up at Rocky’s Meats on Hastings Street in Burnaby. The ham was actually cut and retied as a roast, so the thickness varied, but I made it work. Ideally, you get it bone-in, and have them cut and flatten the ham a bit better, but I made it work.

Then there’s an arm’s length of dry and wet ingredients that need to be processed into a paste and spread over the meat. It ends up looking pretty gross, but it smells great. Here’s a partial list of ingredients (email me if you want the whole recipe):

• 2 bunches green onions
• 1/4 cilantro
• 1/4 Italian parsley
• 6 big cloves of garlic
• 1 medium white onion
• 3-8 scotch bonnets (I substituted about 12 hot chilis)
• rum
• soy sauce
• vinegar
• allspice
• nutmeg
• cinnamon
• marjoram
• thyme

I used a food processor to blend everything together. Then I “jerked” the pork — which is believed to be derived from the word jook, meaning “poke a bunch of holes in the meat with a sharp stick.” I chose to use a knife instead of a stick.

I spread the paste over the meat, working it into the holes with my fingers. I probably don’t have to tell you that, after handling a paste made up primarily of onions, garlic and chili peppers, you don’t want to be touching your eyes. In fact if you have sensitive skin you may want to wear rubber gloves.

I let the meat soak overnight, turning once. Here are a couple of shots of the meat the next day, about an hour before it was time to throw it on the grill:

Here’s me flipping it one last time. Remember, no touchy de eyes:

All in all, you need to plan to prep this at least 24 hours in advance, more if you have to shop for ingredients.

cooking

I had also prepared some sliced sweet potatoes soaked in a honey-lime sauce, and I decided to grill them first. Then I moved them to a warming rack, and placed a smoker box filled with hickory chips and whole allspice berries over the flame. Once it started smoking I threw the meat on. Here’s how it looked when it first went on:

As it turns out, I did the potatoes a little early. They were starting to get a bit soft so I took them off and put them in the oven to stay warm. Here’s the meat after about 30 minutes:

A few action shots of me flipping and dealing with flare-ups. Keep in mind that for the most part, the lid was down and I was using medium heat:

The “grillmaster” at work:

A Dos Equis close at hand:

Here it is just about done:

Jerk pork should be cooked until there’s a nice crust on it, but I overcooked it a bit and ended up with it being a bit more charred than I wanted. I was kinda pissed about that, because I second-guessed myself, and left it on longer because my instant read thermometer said it wasn’t done, even though my gut was telling me it was done. So, it was a bit more black, crisp and dry in some places than I would have preferred.

serving

After an hour (should have been 45 minutes, see above) I took the meat off and let it rest for five minutes before carving. Then I sliced it all up, and served it with the sweet potatoes and some fresh tomatoes and cucumber. Here’s me slicing it all up:

Now, this was a 7-pound ham, and there were only 9 adults and one 7-year-old boy partaking of this feast. Here’s what was left:

Even that little scrap on the right eventually got eaten.

So, all-in-all it was a success, but I have to blame my grill again. This turned out much better last year, when I didn’t have as many hot spots. I really had to babysit this one, and I think it was smaller than last year, so there’s really no excuse for the excess carbon I forced upon my guests.

I also wasn’t a big fan of the sweet potatoes either. They looked cool, and they all disappeared, but I think I’d prefer some cuban rice instead. Rice is easier to deal with from a grilling perspective, because it was tough to do the large volume of meat and potatoes and have them both ready at the same time; there simply wasn’t enough space on the grill.

I wonder what’s for dinner this weekend?

canada day ribs

So, last weekend I made a sticky, sweet rib dinner. I didn’t think to take photographic evidence until well into the process, so these are more end results than anything else.

These ribs were to be marinated in a honey lager brine for as much as 24 hours, so I started them on June 30. Two racks of baby back ribs went into the brine at about 10:00 p.m. I also looked for side dishes that used beer and came up with a recipe for baked beans that called for dark beer. I substituted more honey lager to complement the ribs. Between the brine, a mop sauce, the beans and a beer/water mixture I used during cooking to keep the ribs moist, I used almost six bottles of beer in this meal. Here’s the evidence:

“But Dave,” you say, “there are more than six empties there!” And to you I would say, “How very astute!” Suffice to say that some of the honey brown lager also found it’s way into Dave’s tummy.

The beans were a new dish for me. One can of black beans and one each of white and red kidney beans we’re at the heart of it (duh), but I also fried up some bacon and some leftover pancetta, then browned some onions and garlic in the bacon fat. That got spiced up with some serrano peppers and some bbq rub (secret recipe) and then I added the bacon back and mixed it all into the beans. Some brown sugar, molasses, 2.5 bottles or beer and a dash of liquid smoke, and then we let it simmer for 3 hours. Here’s the result:

So the beans went on about the same time as the ribs, which, if you recall, had been brined overnight in a beer and bbq rub brine. As it turns out, I put too much salt in for the duration that I left the ribs in the brine. You really only need to brine ribs for about 4-6 hours, but I was treating it like a marinade, too. The meat came out juicy and tender, but it was a bit on the salty side. Here are a couple of shots of the ribs nearing completion:

That’s more beer in the spray bottle, which I sprayed on the ribs every half hour after the the first hour. All together, the ribs were on for about 2.5 hours, and I let them stand, wrapped in foil, for another 30 minutes after I took them off the grill.

For the first hour and a half the ribs were smoked over hickory chips I soaked in water and added to a smoker box (you can just see an edge of it on the left side of the photo). For the lasted 30 minutes I basted the ribs with a honey beer mop. Sticky and sweet:

To cool off the spice in the ribs and beans, I made a side of coleslaw. One small green cabbage, a couple of carrots, lots of mayo, some vinegar, celery seed and a few other ingredients and you’ve got the ultimate accompaniment:

All in all this turned out pretty well. The beans were a big hit, which is cool because they were pretty easy to do. The slaw was simple, although a bit too sweet for my tastes. But the big issue is the ribs. I’ve done about 5 different variants on a theme — three times for sticky ribs, twice for dry ribs — and I still haven’t mastered them. They’ve all been good, but there’s always something stopping them short of “perfection” (see note about too much salt above).

I know it sounds like an excuse, but I think I need a new grill. The earlier versions worked out better, and that was last year. My grill is over 5 years old so I figure I’m due.

Anyway, Dex liked the meal so much, he stuck his toe in his nose:

That isn’t Photoshopped. The kid really bends like that. Ouch.