Lex Culinaria

The Summer Barbque Challenge Round-up

We all know what a huge proponent I am of the importance of sharing great meals with friends and family. The sort of meal I enjoy sharing most often happens out of doors, on a sunny weekend afternoon and doesn’t generally involve heating up the kitchen or folding napkins into perfect thirds.

Though I’ve had both near and total disasters in the kitchen preparing for regular dinner parties, I’ve never had the experience with a BBQ. There’s something magical about the ease and joviality that go hand in hand with the BBQ. No one’s worrying about the right fork and it’s totally acceptable to be so enamoured of what you’re eating that you end up with sauce on your chin. I guess that’s why I love barbeques so much… they really are the essence of what a shared meal should be -  enjoyment of great food, and lively company (especially when there’s good beer and wine!) - without the fussiness and formality that sometimes comes packaged up with more formal meals.

My most vivid childhood memories of eating a complete meal (as opposed to a particular food item or the preparation of food) are of summer suppers eaten outside with my parents and sister on the patio of the house I grew up in. We had a patio table with an umbrella that had a very hip (for the late 70s) brown and blue stripe on it. That was at the time long before patio furniture became plastic. Our table was a shiny powder-coated white metal. The meals were never really fancy – salad from the garden, baked potatoes – maybe done in foil with sliced onions, butter and a touch of honey – and steaks from the barbeque. I loved those meals. Heat would kick me under the table, or torture me by obliquely revealing to my parents some secret I’d confided earlier and which I was mortified to hear her repeat. After supper, we’d get Popsicles from the freezer. Those meals were lively and happy and exciting in a way that meals eaten inside never quite were.

Maybe it’s because the winters here can seem so long, but I really feel like I have in the past been much more adventurous with my indoor cookery than the outdoor variety. I felt stuck in a BBQ rut really, serving the same old standbys time after time. I swore to myself that this year would be different – I’d cook outside more, and I’d cook better and more adventurous things. So I issued the Summer Barbeque Challenge. I thought it would be a great resource to have a little online cache of great outdoor recipes to inspire our shared backyard meals all summer. So here we are…

The Summer BBQ Challenge has certainly turned out to be an international event with recipes from all corners of the globe all of which are amazing alternatives to the same-old-same-old that happens all too often around my own barbeque. After some initial confusion over what in fact I meant by “barbeque” the entries rolled in. 

Stephanie, my favourite Happy Sorceress brings us a tasty looking Lamb & Persian Rice Kibbeh and in doing so has unwittingly created for the barbeque one of my favourite Middle Eastern Dishes. Funny, without her, I’d never have thought of doing kibbeh on the barbeque. Thanks Stephanie!

McAuliflower of Brownie Points brought a tasty treat for vegetarians and meat lovers alike! Her Teriayki Grilled Tempeh that looks amazing. She did hers in a grill pan, but I reckon it’s going to get a workout on my wood fire pit grill this summer. This is one recipe that's stood the test of time...McAuliflower's brought this with her from her college days!

Helen of Beyond Salmon brought us two fantastic entries. First she provided great instructions on how to properly grill fish. I for one, have never really attempted to grill fish before because I was always worried about temperature control and the possibility of the fish sticking to the grill or breaking up and disappearing into the flames! With Helen’s great step-by-step instructions, I think I can finally conquer my fear.

Helen also made a great salad, with grilled ingredients. I don’t have much to say about Helen’s Grilled Asparagus, Tomato and Feta Salad, because I’m too busy drooling. I love grilled asparagus. I love tomatoes. I love feta. Yum.

Sandra of Un Tocco Di Zenzaro gave us the only non-English entry. Sandra, who lives in Turin, Italy made some chicken skewers that sound wonderfully yummy, no matter what the language! Her chicken skewers recipe – done both in Spanish and in Italian, would make a great addition to any summer barbeque.

Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once is from my very favourite city in the whole wide, wide world: Melbourne. When we lived in Melbourne, Cakes and I would barbeque our supper at least 5 nights out of 7 over the summer. I can remember some Saturdays when we’d barbeque both our lunch and our supper!  Getting away from the focus on the meat is Haalo’s potato skewers recipe, which is a fab alternative to plain potatoes in foil. I could practically smell the garlic and roast potato smell looking at that photo!

Kat of Kat on Thyme made an extremely adventurous Triple Sec and Vanilla Brined Pork Tenderloin with a Rhubarb Fruit Compote spanning two posts. This is definitely on my to-try list as I’ve become a great fan of brining meat ever since reading Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking. Plus, I’ve got some nice fresh rhubarb sitting on the counter……

Zorra of 1 x umruehren bitte also stepped away from the meats! The one Barbeque meal food that I almost always end up buying is the bread. That will probably change now that I’ve seen how soft and yummy looking Zorra’s home made pita bread looks. I can just imagine wrapping up a nice hot browned bit of lamb or sausage straight off the grill in one of those pitas.

Gabriella True of My Life as a Reluctant Housewife brings us the only desert entry with her amazing-looking grilled pineapple with caramel sauce. Yum. I really would like to experiment more with grilled sweet foods and this looks like a great place to start!

Craig’s & Lois Notes from the Cape sent in a fantastic recipe for melted camembert on a baguette. I can’t even bear to look at the picture because I am afraid the drool might short out my keyboard and then where would we be? No roundup. I think I’d probably be tempted to also grill the baguette too, but that’s just me and my new barbeque motto - no food should be left ungrilled! Seriously. Melted cheese? Too good.

Everyone need as good Barbeque sauce recipe or two in their repertoire. I’m glad I can add Dave’s world famous BBQ basting sauce from Robert at White Trash BBQ to mine. I find the selection of sauces at the store most perplexing. I get tired just contemplating reading the labels on 200 different sauce bottles to find one that I like. I’d much rather just make my own. I’m gonna put this one together with Helen’s fish-grilling instructions…

Intrepid Torontonian Ruth, of Once Upon a Feast, came up with a whole barbeque meal menu including grilled asparagus, cedar plank salmon, quinoa tabouleh, chickpea & couscous salad and blueberry mint granita. Wow. Now I have one whole barbeque party planned out and I’m not even tired! Those granitas sound great, and I’ve always wanted to do cedar planked salmon……

Kevin of Seriously Good is clearly making this his sausage year as well. In that vein he made us some super tasty looking Romanian sausage called Mititei, which I imagine is Romanian for “seriously good-looking sausages”. They’re user friendly too. You don’t need a sausage stuffer for these babies, as they are skinless.

My favourite Edmonton author/shopping enthusiast and all-round blog-girl, Jena of Naked Bootleg, added to the international flavour of the challenge by producing Korean barbequed chicken and beef with loads of garlic. She complements this with home made Sunomono, which is an absolute favourite of mine – I’ve never even though about making it myself before, but now that Jena’s brought this recipe to my attention, you can bet I will!

Blogless Erica sent us two really tasty entries from her online cookbook (why don’t I have one of these?). Her Sweet & Sour Broccoli Coleslaw looks like a great twist on an old barbeque favourite and the amazing sounding  Wheatberry & Roasted Beet Salad is right up my alley – I love roasted beets in a salad!

My favourite Southerner, William of Never Trust a Skinny Chef, throws it back in Rachel Ray’s face with a five-hour smoked chicken chilli. Could Rachel even stand to do a dish that took more than 30 mintues? We’re guessing not. After all, she’s probably too skinny to stand and cook for that long. She'd probably feel all faint and have to lie down. William smoked his own chicken folks. That’s dedication.

Robert from Al Forno wades into the backyard cooking fray with a great post on the history of barbeque sauces and the regional sauces of the American barbeque belt.  He serves up a great recipe for an old fashioned all-American barbeque technique that sounds amazing and which will certainly find a place in my repertoire.

And lastly, my own entry… Grilled Char Sui Beef Bundles

Fitzroy will be making his selection of the winner of the Summer BBQ Challenge later in the week when his mum manages to buy a new printer cartridge! Also, he's feeling a little out of sorts owing to the fact that he recently ate a bee. This necessitated a terrifying trip to the vet (actually, probably more terrifying for me and Cakes than for poor old Fitzy). I'd like to make sure he's in top form before setting him to such a difficult task!

An unusual panacotta

I love confounding expectations in the kitchen: mushroom bread pudding, yogurt drained and used like cream cheese, salted caramels.... are all a little different, and they work so very well.

As does this great appetizer panacotta. It's gralicky and very parmesan-y. It's super quick to make and goes very well with all sorts of heavy crusty bread. I bet it would even do well with a nice salad and some grainy bread for a light and unusual lunch. I adore it, and we have made this to the raves of our dinner guests quite a few times. It's also one of my most popular recipes with readers. If you haven't already, give it a go.

The original post and recipe is here.

Right about now, I'm shopping at the Prahran Market!

Family Style Platter Meal (plus the best freaking roast potatoes on earth!)

I'm a big fan of sharing a good meal and a nice bottle of wine with friends on a Saturday or Sunday night. When I've had all day to futz around in the kitchen making good smells and filling the house with steam (and sometimes smoke!). When no one has to be at work the next day and you can sit around chatting into the night, bellies full.

For this reason I love fondues and tapas. This time, I decided to try a different kind of shared meal - the family platter. You just plonk down a huge platter on which is displayed the entire meal: meat and potatoes and vegetables. Everyone takes from the same platter in the middle of the table. In the way that everyone dips into the same fondue pot brimming with melted cheese. There's certainly something about sharing from a communal vessel that makes a dinner seem more friendly and intimate - the perfect way to share a meal with family or treasured friends.

This weekend's menu included:

• Apple and ginger ham
• Savoy cabbage and peas in a mustard cream sauce

AND....

The Best Freaking Roast Potatoes on Earth!  (serves 4)

• 6 large russet potatoes (I will take no blame whatsoever if you use a different kind of potato)
• 1/4 to 1/3 cup canola oil
• salt & pepper

Peel and cut the potatoes into largish chunks, roughly 3 pieces per potato. Boil the potatoes in salted water until they are cooked through and begin to get quite floury on the outside. I did mine in the microwave (in a plastic container with water to cover) and it took 12 minutes. Drain out the water and put the potatoes back into the container, drizzle with canola oil (use more oil rather than less, as the extra will melt off during cooking) and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Use a slotted spoon (or your hands, if you've done the potatoes ahead of time and they are not too hot) to toss the potatoes around in the oil. The outsides of the potatoes should break up a fair bit - this is exactly what you want. The floury outside of the potatoes will combine with the seasoned oil to make a gorgeous coating that gets unbelievably crispy when baked! When they are adequately coated, transfer them to a foil-lined baking sheet. Place them on the lowest oven rack in a 400F oven for 15 minutes, then transfer them to the top rack and broil them, turning with tongs where necessary, for a further 15 minutes, until their outsides are golden and crispy.

These potatoes are the perfect mix of crispy outside and soft, floury, creamy inside. Sigh.

If you've got leftovers, which you won't, you can re-crisp them with 15 minutes under the broiler.

EotMEoTE 8: Quail Egg and Prosciutto Pizza

Surprisingly, Samantha had slept straight through the night despite the thunderstorms. Now Nicholas had roused her from her dreams to watch the glorious, rainbow-ed sunrise. At first she’d been grumbly about having been woken from such a deep sleep. Now she was pleased: the sunrise was breathtaking.

She stretched her long tanned legs in front of her on the porch floor and nursed the cup of coffee Nicholas had offered her, steaming, as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. They’d been up so late taking about nothing and everything. She was watching Nicholas serve up breakfast – it looked like eggs and bacon on a pizza base (surely she was wrong) - and trying her hardest to disguise how much she enjoyed watching him do these little meaningless things. She didn’t know which she found more compelling, the pink and orange sunrise or the muscles on the back of Nicholas’ arm as he dished up breakfast.

He looked sideways at her over his muscle-y shoulder. "I hope you like quails eggs on pizza. I know it’s not exactly a traditional romantic getaway breakfast, but I really don’t eat any non-pizza foods."

That was one of the things she liked so much about Nicholas. He was not afraid to be weird. Weird and smouldering at the same time. She could feel her breath catching in her chest as he worked at the tea table.

When would he put the egg and bacon pizza down and walk over to her, sweeping her up into his brawny arms?

She watched, intently as he walked across the porch to he, bearing his love offering, his pizza. And she knew everything was perfect.

" Samantha? Do you like my egg pizza?" he whispered as he crossed the white painted floor.

His voice wafted through her, like the early morning mist over the ground, and she shivered in the warm sunrise air.

“Yes" she said, softly. "I love it."

Carefully, he put aside the pizza, and her shiver turned to a flush of heat as he swept her into his arms and out into the dewy pink and gold  morning, covering her with eggy kisses.

It is the end of the month and yet I see no signs of the friendly and irreverent EotMEoTE entries that make me laugh until I pee my pants. I can find no limericks, no haikus, no Smith's lyrics. Where are all the other EotMEoTE-ers? Where are all the witty poems? Short dramatic works? Are we all egged out by this month's IMBB?

Anthony promised me that the June editition of EotMEoTE would be the Mills & Boon edition, and my quivering orbs of yolky delight have been heaving with anticipation all month. But alas, I fear I am alone in my love of the egg and the toast (or-other-similarly-bready-and-at-least-heated-if-not-toasted-carbohydrate) this month. Sigh.

I had a dozen quail eggs left over from Sunday's upside down caviar and I needed a quick supper for friends. I also thought it would be a cute twist on the Aussie favourite -fried egg topped pizza. I've been in an Aussie food frame of mind for a few days after we had the pleasure of having a couple of fair-dinkum aussies over for a barbie last Friday night. Waz and Lenny live in the apartment next door to a mate of mine, and I'd never ever met them until Waz emailed me after Judy Schultz of the Journal wrote an article about food blogging featuring Lex Culinaria.

What could be more Aussie than egg on a pizza? Alright, maybe egg on a burger.

I love pizzas best without the tomato sauce base (Makes the dough too doughy) so I just brushed the (partially pre-cooked) dough with olive oil and sprinkled on lots of fresh chopped garlic. I topped it with slices of gorgeous ripe tomato, sliced smoked mozzarella, shredded basil leaves and pieces of prosciutto. I baked it in a 400F/200C oven for about 15 minutes - until the cheese melted and the edges got brown. Then I removed it from the oven, grated over some fresh reggiano and cracked a half dozen quails eggs onto each pizza. I popped them back in the oven for 5 minutes, and Bob's your mother's brother.

Tomato & Onion Jam

For a vegetable that was once thought to be poisonous, tomatoes have sure come a long way.

Thought at various points in history to be the sole domain of the poor, the Italians or the Central Americans, tomatoes are now used in a staggering array of dishes across all cultures. This is hardly surprising to a die-hard tomato fan like me.

Tomatoes are so many good things at once: tart, sweet, tangy, juicy, smooth and vibrantly coloured. They smell and taste like summer all juicy, and warm with sunshine.

Every summer my mother's garden would change slightly from the last year, instead of last year's beans there would be peas, or baby carrots instead of last season's beets (which,as a child, was totally okay with me...I hated beets). Whatever other vegetables my mother planted and grew, tomatoes were always the highlight of the garden. My mother's red tomaotes, beefsteaks mainly, found their way into most of our summer suppers, and we never tired of them. Truth be told, my sister and I probably prized them more for their satisfying squish when we threw them at the dog.

My childhood was full of salads of tomatoes still warm from the garden. Mum would send me out the back door, mixing bowl in hand, to pick tomatoes and maybe an onion and a few leaves of lettuce for a fresh summer salad.  I'd bring the vegetables back in to the kitchen, along with a bonus layer of mud up to my knees or a gross bug or something. I'd watch mum slice the tomatoes, juice oozing out, and arrange the slices on our plates in a very 1970's cookbook kind of way.  Which, well, it was the 70's and my mum belonged to every one of those recipe card clubs, so, there you go.

We'd carry the plates outside and eat at the white metal patio table with the sauve seventies brown-striped umbrella. Mum would have a glass of wine with her supper and my sister and I would misbehave by kicking each other under the table and sticking our tongues out and pinching each other as hard as we could.  The evening air would be  perfect and warm and full of our laughter and cries of "STOP IT. Mum, She's touching me again.", and "OOOOWWWWWWW!"  The backyard had a particular summer smell: dirt heated by the daytime sun, moist green grass and the fruit trees in our yard.

Mum fed not only our tummies on those evenings, but our little kid souls as well. Who knew that being teased and kicked by my older sister would be part of my fondest memories of childhood? If you'd told me at the time (or any time before I was out of my teens really) I would have thought you were nuts. I hope when I have my own kids, they beat the crap out of each other the way we did. Or rather the way my sister did to me. Because I would never do that sort of thing. Really. Plus, she was bigger.

I must have inherited my mother's tomato-planting gene. All those years I lived in apartments I always had a cherry tomato plant on the balcony. My ferns would perish horribly and my marigolds would wilt, neglected, but my tomatoes would be showered with love and would produce enormous quantities of those juicy buggers that explode satisfyingly in your mouth. My own garden (the first proper one I've ever had) now contains no less than 5 varieties and well over half its total of 800 square feet is taken up by tomatoes! In our family, the tomato-growing genes run deep. Too bad they are linked to the too much shopping gene.

Until my own tomatoes are ready, I have been indulging myself every Saturday morning at the Strathcona farmers market by purchasing 3 or four pounds of dense, heavy, plump tomatoes in red, yellow and orange. I must admit I purchase them as much for their perfect round brightness as I do for their taste! They do double duty in my house, sitting perched in a white ceramic bowl for a few days before being devoured. This week, they lasted so beautifully and work was so busy that I didn't get a chance to do anything with them until Friday night. By 8pm on the last day of the work week, I was feeling quite a lot like a nice glass or wine, some crusty french bread and cheese. I gambled that the perfect tomato dish to accompany my feet-curled-up-under-me-on-the-sofa- reading-a-good-book kind of feeling was a sweet tomato and onion jam, spread thickly on freshly toasted French baguette and topped with slivers of Applewood smoked cheddar.

I was right.

Coincidentally, it also made for an excellent breakfast in bed (with these little guys) the next day.

If you want to be a real purist, you can peel and seed the tomatoes. These tomatoes are so beautiful and fresh and their skin so tender, that I didn't bother. Besides, I really like the farmhouse appeal of using the whole, unpeeled, unseeded tomatoes.

Tomato and Onion Jam

• 1 tbsp good olive oil
• 300 grams sliced sweet onion
• 4  large garlic cloves, crushed and chopped
• 1/2 tablespoon grated fresh ginger root
• 1 - 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
• 1 - 1/2 teaspoons fresh ground pepper
• 2 tablespoons good quality balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 7 large ripe tomatoes, chopped roughly (about 4 cups)
• 1 cup water

Add olive oil and onions to a non-stick pan over low to medium heat, cook and stir until softened and well browned, about 10 minutes. Add garlic and cook and stir 5 minutes more. Add all the rest of the ingredients, except tomatoes and water. Cook and stir until bubbly, about 5 minutes. Add tomatoes and water, heat until bubbly, reduce heat to low, and cook, covered, stirring occasionally for 30 minutes. Remove cover, increase heat to medium high and cook, stirring until liquid reduces and mixture becomes jammy in consistency, about 15 minutes. Pour into a clean 1L jar or plastic container to cool. Refrigerated, this jam will keep for about a week. Spread thinly on crusty bread and top with cheese. It would also make a fantastic accompaniment to an omelet or any other dish where you might use a vegetable chutney.

Melting pot

The custom of sharing a meal with friends and family out of one communal dish is a common one amongst a vast variety of cultures. It seems to me that there is no more intimate way to share food. For this reason I felt it was the perfect way to welcome friends into our new home.

It had *nothing* to do with the fact that it's dead easy to prepare.

OUCH!

Pardon me. My nose appears to have grown rapidly and struck the monitor quite hard.

As long as I am being honest, I must admit the interactive nature of the fondue supper also helped to distract my guests from the lack of a kitchen and the building supplies and tools stacked in the corner of the dining room - everybody's eyes were, thankfully, on the fondue pot rather than on the chaos.

Normally, I would have waited to have guests over until the place was more presentable, but my sister happened to be in town and some mutual friends that she doesn't get to see too often (and who are only a month or two off disappearing from the face of the earth for a while as they adjust to life as new parents) were available for supper.

Although I am sure there are plenty of people out there who religiously follow fondue recipes, I am not one of them. I generally go to the deli and select a few cheeses and cart them home.  I grate the cheeses up (about 100 grams per person), toss the grated cheese in a tablespoon of so flour, and blend the cheese, handful by handful to a potful of heated white wine with a few crushed cloves of garlic floating in it. That's it. See how easy?

The one time I did try to stick to a specific recipe is the one and only time my fondue came out badly: crystally and rubbery and clumpy and no good at all! Fondue is clearly one of those foods which seems to turn out better when I cook based on my intuition (and a lubricating glass or two of wine) as opposed to planning and measuring and fretting. The fondue, it would seem, suffers from the fretting at least as much as I do.

I am so relaxed about the preparing of the cheese fondue, I can't even pretend to know how much of each thing I used. The best I can do is to estimate that I used somewhere between 400 and 700 grams of cheese, made up roughly of 1/2 Emmenthal to 1/4 each of Tilsit and Gruyere and somewhere between 3/4 and 1 3/4 cups of wine.

I served it with a selection of breads for dunking accompanied only by a simple salad with a lemon and olive oil dressing. Heaven!

I made a shocking and exciting discovery on that fondue night. I discovered, much to the bathroom scale's dismay, the BEST caramel fondue ever created. You must promise, after reading this recipe, to make it once, and then never again. I cannot be responsible for the consequences if you cannot control yourself. It. Is. Just. That. Good.

Should I make you wait longer? Perhaps draw out your anticipation over what is surely the best bloody desert fondue ever?

I cannot bring myself to be so cruel.

Ingredients:

• one 500 ml jar of dulce del leche

1. remove lid from jar of dulce de leche.

2. microwave jar of dulce de leche for 3 -5 minutes, or until quite warm and melted through.

3. pour melted dulce de leche into chocolate fondue pot and place lighted tea light in receptacle.

4. serve dulce de leche turned caramel fondue with cubed cake, apple wedges and other fruits.

5. lament the fact that you can't un-know how easy this is.

6. make an oath never to buy another jar of dulce de leche.

7. hope you can keep your oath.

Don't say I didn't warn you.