What is everyone having for Labor Day?

We are having a cookout tomorrow and I am plum out of ideas. We had a wonderful cookout yesterday of pork tenderloin and italian sausage (among other things).

I am too lazy to smoke anything. I do need a meat main course.

Any suggestions?

For dinner tonight I picked up some 2" thick ribeyes at Dominicks and am going to grill them. I've got corn on the cob and garlic mashed potatoes. Watermelon for the kids and icy cold Carlsberg for me.

Tomorrow I am alone so probably leftovers.

Octarine wrote:For dinner tonight I picked up some 2" thick ribeyes at Dominicks

Wow! Which Dominick's is that, that has 2" thick ribeyes?!? You're out in Northfield now, right? So would that be the one on Willow? Suffice it to say the steaks at the Dominicks at Belmont and Kimball wouldn't add up to 2 inches if you stacked all of them up together.

Yeah I was just as surprised as you! Some salt pepper and olive oil, a few minutes on each side on the grill and finished in the oven. They far exceeded my expectations and at $4.79/lb, 1/3 the price of the shop downstairs.

A friend's making the burgers, we're bringing mint brownies and asian slaw (gotta find another use for that galangal, lemongrass and thai basil)

Smoked Prime Rib



Chicken


The Yellowest, Sweetest Corn I've See all Year


Photos courtesy of GWiv

Rain or no rain, I'm heading back to day two of the Fox Valley Folk Festival where I'm going to repeat yesterday's supper of two of Ream's magnificant award-winning brats (with kraut), courtesy of the fine folks from Elburn Market.. They have one or two things other than the brats, but I'm don't want to miss another chance with those brats.

Another vender is selling funnel cakes, popcorn, nachos and hand-dipped, never frozen, corn dogs. This young man could barely hold his up, but nonetheless seemed very happy with his choice.

Sloppy mac.

Grilling steaks, and home made caprese.

STEVEZ:

The smoked prime rib is the best thing I have seen all summer. How did you do it?

LTH,

My soon to be famous Tuscan Steak is on the Labor Day menu. It's a blend of a few different recipes, Bill/SFNM, Lidia Bastianich and Bon Appetit.

Key is a good quality porterhouse, at least 2.5-lbs, grill over hardwood charcoal and don't over cook.

Enjoy,
Gary
-

Grilled Tuscan Style Steak

1 2.5-lb Dry age Porterhouse

2 cloves garlic
1-1/2 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon fresh cracked pepper.

Combine garlic, olive oil, pepper in mortar, crush, blend, emulsify.
Coat Steak, let sit at room temp for 15 minutes
Grill over hard wood or hard wood charcoal to med-rare

Coat with Paste for Cooked Steak, let rest 10-minutes
--

Paste for cooked steak

2 Rosemary Sprigs
6 Anchovy Filets (small filets, oil packed)
3 Garlic Cloves
2 Teaspoons Sea Salt
3 Tablespoons Olive Oil

Strip leaves from Rosemary, combine with anchovy, garlic, sea salt and olive oil as needed in a mortar, crush, blend emulsify.

Parmesan cheese
5 cups loose packed arugula
Lemon wedges
-

Presentation:

Slice on the bias, rearrange, on the bone, on bed of arugula.

Pour accumulated meat juices on steak.
Top with shaved strips of Parmesan (a vegetable peeler works well)
Serve with lemon wedges.

Gary Wiviott

Note:
The only acceptable ingredient substitute is kosher salt for sea salt, if you use table salt the meat will be oversalted, if you use veg oil the mix will not emulsify, if you use dried rosemary you will be shot.

AngrySarah wrote:The smoked prime rib is the best thing I have seen all summer.

Sarah,

A good looking hunk-O-meat for sure, which tasted even better than it looked.

Enjoy,
Gary

I made paella pummeled with shrimp, but after reading this thread, I'm wondering why I didn't do beef.




Bill/SFNM

On Wednesday, Thor's Personal Assistant and I defrosted a bone in pork shoulder that was graciously brought back from Georgia by Bruce. Saturday night I removed the hock, the bone and the back fat, rubbed it with a mix of pepper, paprika, cayenne etc. to sit overnight. I cured half the fat in sugar, pink salt and salt, which will ultimately become home cured lardo. The next day, TPA smoked the shoulder along with Italian sausage, the hock and a beef tenderloin. I used the remaining fat in a particularly luscious version of Boston baked beans and the bones to make pork stock. To round it all out, we had some quick cured okra, Napa cabbage slaw, sliced cucumbers in cider vinegar, roasted corn on the cob and finally some Nectarine shortcakes with served with the rarely available Trader's Point creme fraiche.

(By the way, thanks again Bruce, your pork has served us well).

Costillas de Res al Carbon (grilled short ribs) AKA beef candy.
As you can see, around here we like the fat crispy at the edges.

G Wiv wrote:My soon to be famous Tuscan Steak is on the Labor Day menu.

Mortar Pestle


Sear


Covered cook offside


Corn/lemon


Rest (Tented w/foil on plate to catch juices)


Slice/Serve/Eat

Bill/SFNM wrote:I made paella pummeled with shrimp, but after reading this thread, I'm wondering why I didn't do beef. [/i]

Bill,

And after seeing your paella pic I'm wondering why I didn't do shrimp.

Paella looks great!

Enjoy,
Gary

d4v3 wrote:Costillas de Res al Carbon (grilled short ribs) AKA beef candy.
As you can see, around here we like the fat crispy at the edges.

D4v3,

Looks quite edible, quite edible indeed.

Enjoy,
Gary

Yeah baby, it's Sloppy Mac, and it was some sweet supper.



More here:

http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=91218#91218

Hosted a couple Vermonters for the weekend; the s/o's aunt and a friend---girls' weekend out an' all.

yadda yadda yadda

Think Cafe' (o' dear lord, Honey 1...you make it hard to concentrate when yr sitting outside enjoying the evening enrobed in encantatory smoke from just two storefronts over)for dinner: best freaking scallops ever---I'm a scallop hater and Think's app. ruled...so impossibly tender and smoky. Everything else was adequate...nothing reaching the heights of the aforementioned. Service tho' perhaps a bit harried(our server was switched with another halfway through the meal then switched back) but, as friendly and welcoming as can be.

Then, the holiday itself I wasn't planning on cooking, but ended up tossing together Macella Hazan's legendary salsa pomodoro(utilizing my own farmer's market plum tomatoes home-stewed, etc) over rigatoni, parmesano reggiano via microplane, caprese salad---would mine make the LTH caprese index? only the shadow knows, and for dessert-mixed berries, quenelle(oh! that dastardly trendy quenelle!) of frozen greek yogurt/drizzle of honey. -accompanied by two primitivos-

....oh, duh...roasted garlic/Aleppo butter and T.I. baguettes

there were intervening cocktails/beers at 95th Hancock, Exchequer, Underground Wonderbar---man, Lonie Walker was in fantastic form, and Big Chicks

I was horrified on Labor Day to see my host pressing the juice out of the burgers he was grilling ("You have to make sure they're cooked all the way through when they start frozen")

But my asian salad turned out pretty good. The Thai peppers I bought at H-mart are by no means Thai peppers, they've got less heat than a short Serrano, which is what they look like. So it was less spicy than I'd like it to have been. Nobody got my Futurama reference (It's an Asian cabbage salad, or as I like to say, "Brannigan's Slaw"):

3/4 head cabbage, thinly sliced
1 Cucumber, peeled if waxed, deseeded and cut into matchsticks
1/2 red bell pepper, cut into matchsticks
2 Carrots, shredded
1 handful each of Thai basil, mint and cilantro, chopped or chiffonaded
1 handful peanuts
4 shallots, sliced thin
juice of 2 limes
1/4 cup coconut vinegar (subst rice vinegar)
3 Tbs fish sauce
Sriracha to taste
1 tbs galangal, shredded on microplane
3 chiles, shredded on microplane
2" of lemongrass, shredded on microplane
salt to taste
2 tbs sugar
1/4 cup oil

Heat oil in a small sauce pan. Fry the shallot slices in batches until they start turning brown. Remove with slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Reserve the oil.

Toss the cabbage, cuke, bell pepper, carrot and herbs together.
Whisk together vinegar, chile, sugar, fish sauce, galangal, and lime juice. Adjust seasonings with salt and sriracha, but flavors will intensify as time goes on. Whisk in reseved shallot oil and toss with salad.

Garnish with peanuts and fried shallots, and some more herb leaves

AngrySarah wrote:STEVEZ:

The smoked prime rib is the best thing I have seen all summer. How did you do it?

Thanks, AS. It was pretty good, if I do say so myself. I felt that a huge chunk of prime meat like this one should just stand on its own, so I rubbed it with a very simple rub of kosher salt and cracked black pepper with a little bit of garlic and onion powder. I cooked it on my WSM with about half of the normal amount of wood I would use for ribs or pulled pork because I didn't want the meat to be over smoked. Because the prime rib was so large, I cooked it to just rare in the center, which left enough medium rare and medium at the edges for my guests who liked it cooked to a higher temp. I also made some horseradish creme sauce out of whipping cream, fresh horseradish, lemon juice and worchester sauce to be served on the side.

MAG wrote:
(By the way, thanks again Bruce, your pork has served us well).

Your welcome. I've still got 3/4 of a freezer full for the winter as well as a couple of gallons of lard.

A local grocery store had a BOGO free sale on pork tenderloins. My MIL wanted one so Mary grabbed the other other one. I tossed it on the grill Monday night and learned I'm spoiled. Flavorless meat except for the seasonings I put on it. I guess I had better start putting a few dollars away for next spring's HTH Fest. Bob's having one early next month, but I just can't get away.

G Wiv wrote:My soon to be famous Tuscan Steak

LTH,

Considering the dry-age porterhouse from Fox & Obel pretty much broke the food budget, we went with a post Labor Day dinner of Black Bean Soup with a scoop of rice and a couple of tamales from Tamales los mejores de Guerrero. (I have a dozen tamales in the freezer from a previous excursion.)

The Black Bean Soup recipe came from Steve Z's favorite tv chef, Daisy Martinez, whose show has magically started appearing on my cable lineup. That along with a cucumber salad and Pa amb tomàquet, made with half of a day old Fox & Obel baguette, made for a deliciously inexpensive meal. Tonight is black beans and rice, enhanced with meat from the long simmered smoked hock used to make the black beans, and a chopped veg salad.

Enjoy,
Gary

G Wiv wrote:Considering the dry-age porterhouse from Fox & Obel pretty much broke the food budget

I was wondering where that gorgeous hunk o' beef came from. I should have known. The other thing I was curious about is how you got the steak to have that beautiful reddish-brown hue. When I grill steaks, they tend to come out in various shades of gray.

d4v3 wrote:The other thing I was curious about is how you got the steak to have that beautiful reddish-brown hue. When I grill steaks, they tend to come out in various shades of gray.

D4V3,

Gray most likely means the grill is not hot enough and/or needs to be cleaned. Are you using gas or charcoal?

Far as the reddish-brown hue, I used lump charcoal and a small piece of apple wood.

Enjoy,
Gary

Gary: be careful, it's bad luck to put meat in Cuban black beans. No one has ever explained to me sufficiently why this one, particular Cuban staple is, quite possibly, the only vegan dish in the repertoire. It probably goes back to Lent/Fridays: but the abuelitas are adamant, no ham, no lard, no nothing (olive is the oil). Mysteriously, pork products are required for habichuelas rojas, garbanzos, fabada, and any number of other caldos y potajes de frijoles, not to mention congri and moros, which of course contain the same black beans. To avoid bad juju, call it feijoada.

G Wiv wrote:Gray most likely means the grill is not hot enough and/or needs to be cleaned. Are you using gas or charcoal?

Gary,

Describing my steaks as gray may have been a little bit of an exaggeration, but next to the beauty pictured above, they do look anemic. I think you are right about the heat. I don't think I am letting the grill itself get hot enough, because I don't get those handsome grill marks.

Up until recently, I had been using briquettes and lighter fluid . Now (thanks to LTH and your guidance), I have started to use lump charcoal. It does burn much hotter, and I have noticed an improvement. However, I am still learning about the physics of lump charcoal. The first few times I used it, I don't think I let the coals burn down enough before grilling. It seemed to me that it was burning up too fast, and I was afraid it would be exhausted before I was done grilling, so I think I jumped the gun. Now I realize that is one big difference between using lump and processed charcoal.

I see from your photos that you seared the meat over very hot coals, then pulled it to the side. Did you then cover the grill so the steak could absorb some of the applewood smoke?

Dave

JeffB wrote:but the abuelitas are adamant, no ham, no lard, no nothing (olive is the oil).

Jeff,

If the grandmothers say no meat in the black beans, that's good enough for me. Bad luck I don't need. You should, however, take it up with Ms. Daisy, her recipe calls for a smoked ham hock in the simmering beans.

Enjoy,
Gary

d4v3 wrote:I see from your photos that you seared the meat over very hot coals, then pulled it to the side. Did you then cover the grill so the steak could absorb some of the applewood smoke?

Dave,

I pulled the meat to the side and covered the grill both for light smoke and to roast the meat after the sear. The steak weighed almost 3-lbs and would have cooked unevenly, to say the least, directly over the hot searing fire.

Sear then cook slow offside is a technique I employ often with my Weber Kettle Grill.

Enjoy,
Gary