deep fried pickles? YES!

Dearest Internets,
Want to take a darn tasty BBQ pork sandwich and elevate it to a crazy level? Add DEEP FRIED PICKLES. Really! Do it! drain some hamburger dill slices, dry 'em off with paper towels, dredge them in flour, then dip them in a batter made from 1 cup flour, 1 Tablespoon baking powder and a light-bodied beer. Fry them until they are GBD (Sorry...that's Alton Brown speak...Golden Brown Delicious), and kaboom! They're excellent just as munchies, too, of course, however, like I said, ours went on BBQ pork sandwiches. Jack made them from pork steaks (slices of pork butt for those not familiar with this St. Louis cut of pork), grilled then sliced thin and tossed in a homemade raspberry BBQ sauce. Sweet, spicy, fatty...the pickles add salty, crunchy, and a bit of sour. CHOMP!

You're welcome,
iron stef



P.S. Speaking of grilling (yay warm weather!)...here are some grilling ideas from the Iron Stef Archives:
-teeny burgers and how to top them.
-Jack's Sandwich of Awesome.
-Make a fabulous Chicago-style hot dog relish.
-Tequila lime chicken!
-Grilled salsiccia sandwiches.
-Giant smooshed sandwich with grilled veggies.

reason # 397 to make teeny burgers

Teeny burgers, which made an appearance on Iron Stef here, have become a regular dinner option at the Iron Stef homestead. They are easy and casual and fun. Also? Since you can eat more than one, you can play with toppings way more than you would with a big 'ol regular burger. With teeny burgers, the possibilites are endless! Last night I played a little game of "what's in the fridge?"


In the above photo I have 3 topping combos, from bottom to top: Muenster cheese and thinly-sliced green bell pepper soaked in hot sauce; stilton cheese with thai black pepper sauce and red onions; habenero cheese and tomatoes.


I had high hopes for this stilton one, but all the falvors were to strong, and when combined they took on, strangely, the taste of anchovies. I love anchovies, but...this just didn't work. Usually I love burgers with blue cheese...maybe the stilton was just too pungent. Oh well, all my other combos were yummy.

I especially enjoyed this "Italian" number...mozzerella, roma tomato and pepperoncini:

What do you like most on your burgers?

jack's sandwich of awesome

This is a sandwich I've decided to call "Jack's Sandwich of Awesome." He's made it quite a few times, but I've never bothered to give it a name. I just bothered to eat the heck out of it because it's so...awesome.


Here's the low-down on Jack's Sandwich of Awesome: blend up some fresh rosemary, fresh garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper to form kind of a paste. Rub it all over a flank steak. Grill flank steak until it is rare to medium rare. Slice steak against the grain into thin strips. Put it on some good crusty bread (here we used ciabatta rolls), top it with gorgonzola cheese and mixed greens that have been tossed with balsamic vinegar & olive oil. Pass out cold from the awesomeness.

teeny burgers

Over labor day weekend, there wasn't a whole heck of a lot of cooking going on in ironstef-ville. There was some grilling, though...done by Jack, of course. For a couple lazy days out in the country, we nourished ourselves midday with our new favorite burgers...little patties on Hawaiian rolls. They are simple...small hamburgers sprinkled with salt, pepper and garlic powder and grilled. Place on some of those sweet, soft little rolls and enjoy. I like mine with fresh homegrown tomatoes.

Believe it or not we got the idea from a night out at Dave & Busters (a chain bar/grill/arcade place). Something about the way the sweet bread goes with the smoky grilled meat. And they are more portable than big normal burgers, too! It's simple perfection. D&B's is actually one large patty placed on 4 connected rolls then cut as a whole. We prefer the little individual burgers, because you get more of that charred outer flavor on each patty.

Grillin' up a Saturday

Yesterday was kind of a lazy Saturday. The weather was awesome...ripe for some hot grill action. For lunch we had some grilled all-beef uncured hotdogs. Yum! We topped them with this relish we made up a couple of years ago, kind of a chicago-style dog in a jar.It's simple, just cut up a couple of pickles, a couple roma tomatoes and a small red onion, season with salt and pepper and pickle juice to taste and mix together. Use it to top your dog along with your favorite mustard! Some crunchy reduced-fat plain potato chips on the side? Mmmmm MMMMM!


Then, last night, Jack started up the grill again. He grilled some sun-dried tomato chicken sausages and portabello mushrooms. When they were good and grilled, he chopped them up and we added them to some whole wheat penne pasta, a jar of good marinara sauce and some toasted pine nuts. Top with Pecorino Romano cheese, and that's a simple but really yummy dinner. In fact, it's the second time this week we've made it.

the other cook in the house (installment 2)

This weekend Jack whipped up some tequila lime chicken on the grill. It was really good, so I asked him to share his recipe and notes. He's much better at making up recipes and being analytical about what he makes than I am:

INGREDIENTS
The marinade had the following:
1/2 C Cilantro, chopped fine
2 green chiles (jalapeno or serrano), halved and
sliced
1/4-1/2 C lime juice, fresh (7 limes)
2 Tbsp lime zest (or zest of 3 limes)
1 Tbsp cumin
1 Tbsp kosher salt
1/2 Tbsp black pepper, ground
1 1/2 cup tequila
1/2 cup olive oil
Water

DIRECTIONS
Mix first 10 ingredients in a large bowl. Reserve 1/2
cup of the liquid. Add chicken pieces to bowl or
large plastic zip-top bag and coat in marinade. Add
enough water to cover chicken. Allow chicken to
marinade for at least 2 hours.

MOP
Mix the reserved marinade mixture with an additional
1/2 cup olive oil. Stir or shake in tight container
to mix thoroughly. Mop chicken pieces during cooking.

PERSONAL NOTES:
Next time, let's blend the marinade in the food
processor to pulverize the cilantro. Also, less water
and more tequila. The plastic bag idea should have
been used (less liquid needed).

Also, I could make a tequila-lime glaze instead of the
mop for more of a sticky coating.

We should serve these fajita-style next time.

Photos!!


On the grill, getting mopped with deliciousness.

Mmmmmm....

Served with a green salad made at the local salad bar, and blue corn chips...and beer and hot sauce, of course.

black stripes

It's grillin' season! Yay! The other day Jack cleaned up the grill, oiled and seasoned it and got it all ready for spring/summer grill-o-rama!

I just finished reading Food & Booze, which I mentioned here. It's an awesome book, by the way. I had gotten it from the library, but I'm now going to buy it. Each essay has a recipe with it, so it's like you get a whole background story to each recipe. Awesome. Steve Almond's contribution was about grilling, and concluded with a chicken salad recipe that I will be trying this summer. Here is an excerpt from Almond's essay, "My Soul Upon the Grill:"

Specifically, I’ve developed certain spiritual ideas, emotional biases, what my analyst would term – if I ever spoke to him about the grill, which I do not – an ideological fetish.

It begins like this: Human being are inexorably drawn toward fire, which has, for most of our formative evolution as a species, been the fundamental source of warmth, safety, and nutritional gratification. Stoves are, in the grand scheme of things, an infantile domestic prop. (I shall not even begin to express my contempt for microwaves.)

The sensual signifiers of fire – the orange snap of the flames, the smell and taste of the smoke – are hardwired. It is for this reason that cooking over a fire, which most of the world still does, triggers certain vestigial limbic impulses, in my case a desire to lick tendrils of grease from the grill.
Steve Almond, My Soul Upon the Grill

Here are some recipes for grilled stuff that I hope to try:

Grilled Lime Chicken with Black Bean Sauce

Adobo-Marinated Pork Tenderloin with Grilled-Pineapple Salsa

Asian-Style Grilled Cornish Hens

Jamie Oliver's Grilled Monkfish with Black Olive Sauce

Indian Style Sheekh Kabob


And to help us get into even more of a grilling mood:

-a mouth-watering flickr grilling group.

-an Amazon Listmania list "All-Time 15 Greatest BBQ Books"

-another Listmania list "The Absolute Best Grilling Books"

-Alton Brown's Grilling Essentials Kit. I think this is a great deal!

you wanna see my what? let me see yo grill

Jack and I are going out to buy a grill. We're getting a gas one, for it's ease and versitilty (Here's a good article about gas vs. charcoal). It will have a burner on it, too, so we can cook stuff in a wok if we want. Wok cooking doesn't work so well on our apartment-grade electric stove-top.

I am very excited about this grill thing. It'll be a good summer. The other night we were wondering if we should go ahead and spend the money, and lo and behold, the food network had a whole special on, with snippets from all the food network shows featuring the art of grillin'. And we decided that we indeed need a grill. Soon.

I can't wait to try something like this grilled mango recipe. I need to start getting some lessons at BBQ University.

Meanwhile, this article is a wonderful summation of the awesomeness of barbecue. A snippet:

"I believe that barbecue drives culture, not the other way around. Some of the first blows struck for equality and civil rights in the Deep South were made not in the courtrooms or schools or on buses, but in the barbecue shacks. There were dining rooms, backyards and roadhouse juke joints in the South that were integrated long before any other public places."

Hmm...I got into the Kansas City BBQ thing last year, but I haven't really explored STL places. Maybe I should check a couple out this summer...