Porcini Rubbed Two Pound Rib-eyes

I know what you've been thinking...the BBQB has been neglecting to post on red meat. My apologies. I'm back in a big way. I picked these monsters up from Acme in West Chester, PA. Each bone-in rib-eye weighed over 2 pounds. Of course this is way more than one person should eat in one sitting but heck it was my buddy's birthday! I bought the meat but my friend actually did the preparation. He wanted to attempt to duplicate the procinni rubbed rib-eye that the Capital Grille in Philadelphia offers.

I believe he nicked the recipe off of the web somewhere but I don't think it is a big secret or anything. It is essentially as follows. First, coat both sides of your steaks in olive oil. Next, get your hands on about an ounce of porcini mushrooms and grind them to a fine powder using a coffee grinder. I actually own two grinders, one for my coffee and one for grinding spices. I suggest you do the same unless you want funked joe in the morning. Combine in a couple of tablespoons of black pepper and plenty of kosher salt. I like plenty of salt on my meat.

Once you've mixed up your dry rub, spread a thick coating of it on to both sides of the steak as shown above. This thick coating will become a sort of crust once grilled.

As for cooking these guys make sure you get the grill nice and hot. I cannot stress enough the need for a firey hot grill when grilling steak. This is probably the most important part of the whole process. Under heat like this we grilled them for about 3-4 minutes a side. That produced a perfect medium rare.
Once the meat was cooked I took them off of the grill and let them sit for 10 minutes. Before serving, I tossed them back on the grill for 30 seconds to get them piping hot for the dinner table. Right before serving, drizzle some high end balsamic vinegar on top of the steak. It really finishes the whole thing off. Take a look...
To round out the meal I fixed up a batch of potatoes au-gratin, grilled up some little eggplants, and tossed on a slice of tomato. 2 pounds of meat is a bit much for one man but I rose to the occasion. And it all got washed down with an unhealthy amount of red wine. Enjoy!

Memorial Day Pork Chops With Pesto Sauce

I ended my Memorial Day weekend in California by grilling up a dozen or so pork chops. Of all the pork cuts, I find pork chops to be one of the more difficult ones to grill properly. Chops have less fat than ribs so it is very easy to overcook them. One must walk a fine line between being under cooked and over done. In addition, pork chops can somtimes be a bit bland for my taste. To increase the flavor I will usually prepare a marinade. This time, I relied on a orange juice soya sauce mixture. Soak your chops in this marinade for at least a few hours if not longer. The ingreidents for the marinade are:

1 cup orange juice

1 cup soya sauce

Few table spoons of olive oil

You will want enough liquid to cover all of your chops. Adjust the poritions above as necessary.

The cooking time for pork chops really depends on the thickness of the cut. As you can see from the pictures, I was dealing with some pretty thick chops. These required about 5-6 minutes a side over high heat.

To accompany the chops I whipped together a nice pesto. As you know, I am a big fan of pesto and make it many different ways. Click here to see what I have done in the past.

I make pesto several different ways sometimes using basil sometimes using parsley, sometimes using pine nuts and sometimes using walnuts. This time, however, I tried using pistachio nuts instead. I got the idea from watching an episode of Good Eats with Alton Brown. It was excellent...you must try this. Just keep the basic recipe for pesot but substitue the pine or walnuts with pistachio nuts. That means, plenty of basil (or parsley), garlic clove or two, parmesean cheese, pistachio nuts, salt, pepper, and enough olive oil to create dip like consistency. Place all of these ingredients in your food processor and let it run.

For the final plating, I spread a big spoonful of the pesto sauce on to a chop and one big spoonful of the pesto sauce on to a slice of crusty sourdough bread. In addition, grilled up some fresh corn and put together a spinach and ravioli salad.

Upper Yosemite Falls Menu

At the moment, I am spending the Memorial Day weekend in the San Francisco area. Yesterday I found myself in Yosemite. I wanted to do some hiking and finally decided to do a fairly short hike from the Yosemite Valley up to the Upper Yosemite Falls. It took about 2 hours to get to the top. Once at the top, I felt the proper way to enjoy the view was to sit down, enjoy some lunch and uncork a bottle of red.
Lunch consisted of a big loaf of sour dough bread paired with a block of aged cheddar, some hard salami, and some store bought hummus. All of this was choked down with a bottle of Diablo Creek. The wine was crap but it was the best $5 bottle of wine that could be found at the top of the falls. Wine never tasted so good.

To finish off the "on the trail" meal, I made some chocolate sandwiches. For those of you who have never tried it, you take a piece of white crusty bread and you eat it with a piece of quality chocolate. Brands like Lindt or Rittersport go exceptionally well.

Review - Star Of India, West Chester, PA

In my last post I highlighted a new beer that I had gotten my mits on. At the same time I mentioned that I consumed most of it at a small Indian restaurant called the Star Of India in downtown West Chester, PA. Though I wrote that I enjoyed my dining experience there, I did not however provide a proper review. Here is a more proper review.In general, I feel I have very specific and high standards for Indian food. I am by no means an expert but I have eaten at Indian joints all of the US, the UK and parts of India. In general, the food served in many domestic Indian restaurants is often very bland and caters more to the masses. This is especially true for Indian lunch buffets. They have gotten so bad in my opinion that I no longer go to them. In the UK and India, the experience is much different. In my opinion, Indian food needs to be properly spiced. This not only includes heat but also flavor as well. Restaurants in the UK and India certainly deliver.Now back to the Star Of India. When my date and I arrived last Friday night, we were greeted at the door and promptly seated. As we were BOB'ing, the server brought us some clean glasses and my date and I popped open a couple of Schwelmer beers and dove into them. I was pleased to see that there were several other people in the restaurant. To be honest, I had been avoiding the Star Of India for quite some time. I had last been there 4 years ago. While I remembered enjoying the food, I felt that the restaurant was not very clean. While I will eat Indian food out of a dirty restaurant in India, my standards change when I am in the States. At first glance I was happy to notice that they had cleaned up their act.For an appetizer, we dialed up some vegetable samosas. While the samosa s themselves were failry ordinary, the mango, mint and tomato/onion sauces were excellent. After that, we popped open our second beers. My beer happened to make a load champaign type pop when I did it. The entire restaurant turned their heads in surprise. I like attention.For our main courses, my date and I shared a lamb rogan josh and a lamb palak with some chapati, naan and rice on the side. I must say they were pretty darn good. The chef had properly spiced the food as I had requested. My date and I soon ate ourselves into a food coma.Overall I would certainly recommend this restaurant. The only complaint I would have is that the wait staff is not incredibly friendly. I would normally expect and small joint like that to be extra friendly. For example, at one point I noticed a picture of the Taj Mahal on the wall and mentioned to the owner(?) that I had recently gotten back from India. My real point was to start a conversation. She merely acknoledged my statement and left. In her defense, she might not have understood me.Anyways go to the Star Of India, order some good spicy food and let the BBQB know what you thought of it.

Beer at the Star Of India, West Chester PA

A buddy of mine gave me a six pack of Schwelmer beer two weeks ago and I finally had the chance to crack a few of them open Friday night. For the first tasting I decided to take it to the Star Of India. The Star Of India is a an BYOB Indian restaurant in downtown West Chester, PA. For those of you not from Pennsylvania, BYOB or Bring Your Own Beer, restaurants are eating establichments that do not have a liquor license. BYOB's are the best thing PA has got to offer. You'll save beaucoup bucks bringing your own booze.
Anyways, back to the beer and the Star Of India. The Star Of India is definitely worth a visit. I like my food spicy and they had no problem providing the spice. Normally I would bring a bottle of wine to a BYOB. However, because of the strong flavor of Indian food, I felt a good strong beer would stand up better. I was right and the beer I chose was perfect. At first glance, these Schwelmer beers are noticeably a little different the average fair because of the flip-top cork style seal. I'm not saying it is as much fun as opening a bottle of champagne, but if you do it right the bottle will make the same popping noise and definitely catch the eye of all of the other restauranteers. Good stuff! As for the taste, it's pretty decent as well. The color is a slight amber and it has a slightly sweet and caramel flavor. If I had one criticism it was that I was unable to achieve a proper head on the beer. It wasn't flat but the picture below is the most head I could coax out of the bottle.

Grilled Little Eggplants

Little eggplants are very similar to normal eggplants...but little. Anyways, they are really awesome on the grill. Place them directly over the coals. The idea here is to get the skin nice and charred. This is a very similar process to making roasted red peppers.
Once the skin of the eggplants are nice and charred, take them off of the grill. At this point you'll need to peel them. Many people suggest putting them into a paper bag to get them to sweat a bit. As for me, I dont have any paper bags hanging around so I just toss 'em into a bowl of cold water. Works for me.

I like to server them with brushed with a little bit of butter with the stem still on.

Charcoal Grilled Sausage Pizza

As promised earlier, this blog entry will give you yet another idea how to consume your homemade sausages.
The other night I got another itch to grill up a pizza. This time it was a homemade chicken and pork sausage ricotta cheese pie. Again, you really need to try this out. Its simple and it tastes incredible. The taste is a little different than your average pizza parlour pie because of the charcoal flavor.
Remember to get the pizza stone as hot as you can get it before transferring your dough to the stone. As a reader suggested earlier it is also possible to do the dough directly on the grill thpough its a bit mroe difficult.