Grilled Fish Tacos or are they Burritos?

Reader (my brother) submitted...
Last night I tried something a little new. My basal is thriving, and the first tomatoes are getting ripe in my garden.

Here is what I started with:

• Frozen Trader Joe's vacuum sealed white fish.
• Salt
• Pepper
• Olive Oil
• 1 Tomato
• a bunch of basil
• Tortilla
• Pre-shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese from Safeway
• Plain Yogurt
  

I took some frozen white fish from Trader Joe's and let it defrost for a couple of hours. Then I laid it out on to a plate, threw on some olive oil, salt, and pepper and let them finish thawing.

I heated up the grill good and hot and placed the fish on the grill. About 4 or 5 minutes per side. As you can see from the photos it was a bit of a mess. Some of the fish fell in between the rails into the flames. But most of it made it off the grill.





While the fish was grilling, I chopped up a fresh tomato and combined it with a bunch of freshly chopped basil, added some salt and pepper and presto!

Then I just wrapped up some fish, the tomato mixture, sharp shredded cheddar cheese, and some plain yogurt to make my grilled fish taco/burrito.

They tasted excellent. The only change I'll make next time is to increase the tomato to basil ratio and maybe squeeze half of a lemon into the mixture.

After the Festival Of Discovery

Like I mentioned in my last post, last weekend I discovered the Festival of Discovery in Greenwood South Carolina. What I didnt mention was that after the festival, I was so charged up that my buddy and I headed to the local Piggly Wiggly grocery store (yes, there is actually a chain called Piggly Wiggly...I have the t-shirt to prove it) to buy beer and some food to grill up. I ended up buying several different steaks. I bought some rib-eye, some extremely marbled chuck steak, a strip steak, and a pile of Johnsonville Hot Italian Sausages.

When we started preparing the meat I found out that my buddy was out of salt. Red meat without salt is a sin. To salvage the situation I rubbed both sides of the meat with soya sauce instead. It worked like a charm. The next gotcha was that my buddy had a semi functioning gas grill. Come to think of it, that is yet another reason to go charcoal: fewer parts that can break.
Normally I would grill steaks like this for about 3-4 minutes a side. We had some trouble getting it up to heat so we eventually cooked them for about 9 minutes a side. The italian sausages were left on for about 40 minutes.

we rounded out the feast with some garlic bread, red wine, steamed broccoli, and more beers than we could count.

Festival Of Discovery

Im down in South Carolina this weekend visiting a buddy of mine. We spent yesterday morning on a lake and then afterwards hit the Festival of Discovery in Greenwood, SC. I'm not quite sure why they call it the Festival of Discovery because as far as I could tell it is basically a barbecue festival and competition. Armed with an empty stomach I decided to "discover" as many of the barbecue tents as I could.Let me tell that I sampled some pretty good 'cue. Here are a few shots of some of the competitors I tried. My top three were Carolina Barbecue Company, the Swamp Boys and Just For Kicks. Though they were all good Just For Kicks had not only the best pulled pork but also the best sauces to match.
All in all it was a great festival. The only criticism would be that it lacked a beer tent. 'Cue and beer go hand in hand in my opinion and frankly it took my body a few minutes to eat one without the other.
Congratulations Just For Kicks!

Barbecue Pictorial

Here's a little taste teaser


Hungry yet?

West Chester Bike Race - Belgium Wit?@*!

As usual, a ton of people turned out for the 4th Annual Iron Hill Twilight Criterium, including the BBQB. ...or otherwise known as the West Chester bike race.I wandered up to the festivities in the early evening hours and got to watch the end of the Men's Amateur race. All that biking in circles got made me thirsty so I then headed to Iron Hill to track down a Heffe Weizen. It was only when I got up to the bar that I read the day's beer menu. The Heffe Weizen was nowhere to be seen. Panic set in. The waitress suggested that I try their Belgium Wit. Belgium Wit? Belgium wrong. I only wish that the Belgiuns would get out the wheat beer business. I settled on Iron Hill's West Coast Weisse instead. It was very drinkable but nowhere near as good as their Heffe Weizen. After drinking their WC Weisse pretty, I decided it was time to grab something to eat. Normally, I really like eating at Iron Hill but earlier I had spyed some street ribs.
Jimmy's BBQ stand was run by a couple of friendly guys who seemd to really enjoy sellin' ribs. While I felt the ribs were a bit dry, their barbecue sauce was very interesting. Call me crazy but it tasted a bit like they added some apple sauce to it. All in all, I plan on visiting their restaurant in Malvern when it opens later this summer.

Happy Birthday!

Good morning and Happy Birthday America! This is probably the biggest grilling day of the year. Make it count!

Its a bit overcast here in West Chester, PA this morning but hopefully the weather will pick up.