Indian Ribs and Tandoori Chicken New Year

First off, Happy New Year! Secondly, my apologies, I realize it's been a while since my last post but as the cold weather sets in, I really do tend to go into hibernation. That said, I have continued to explore the world of wine and food which included a cooking event with Lynn Crawford at the Ottawa Wine and Food Festival as well as a night of grilling with Ted Reader at Urban Element.

There was also another trip to Vegas which included some great meals and wines...but let's get on to the business at hand - New Year's Eve Dinner!  This year we decided to stay in and avoid driving, high priced meals and waiting around for taxis.  We chose to go with an Indian theme for our meal and this meant I'd need to clear off the deck and Big Green Egg from the recent snow fall.

For the dishes in the evening's meal, we went pretty meat heavy with Indian-Spiced BBQ Ribs, Tandoori Chicken along with some naan bread and basmati rice.  We pretty much forgot about veggies but if you follow the recipe for the Bobby Flay's Indian-spiced ribs, you'll see that there were tomatoes in the sauce, so veggies are covered. ;)  

We started with the ribs first as they needed the most prep time.  Kelly looked after the sauce, which to be honest was the brunt of the work. For the ribs, I chose pork spare ribs and got to work removing the membrane, a very important step because the membrane actually prevents smoke and flavor from passing through to the meat.  I used pliers as you can see as you really need something to maintain the grip when pulling it off.  Many sites suggest using a paper towel, but I say go with pliers. 

I put the ribs on for roughly three hours and during that time, aside from visiting our friends across the street, we (Kelly) also prepared the tandoori marinade and prepped the chicken thighs for the grill.  Now some of you may be thinking that Kelly has been doing all the work, and you'd be right, but let's not forget that I am the one who has to go out in the cold and man the grill.  It wasn't crazy cold out, but it's never pleasant outside when it's below zero.  

Special thanks to the Shawns for my special hat, direct from Russia!

By now, between the rum and cokes at our friend's Susanne and Paul's place, and the beers that Kel had given me, the evening was getting a bit hazy so I'll fast forward to the meal shots as to be honest, there's not much to mention.  After the ribs, I grilled the tandoori chicken and even the naan bread and did my best to stay warm.  

The meal was awesome and the combination of a full stomach, the fireplace and alcohol, had me falling asleep in my chair by about 10:30pm on New Year's Eve!  Kelly woke me about an hour later and we celebrated at midnight with a very stubborn small bottle of champagne that almost refused to open.  

Anyway, was a great night and it was great to get grilling again, regardless of the weather.  In fact, I grilled again this evening and it's close to 20 below with the windchill, but if you dress appropriately, keep the grill hot and something warm in your glass, grilling can still be fun in the winter. Enjoy!

A Lazy Man's Ribs

My wife had been on the road for 10 days straight and I knew she was looking forward to just coming home and relaxing on the weekend, watching her Steelers play football followed by the Emmy Awards on Sunday.  So, I decided to treat her to a bit of a fun BBQ day to help her relax and really enjoy herself.  Having never tried ribs yet on the Big Green Egg, I thought it was the perfect time to do so. 

Today was an absolutely beautiful early fall day not a cloud in the sky and no wind. The temperature was still comfortable enough, but you could tell it’s started to get cold as the hornets are starting to get lethargic just sitting on the side of the house while the first flock of geese head south for the season. This is good because when I was bbq'ing last night, I saw flocks of geese flying west...and then north as well, then more going west again (they seemed very confused).  

Not exactly a 'V formation', but they were headed south

Ok, so now that I've set the stage, I fired up the grill with some maple wood charcoal and started to let the temperature slowly rise to 225 Fahrenheit while I started prepping the ribs.  The ribs in question for today’s bbq goodness are pork back ribs.  Kelly actually picked them up yesterday when she was out and thankfully asked the good folks at The Butchery if they didn’t mind removing the membrane before they packaged them up.  Lazy Tip #1, ask the butcher to remove the membrane for you.

So, we’ve got our grill warming up, our ribs are sitting on the counter and it’s now time to prepare them with a little rub.  Now, here’s Lazy Tip #2: if you aren’t in the mood, and are lazy, you can always buy a pre-made rub. So far all my other rubs have been home prepared (often with Kelly's efforts, actually - always with Kelly's efforts), but I chose to go for a motorcycle ride yesterday instead of looking up a rub recipe and going out getting the necessary spices.  So for today’s ribs, I used Steve Raichlen’s Lone Star Barbeque Rub.  As always, I prepped the meat using a thin layer of mustard to act as a binding agent for the rub to stick to the meat.  I rubbed the ribs and let them sit for a bit while I finished setting up the grill for indirect cooking.  

I had to cut the 2 strips up to fit them onto the rack

I used the place setter and filled the drip pan with some apple juice and boiling water. Then, just before I put the ribs on, I added a bunch of apple wood chips that I’d been soaking for an hour or so. This created a bit of a smokefest just as the ribs went on - smelled outstanding in the crisp air (ahhh nature).

Now, for today’s session, I decided to follow the 3 - 2 - 1 method of rib cookery.  The 3 means 3 hours of slow cooking at 225, the 2 refers to the following 2 hours of foil wrapped cooking with some apple juice in there to keep them steaming and moist (Lazy Tip #3: what to do with the left-over cooked apple juice from the foil in step 2, drain it into the drip pan that’s already got apple juice and water steaming, easy clean up and adds flavor). And finally, the 1 refers to the final hour where you take them out of the foil, back on the grill naked and you can start basting them with BBQ sauce if you like. Some may say that using foil on step 2 is cheating or lazy, but that was the theme of the day. Plus - if it tastes good, who cares?

So let’s fast forward to the final hour as that’s when things get interesting. I decided to do 3 options:

Option 1: Basted with Steve Raichlen’s Smokey Apple Sauce

Option 2: Basted with Rufus Teague’s ‘Touch o’ Heat’ Sauce

Option 3: Left Plain (for dipping if necessary)

Final Plate: Option 1 and 2 with Kelly's Mac N' Cheese

I really like both option 1 and 2 and actually, I think I liked the heat in Rufus Teague's sauce the best. The plain ribs were still great and we'll just dip them or possibly cut them up and use the meat in fajitas or something else.  I'll bring some into work tomorrow for Rob (aka Capt. Diabetes who you might remember from earlier such posts as 'Goosebump Inducing Pulled Pork'). The final result in terms of the meat itself was pretty much 'fall off the bone' which obviously was the goal. So I certainly recommend the 3 - 2 - 1 method.

Finally, one of our cats game me the final seal of approval by stealing one of the rib bone remnants off of Kelly's plate and attempted to make a getaway.  

Oh - by the way, the Steelers beat the Seahawks in a shut out so I think even if the ribs came out horrible, Kelly would have been pleased!

71 Wines in Three Days - Day Three!

Alright, so when we last left off, we’d just waddled back to our hotel room after finishing the dinner of day 2 of our weekend of wine madness.  If you haven’t been following along, here’s the links to:

Day 1

Day 2 

Ok so day 3…well there was much more wine and food, the end.  Kidding!  Best settle in, as we’re going to get a bit crazy for breakfast.  The agenda said “Bouillabaisse Breakfast” which I was a wee bit concerned about to be honest.  But hey, these guys had treated me well (VERY well) thus far including the tequila in the hot chocolate yesterday morning (which I thought would never work) so I trusted in their abilities and figured all would work out.  Kelly had the idea that perhaps they could do a “French Toasts of the World” as we waited staring at the giant raw fish that made up the bouillabaisse with trepidation.  But then the wine came…ahhh Riesling for breakfast!  

A great way to start the day!

So as they poured the seven glasses of Riesling (3 from France, 2 from Germany, 1 from Austria and 1 from the USA), Master Sommeliers Christophe Tassan and William Sherer went through the ingredients of bouillabaisse with Willie comically lifting up each ingredient, which at times did not cooperate with him!

As Christophe explained the ingredients, Willie tried to gracefully pick them up

The wines were great and I was surprised by the fact that I did not mind eating bouillabaisse for breakfast as it was delicious. 

We had a bit of a break after breakfast, which sadly, we used to check out of our hotel since our weekend culinary carousal was coming to an end with just “lunch” left (I only put it in quotes as the word lunch does not begin to describe it – think of a typical lunch as a sparkler and this meal was on par with someone talking a flamethrower to a fireworks factory).

Weekend wine count thus far: 63

What we learned was that lunch was in fact the service that they give to Executive Pastry Chef Megan Romano to ensure everyone develops diabetes before leaving.  The Swiss fondue with the raclette was amazing (who doesn’t love melted cheese?!?!?!) but when they switched out the cheese for the chocolate fondue, my blood pressure elevated to dangerous levels.  No seriously, people around me can attest to this, at one point I couldn’t even talk and my eyeballs started sweating.  Sadly it devolved to the point where I was dipping chocolates in the chocolate.  I’m not going to try and save face, I really lost complete control and Kelly was actually trying to calm me down.  I should mention that the irony is that at the same time we were there, the American Association of Diabetes Educators was having their annual meeting and exhibition in the same resort.  Anyway, at one point Megan Romano came by to check on us and in my chocolate/sugar zenith, I pounced on her telling her how much I loved her and scared her half to death.  I asked if I could get my picture taken with her and she responded by saying: “sure I guess…my creepy chocolate friend.”  She’d only met me about 10 seconds earlier.

You can easily see the crazed look in my eyes

Oh, I almost forgot, we had some outstanding Swiss wines over the course of this meal while wine educator Sebastien Gavillet explained each of the six wines we tried.  Because I was in a wine/sugar haze at this point, I took a picture of my two favourite wines from this meal, knowing I’d not remember their names later.

Christmas is coming, hint hint!

Wine count thus far: 69

After eating all of the chocolate, I had a lot of energy and we had lots of time to kill before our late evening flight.  We did a bit of shopping at a local mall and then headed back to the hotel sadly anticipating our impending flight home.  We decided to have one last snack and glass of wine each at Aureole before heading to the airport.  Once people knew I was a grill freak, we’d been told a few times over the weekend that before I left, I absolutely needed to try Chef Pouessel’s ribs.  We sat at the bar, ordered a nice glass of wine each, Kelly opting for a Pinot Noir, and I a hearty Zinfandel and ordered the ribs.  I don’t know how he cooks them, but the bark and spicy flavor of them was really powerful and people were right to talk them up so much.  

We sampled each other’s wines, finished the ribs and a dessert or two may have snuck in there before we headed off to the airport. 

FINAL wine count with those last two: 71 Wines in Three Days

This was without a doubt the most outstanding culinary experience of my life and one that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to top.

P.S. We have already booked a return trip to Las Vegas later this year to try and recapture some of the magic we experienced on this special weekend.