Category Archives: I take a lot of pictures

Bay Area BBQ – Harry Stewart – Tips about Tri-tips

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Eating awesome BBQ wasn’t the only thing to do at the Bay Area BBQ Championship. There were live cooking demonstrations by BBQ Professionals such as Harry Stewart from Great American Barbecue.

A few tips about tri-tip

  • Grill at about 300 degrees
  • Sear both sides over direct heat
  • After searing, cook try-tip with indirect heat – close the grill lid
  • Cook until the internal temperature is 125 degrees
  • Once cooked, let the tri-tip rest
  • Cut the meat across the grain – start with the tip of the boomerang

Chef Stewart provided a lot of samples….and I did not hold back!

Is that some beautiful looking tri-tip, or what?

Jeni Kubota, Klint Ramsey, Amy Jones, R Trent Walton liked this post

Open-Face Vietnamese Chicken Sandwich

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Props to my wife tonight, she put together some Open-Face Vietnamese Chicken Sandwiches for dinner. The recipe is from the current issue of Food Network Magazine (July/August 2012). The lime juice mixed with freshly made mayo (used eggs from our own chickens) added a punch of flavor to the mix. The radishes and carrots provided a nice crunch. Oh, and did I mention that the freshly made chili mayo added just the right amount of heat to liven things up. The recipe was easy and quick to make, you might want to check it out.

Food Truck Food Festival – Penn Valley CA

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This past weekend I cruised on up to Penn Valley, CA for Foods4Thought’s Food Truck Food Festival sponsored by the folks at Stitches ‘n Dishes. I love food trucks and this was definitely the place to go. They had a nice line-up of trucks and food vendors from Sacramento, the Bay area, and even local folks. I ate from three trucks and three vendors.

I had to get a Naked Lobster Roll from the Shack Mobile. I’ve eaten from this truck before so I knew I was going to get some good eats.

Next up I had the Peter Rattle Tail from Pit Bros BBQ, it was a mix of rattle snake and rabbit. It actually tasted good and had a nice texture. Pit Bros BBQ are local guys from Penn Valley.

The Skippy Dog from Heavenly Dog…weird, but it worked. Something about the peanut butter, the grilled onion, the fried onion, and the jack cheese all coming together made for an interesting dog.

You really should check out their corn dog, man this thing was huge! Had a really nice crunch when bitten into and the bater had a fresh cornmeal taste. This is my third time eating from Heavenly Dog and if you like dogs, give them a try.

Now who doesn’t like a nice tender beef heart skewered on a stick? This was my first time trying Lima – Peruvian Food and all I can say is if I see them again, I’ll be standing in line. You should give beef hearts a try, they had a nice spice to them and the chimichurri sauce was perfect.

It was a warm afternoon so I headed over to the Local Kine Shaved Ice truck and ordered a large shaved ice with mango, guava, and pineapple. Want something interesting? Have then dust it with plum salt…go ahead, give it a try.

I thought the shaved ice was the last bit for the day, but as I walked out I saw the Butterscotch Girl….I don’t have a picture of what’s behind the lid because I ate it too quickly.

All in all, it really was nice event, there was live music and plenty of seating in the shade. In a couple of weeks there’s a BBQ competition at the same location, I just might check it out.

Now that’s a pizza oven

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Picture of the Day – May 1, 2012This is my favorite picture from inside my mud oven. See how that flame rolls up along the ceiling? That’s a perfect fire for my oven. The floor of the oven is about 650 degrees and that makes the crust nice and crispy. As the bottom cooks, the flames dance overhead occasionally kissing the top of the pizza giving it that little something extra that only a wood fire can do. I don’t always get the perfect fire, but I’m working on it.

Shrimp shell on or off?

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Picture of the Day – April 30, 2012

Last night I did an experiment while grilling some shrimp. If you read yesterday’s blog then you know that I made Key Lime Grilled Shrimp. It was delicious by the way. I left the shells on half the shrimp and took all but the tails off the other half. I massaged the key lime marinade, which was really more like key lime mayonnaise, all over the shrimp and under the shell. I let it set for over an hour before putting them on the grill. Now shrimp cooks fast, even these jumbo shrimps; I grilled them for three minutes on each side.

So which was better? Flavor wise, hands down,shell on; but get me wrong, they both tasted great! So it really depends on what you want. Do you want the ease of just picking up the shrimp and eating it? Or, are you okay with getting your fingers messy and peeling the shrimp? Either way I’m sure you’ll enjoy your shrimp and you really should try the Key Lime Grilled Shrimp recipe.

Key Lime Grilled Shrimp

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Picture of the Day – April 29, 2012

A few weeks ago @Lili_H, on Twitter, was looking for recipe suggestions for key limes, other than pies. So I did a Google search, found mostly pies and almost gave up until I found this recipe form Coastal Living: Key Lime Grilled Shrimp. The recipe actually has three components: the Key Lime Grilled Shrimp, Key Lime Beurre Blanc and Pecan-Spiked Rice. I decided that if I ever bought a bag of key limes, I would make this recipe. Well, today I bought a bag of key limes.

Now ordinarily I almost always never can find a recipe that I’ve looked at online, well thanks to Pinterest I found my recipe no problem because I pinned it to one of my boards. The pecan rice recipe can stand on its own and it provided a nice balance to that zing the key limes bring to the dish. I’m going to make this again and this time I’ll takes pictures and write notes.

Check out the recipe at http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/key-lime-grilled-shrimp-10000001831934/

 

The Stages of a Mud Oven Fire – Before the iPhone Overheats

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Picture of the Day – April 28, 2012

I used a fisheye lens on my iPhone to get these shots as I fired up my mud oven…

Sure I should have known better, especially since my finger tips were beginning to burn.

Then again, it you read my previous post then you know how hot it gets, so what was I thinking?

At least I managed to get the screen shot before it shut down.

 

Firing up the Oven

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Picture of the Day – April 27, 2012

838 degrees fahrenheit! Now that’s hot, but it’s not hot enough. Whenever I want to fire up my mud oven I’ll crank it up past a 1000 degrees. It takes about three hours for the oven to get nice and saturated with heat. Once the coals are brushed aside, the floor of the oven will be about 750 and once it drops down to 650 I’ll start tossing in pizzas. At this temperature I can crank out a thin crust pizza in 90 seconds; I kid you not. Once you start eating pizza from a wood fired oven, you’ll never want to go back.

More Porchetta!

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Picture of the Day – April 26, 2012

After after having porchetta from the roli roti truck, I had to make my own. I have a habit of over doing it and this was no exception, there’s about 16 pounds of pork here.

Instead of a pork loin, I picked up a pork shoulder, deboned it and slathered it with orange marmalade. I made the marmalade with oranges from a little orange tree in my backyard. The marmalade was actually rather bitter, but it mellowed after roasting for about about six hours. Yeah, it took a while cook.

What do you wrap around five pounds of pork? Let me think, how about 11 pounds of pork belly! I really don’t remember all what I used for the dry rub, but I’m sure it was the usual suspects, salt, pepper, oregano, parsley and garlic. Are you still marveling over that slab of belly? Me too. Hey, wouldn’t that make for some awesome bacon? 

Porchetta!

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Picture of the Day – April 25, 2012

Is that the money shot to what? That Porchetta is just gorgeous! What’s Porchetta? Well, it’s pork belly wrapped around a pork loin…that’s pork on pork! How cool is that? Just look at it, need I say more?

Where is this? Well a while back we went to San Francisco early in the morning for the Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building. It was a beautiful day by the bay.

This was our first time here and you can just imagine my wonder as I saw a mobile food truck that had a dozen or so rotisseries in action action!

I didn’t know what to order so I bought a pound of porchetta, roasted potatoes and a porchetta sandwich. It was all good and I would have to say that the porchetta sandwich was the best sandwich I had in a long time.

According to their website, they only do porcehtta at the Ferry Building so check them out at www.roliroti.com