Backyard Barbecue

Since leaving Texas a decade ago, I still miss some of the great local foods I'd enjoyed during my thirty years living in the Lone Star State. One of those things is good Texas barbecue. We have found barbecue in other places we've lived, but its not nearly as good. I decided a few years ago that the only way to get exactly what I wanted was to do it myself.

In North Carolina, they love that pulled pork. In Memphis, it’s all about the ribs bathed in a sticky, sweet sauce. Make no mistake - if you have not eaten slow smoked ribs, brisket or sausage in Texas, you have not eaten Texas barbecue. In Texas, beef  brisket is the cut of choice, it better be smoked for 12 hours and don't insult that meat by drowning it in sauce. In fact, at most respectable old-school barbecue spots in Texas, there is no sauce.

I've smoked fish, pork shoulder, chicken and ribs with very good results. But brisket is the most challenging because it requires such a long cook time. There are a number of variables that need to be controlled for the best slow smoked brisket. This cut is blanketed with a thick cap of fat that renders during its 10-12 hour cook, keeping the meat moist and flavorful. The fat is essential to insure that your brisket doesn't end up as beef jerky. Its not easy to find a whole brisket or even a piece with the fat cap intact. In other parts of the country, brisket is traditionally braised with root vegetables and most of the fat is mindfully trimmed off. However, a reputable butcher can usually procure the necessary fat covered brisket if you make friends. Step 1-if you want to make Texas barbecue, make friends with a local butcher.

Texas barbecue starts with a dry rub and while you can find lots of dry rub recipes, the only things you really need are salt and pepper. For pork ribs and pork shoulder, I find a little brown sugar aids in both flavor and color and a little cayenne pepper gives the meat just enough heat to make your lips tingle. I use the same rub on my beef, but you can fix it however you like. I had a party one summer and cooked barbecue for about 30 people. I cooked a 4 1/2 pound brisket and two slabs of pork spare ribs and I used about 1 1/2 cups of dry rub for everything.

Dry Rub
3/4 cup of kosher salt
1/4 cup of finely ground black pepper
1/4 cup of light brown sugar
2 tsp of cayenne pepper, or more if you want

The meat really needs to spend some time with the dry rub and get acquainted before it goes on the smoker. It's best to put your dry rub on the night before cooking and let the meat sit in the fridge overnight. Also, dry rub is best applied to a dry surface, so dry off the meat before application. Coat the meat liberally with the dry rub, give it all a nice massage and put it in the fridge for a night of culinary romance.

The  wood you use also makes a big difference. Hickory is great for pulled pork. Fish really needs a milder wood, like apple or cherry. The strong, distinctive aroma of mesquite is one of the unique features that sets Texas barbecue apart, but it also has a very assertive flavor that can be overpowering. For brisket, I like to add a little bit of mesquite to a bag of oak wood chunks. The oak is milder than mesquite, but imparts a good flavor. for the party, I started my coals at 6:00 am, put my wood chips on to soak and by 6:30 I was ready to put meat on the smoker. I have since invested in a smoke box for my grill, but this can be done in a large grill with strategic placement of the coals. I arranged the coals on one side of the grill. Since the long, slow method of barbecue requires a relatively low heat of about 225 degrees, I closed the dampers on my grill to allow very little airflow, keeping the temperature under control. When the grill was at about 200 degrees, I set the meat as far away from the fire as possible, dumped a big handful of wood chunks on the fire and closed the lid.

In addition to the locals we'd invited to the party, we were expecting my husband's childhood friend Jed and his wife Erica, who were visiting from California.  With lots of party prep to do, I got cracking. Every 30 minutes or so, I'd look out the window to see if there was still smoke rising from the grill. If there was no smoke rising, I'd put another big handful of wood on the coals. I had to refresh the charcoal a few times during the day, but all in all, I was able to keep the grill at the perfect 225 degrees. Throughout the day, I watched the meat slowly take on that mahogany color and the longer it was exposed to the wood smoke, the darker it got. After about 4 hours, I took the ribs off and let them rest. Normally a brisket would not be sitting as close to the heat source, so mine cooked more quickly than I'd anticipated. After 10 hours, I took the brisket off and let it rest. The meat was pretty much black on the outside but not burned. It looked right. I felt right. As my guests started to arrive, I sliced ribs and brisket. When I cut into the brisket, a beautiful slow trickle of juice glistened down the slice of meat and it had that telltale pink smoke ring under the surface. When I cut the ribs apart, the same pink smoke ring was present. 

My neighbors were all at this party. Lets be honest, they'd spent the whole day smelling the wood smoke and they would have all shown up even if I hadn't invited them. They all loved the barbecue and some said they'd never tasted anything like it. But the true test was my husband's friend Jed. They all grew up in Texas and had spent many years sampling the best Texas barbecue in the state. Many a time, Jason has regaled me with tales of he and Jed eating bar-b-que at the legendary Kreutz's Market in Lockhart, Texas. If Jed liked my brisket, I knew I'd hit gold. He did. In fact, he said it was the best barbecue he'd had outside of Texas. If you are so inclined to make your own barbecue, its worth the time and effort.  

Make Your Own Bagels

I'm a purist when it comes to bagels. In my opinion, the perfect bagel is chewy with a thick crust and a tight, firm crumb. When the perfect bagel is sliced, there should be no crumbly bits that fall from the center. It should take a little bit of elbow grease to get the knife all the way through it. And please, please, please don't serve me a bagel with fruit in it. If you want blueberries, make muffins. If you want raisins, make cinnamon bread. In my opinion, there can be no debate. Fruit does not belong in a bagel. 

A few years ago, I decided I wanted to try making my own bagels. I was relatively new to baking my own bread and I knew this would be a challenge. I had recently met Bridget Lancaster from America's Test Kitchen and she suggested a website called The Fresh Loaf, which is where I found this recipe.  Making the dough seemed simple enough, but there were some interesting peculiarities to this recipe. First, it called for malt powder or malt syrup. Honey or brown sugar can be substituted, but I wanted to do this the right way. I went to a couple of stores, but could not find malt syrup or malt powder, so I had to settle for raw honey. Also, bagels are traditionally boiled, then baked. I've never done anything remotely close to that before, but what the heck, how hard could that be? Finally, the recipe takes two days to prepare. The recipe recommends making the dough and shaping it the night before, refrigerating it overnight, then boiling and baking the bagels in the morning and serving them for breakfast. I set aside a Saturday evening to make bagel dough that I planned to bake the next morning and serve with cream cheese, lox, sliced tomato, sliced onion and capers.

This recipe makes 12 to 15 bagels, depending on how big you like them.

Sponge:
1 teaspoon instant dry active yeast
4 cups bread flour
2 1/2 cups lukewarm water

Dough:
1/2 teaspoon instant dry active yeast
3 3/4 cups bread flour
2 3/4 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons malt powder
OR
1 tablespoon malt syrup, honey, or brown sugar

Finishing touches:
1 tablespoon baking soda for the water
Cornmeal for dusting the pan
Toppings for the bagels such as seeds, salt, onion, or garlic - NO FRUIT!! 

I got a bit of a late start that evening. I didn't actually head into the kitchen until about 8:15 to start the dough. I made the sponge by dumping the flour and yeast into my plastic bin and mixing them up a bit. Then I poured in the lukewarm water and mixed until all the flour was moistened. I covered the bin with plastic wrap and let it sit for two hours. My kitchen was a little chilly that night, so I put the bin in a somewhat warm place, close to my oven, to give the yeast a welcoming environment. When I came back at about 10:30 pm, the sponge was nicely bubbly and sticky and ready for the addition of more dry ingredients. I added 3 more cups of flour, the additional yeast, the salt and the honey. The recipe recommended that the final 3/4 cup of flour get worked in slowly during the kneading process.

This dough was extremely stiff and difficult to knead. I tried working it with my hands in the bin first to get all the flour incorporated. That didn't work, so I dumped it out onto my work surface and tried to knead the flour in. That also proved to be ineffective. Finally, I broke out the Kitchen Aid and scraped all the crumbly flour into the bowl of the mixer. I managed to get the dough to come together with the Kitchen Aid and got the final bit of flour incorporated before the mixer overheated. I let the dough rest for about 10 minutes so the flour could absorb what little moisture was available and turned it out on the board again and started kneading. I ended up doing most of the kneading by hand, taking breaks periodically to let the dough and my arms rest. It gave me quite a work-out and after about 15 minutes of kneading, the dough was about as cohesive as I could get it and I felt like I'd just spent half an hour on the treadmill. 

According to the recipe, this is when the dough gets divided into 12 to 15 equal pieces. I decided to make a dozen bagels, dividing the dough into two parts, then six parts, then cutting each piece in half to make 12 pieces. They were far from evenly divided - some pieces were a lot larger than others, but I figured it would just have to do. By this time, it was well past 11:00 pm and I was exhausted. I shaped the dough into balls as best I could, given how stiff the dough was, and placed them on the work surface under a damp towel to rest. When I came back half an hour later, the dough was quite a bit more pliable and was starting to look a lot like bagels. At this point, I rounded, caressed and shaped each dough ball and finally poked a hole in the middle and lovingly shaped them into even rounds. This was the most relaxing and Zen-like part of the process for me. The pre-bagels went onto a baking sheet lined with waxed paper sprayed with non-stick cooking spray and got covered with plastic wrap. Then it was another 20 minutes before I could put the bagels into the fridge for the night. At 12:20, I put the bagels in the bottom of my fridge and dragged myself to bed. But sleep didn't come easily, I could not stop thinking about my lovely little belly-buttoned dough balls and how they would taste when I pulled them out of the oven in the morning. 

When the sun came up, I sprang out of bed and danced to the kitchen to put a big pot of water on to boil and get the oven heating up. This recipe requires a huge pot and the bagels get boiled in batches, two or three at a time. A tablespoon of baking soda gets added to the water to give the bagels that classic thick crust. I cranked the oven up to 525 degrees and took my bagels out of the fridge. They looked all plump and happy and I prepped two baking sheets with a generous amount of cornmeal to prevent them from sticking in the oven. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat patiently while my water came to the boil. When the water was ready, I dropped in the first three bagels. It only took a minute or a so on each side to boil these babies up right and I used a slotted spoon to turn them and remove them from the water. As soon as they came out of their Jacuzzi bath, they went onto the cornmeal covered baking sheet. The toppings get sprinkled on while the bagels are still wet. I sprinkled a few with coarse salt and a few with crushed garlic. Some I left plain. When they were all boiled, I put the pan in the oven. They only took ten minutes to bake and I rotated the pan half way through. I watched them cautiously to make sure they didn't burn.

The bagels were absolutely beautiful. It was so difficult to wait for half an hour until they cooled enough to eat. They were still pretty warm when I sliced into one, but not so warm that it melted the cream cheese. We had a traditional deli style feast with lox, fresh tomato, onion, capers, hot coffee and a game of cards. These bagels are worlds beyond any grocery store or frozen. If you have the time and inclination, making your own bagels is fun and delicious.  

Scapes

On a trip to a local farmers market a few years ago, my husband Jason saw something interesting sitting on a table.  There was a local garlic farmer who specialized in all kinds of garlic infused delicacies - garlic jam, garlic oil, pesto and such. She was selling zip lock bags of curly green scallion-like items called "scapes" and they were sitting next to a bowl of pesto that she'd made with them. The pesto was strong, yet not as assertive as most pesto I've tasted. It had more of an herbaceous quality, a grassy flavor that I really liked. We bought a bag of scapes and the garlic lady gave us the recipe for the pesto. My mind was filling with questions and ideas for what to do with those funky little garlic flavored curly-cues.

Garlic scapes, also known as garlic spears, stems or tops, are the shoots that grow out of underground developing garlic bulbs. They shoot up from the young leaves of the plant and curl into lovely tendrils with what looks like flower bulbs on the ends, very much like chives. The flower bulb is actually a seed pod that will eventually produce little seeds that can be planted to grow more garlic. If the scape is left on the plant, the underground garlic bulb will not plump up properly as all the energy of the plant will go into growing the scape. For the farmer, cutting the scape off not only allows the garlic bulb to grow correctly, but yields another delicious food product. It's a win-win for everyone.

When we got home, I cut a piece off one of the scapes and tasted it. It was a little woody and difficult to chew, but the flavor was amazing. It was most certainly garlic, but that nostril-burning garlic smell was replaced by a vegetal aroma. If you crushed a bunch of garlic, put it in a bucket of water and watered your lawn with it, the mowed grass might smell something like this garlic scape.

I wasn't sure what to do with this thing. I tried using it in a marinade for chicken breasts with some lemon and herbs, but the flavor didn't show up at all. I cut some into a brine for smoked fish, but once again the garlic flavor never emerged. I figured the best way to enjoy the garlic scape was in its most raw state. So I a pulverized a couple of scapes and used it in place of garlic in a batch of tzatziki sauce, which is the greek yogurt and cucumber sauce most commonly served on a gyro sandwich. EUREKA! The garlic flavor was powerful yet gentle and the crunchy little bits of green scape delivered a surprising punch. I'd hit the jackpot. I chopped another scape into a batch of tabouli salad and the the grassy garlic flavor was a perfect compliment. The parsley, cucumber and lemon in the salad played supporting roles to this culinary rising star. It is always a thrill to discover some interesting food item you've never used before. But the real thrill is helping it find it's true voice in your kitchen. 

Rhubarb

Its rhubarb season and I'm starting to see it appear at farm stands and grocery stores.  In New England, we had rhubarb growing in our backyard like a weed.  It's a hearty perennial plant grows near a body of water and can be transplanted easily. It will even grow well in a large pot. This stuff is everywhere and upon further research, I discovered that rhubarb has a long and illustrious history. Dating back to 2700 BC in China, rhubarb root was cultivated for medicinal purposes and was used to treat everything from constipation to the plague. When European merchants started trading with China, they carried rhubarb back to the west. Marco Polo's accounts of his travels to China mention rhubarb prominently. It was first planted in Italy in 1608 and over the next few decades, it spread all across Europe grown exclusively for medicinal purposes. In the mid 1700's, it started showing up in recipes for pie and tart fillings and in the early 1800's a Maine gardener introduced it to New England.  Now you can find rhubarb all over the country.  

Rhubarb is a green, leafy plant with red stalks that resemble thick celery. The leaves look a bit like kale and are toxic to human and animals, but the red stalks are a very interesting food item. Typically, its chopped up into small pieces and cooked with sugar. When it cooks down, it becomes thick and slightly stringy and has a lovely pink color. Rhubarb is seriously tart, but with enough sugar, it takes on kind of a floral perfume-like flavor. When it's added to other fruit, like strawberries or peaches, its flavor blossoms into something truly remarkable. It's also full of pectin, so adding it to jams and preserves not only gives them great flavor, but helps them set up nicely. It is frequently added to fruit pie filling, in which it melts into the other fruit and adds a distinctive yet mysterious richness. 

Several years ago, my mother-in-law put together a family cookbook of recipes she collected from many different relatives. Rhubarb plays a pretty substantial role in this cookbook and my husband speaks with fond nostalgia about a rhubarb sauce that his grandmother made and served over vanilla ice cream. I found that recipe in the family cookbook and made it with some of the rhubarb I'd found at the farmers market. It's just rhubarb, sugar and a little bit of water, cooked until the rhubarb falls apart, which takes about five minutes. I served it warm spooned over vanilla ice cream and I thought it was delicious. But there was a lot of it left over in the fridge and how much rhubarb sauce can two people eat? 

A week later, I went strawberry picking and came home with 6 pounds of ripe, juicy berries. We were planning a party for July 4th weekend and we talked about serving the strawberries at the party. I suggested strawberry shortcake, but my husband took the idea a step further and suggested a strawberry rhubarb trifle. A trifle is an easy, delicious and beautiful dessert featuring fluffy cake, chunky sauce, fruit and whipped cream or custard layered into a glass bowl. I've made trifles before and people are always impressed with the stunning visual and I figured it would be a perfect way to use up that rhubarb sauce.

STRAWBERRY RHUBARB TRIFLE

2 cups of cooled rhubarb sauce (4 cups of chopped rhubarb, 1 cup of sugar and a 1/2 cup of water, cooked over medium heat until the rhubarb breaks down)
4 cups of strawberries, cut into pieces and sprinkled with sugar
1 vanilla cake, angel food cake or sponge cake
2 cups of whipped cream or custard
A deep, glass bowl for presentation

This recipe does require a little preparation the day before you assemble and serve it. If you make this dessert too far in advance, it starts to break down too much and the cake will become mushy. I advise making it just a few hours before you plan to serve it. I bought a vanilla cake at the store, but you can bake your own if you like. Lady fingers, angel food cake, sponge cake or just a plain yellow cake will work just fine. You want something spongy so it soaks up the sauce. I cut up the strawberries the night before the party and sprinkled them with just a touch of sugar so they'd break down a bit and become slightly soupy. A few hours before the party, I whipped the cream with a little vanilla and sugar until it was stiff, assembled the trifle and popped it in the fridge. 

I started with a couple spoonfuls of the rhubarb sauce in the bottom of the bowl. Then I broke the cake up into medium sized chunks, about 2 inches, and laid them on top of the rhubarb sauce, pressing down slightly to get a tight fit in the bowl. Then I spooned a layer of strawberries on top of the cake, making sure they were up against the sides of the bowl, and gently pressed down again to compact everything. I spooned some of the rhubarb sauce on top of the berries, then added about half of the whipped cream, again making sure it was flush against the sides of the bowl. A second layer followed, starting with cake, followed by strawberries, then rhubarb sauce. You've got to keep adding a little gentle pressure with each layer to make sure it's all compacted in the bowl, but don't press too hard, just enough to keep the layers close together. Keep an eye on the sides of the bowl to make sure your trifle is beautiful. I topped the bowl with a final layer of whipped cream and added some chopped berries on top for decoration.

I put the trifle out half way through the party and nobody wanted dig into it and destroy its beauty. Finally, I took the first spoonful and everyone else followed. It was gone within about 30 minutes and I swear I thought I saw someone licking the bowl. 

Kentucky Butter Cake

It all started when Cooks Catalog went out of business last fall.  My friend Barb and I had gone to a Cooks Catalog warehouse sale in Dallas many years ago and we share a love of cooking and good food.  So when the catalog announced its going out of business sale, Barb sent me lovely box of spices, which included a jar of culinary lavendar. Without realizing it, Barb had presented me with a culinary challenge. Many years ago she's made a batch of butter cookies using lavendar and they were stunning. I've cooked with lavendar before, but it was so long ago that I can't remember what recipe I used it in. The gauntlet had been thrown.

I started rummaging through my cookbooks to see if any recipes caught my attention. I considered ice cream, shortbread, even a plain pound cake, but was still searching for the perfect lavendar vehicle when my social media struck gold. I saw an add for a Kentucky butter cake recipe that sounded perfect. Its a moist, dense and buttery cake made in a bundt pan with a butter sauce poured over the cake when its still hot. The sauce sets up as a crust on the surface of the cake, which becomes the bottom of the cake when its turned out of the pan. It also seeps into the cake and makes it very moist. Now that's a great starting point for lavendar. I got to work.

KENTUCKY BUTTER CAKE:

3 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup butter
4 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
2 tbsp culinary lavendar

BUTTER SAUCE:
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter
3 tbs water
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp lemon zest and 1 tbsp lemon juice (optional)

This is a pretty easy recipe with great results, but there are a few tips that will make all the difference. You absolutely need a bundt pan for this recipe and I suggest nothing smaller than a 10 inch pan. Even if you have a nonstick bundt pan, grease the hell out of it and dust it with flour. This cake needs to stay in the pan until its completely cooled and it will stick if you don't take every precaution. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

I always like to sift my dry ingredients together before I get started. Put the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda through a sieve and set it aside. Beat the butter and sugar together, add the eggs, buttermilk, vanilla and lavendar and mix it well. I went a little overboard and scraped the seeds out of half a vanilla bean, which went directly into the batter. I love vanilla, what can I say! Once your mixture is blended, add the dry ingredients slowly with the mixer on low just until everything is incorporated.

Pour the batter into your greased and floured bundt pan and bake it for about an hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. While the cake is baking, make your butter sauce. Put the sugar, butter, water and vanilla in a small saucepan over medium heat. Of cource, I couldn't just leave this alone either, I added a little lemon zest and lemon juice for a touch of brightness. Don't let this butter sauce boil, keep an eye on it and take it off the heat when it just starts to bubble slightly. While the cake is still hot, use a skewer to poke holes all over the surface and pour that butter sauce all over it, letting is seep into the pan and into the holes you made. A lot of the sauce will sit on top, which is fine. When the cake cools, it adds a pleasant crunch to the whole experience. Let that cake cool completely before you turn it out of the pan. When you turn it out, the sugar crust will be on the bottom. Dust the top with powdered sugar for a professional looking finish.

I served this cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and it was an excellent compliment. The cake was moist and springy and lavendar came through nicely and didn't taste too floral. The lemon zest in the topping gave a counterpoint to the lavendar and vanilla. And of course, my coworkers benefited because I brought half the cake to work the next day. This is a good basic recipe to let your imagination run wild. Have fun with it.