1) everything tastes good with just salt and pepper on it
2) no dirty dishes to clean up
The past weekend, I decided it was time to graduate from simple chicken or beef steaks to more advanced/sophisticated fare. First up was breakfast, well brunch technically, seeing as it was Sunday and at least halfway through the day.
Today's breakfast meat of choice was bacon. Pork is always the breakfast meat, I just don't have a craving for chicken or beef in relation to breakfast. We eat sausages quite a bit and are trying out different ones to see which we like. There is a local company that produces it's own sausages that don't have loads of preservatives in them but I find supply is hit and miss in the grocery stores. However, Superstore has some new sausages in both the frozen and fresh section that are pretty good. They are short fat little ones and they BBQ up nicely and don't shrink a lot. To go with the bacon, I mixed up a combo of halves of button mushrooms with halved parboiled baby potatoes. I added oil, salt, pepper and some dried herbs and threw them in the metal vegetable basket on the grill. I think I let them cook around 15 -20 mins so there were some charred edges and the potatoes were cooked through. the Bacon took all of 2 minutes as it was thin but streaky bacon but the hot hot temp crisped them up reallll niiiice as you can see. I'm glad we got the bigger grill, lots of space to spread out and give everything space.
I served this with scrambled eggs and grapefruit for PB ( I wish I like grapefruit, it looks so delicious and refreshing but it's so bitter..bleeugh! Along with coffee and fake cherry flavoring, it's one of the few things I just can't palate). For myself, I had half an avocado and salsa on the side of my bacon and potatoes. Good combo all around, bacon on the BBQ is fast, crispy and mess -free. No greasy pan cluttering up your sink and no fat-spattered oven top.
Not content with just one BBQ meal for the day, I already was planning the next. I had a nice sirloin tip beef roasting joint in the fridge and usually would roast this the traditional way but today, BBQ was the test. I thought that the high heat would sear the outside nicely and seal in the rich juices. Let's hope I was correct. I did the usual paste coating on the beef as follows:
2-3 shallots, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp dried rosemary
salt and pepper (liberal)
I mix this up and then rub it on the joint as below:
The grill had been preheating for about 10 minutes and had reached 450F.
I put the beef on and put the lid down as I went to chop up my parsnips
for roasting on the BBQ. I sliced them into approx 2-3 inch long sticks
with the hard core removed. I tossed in oil, salt, pepper and rosemary
and then put them in the veggie basket on the grill once the meat was
about half done. They don't take long, maybe 20 mins, and try to avoid
really thin ends as they will easily burn.
I monitored the meat and estimated it would take probably about 30 mins on the BBQ to be ready...i.e. seared on the outside, rare in the middle. I knew I'd be opening the grill to put the veggies in and check on the meat so maybe 35 mins might be needed. I knew the meat needed to rest for 10 mins too so I planned for the parsnips to go in about 10-15 mins before the meat was due to be done.
Well, it turned out even better than expected. If I was a contestant on Come Dine With Me, or Dinner Party Wars...this is what I would make....and it would win. I'd prefer to be on Come Dine With Me though as Anthea Turner is soooo annoying. The beef was so rare and soft in the middle but the shallot paste seasoning was nice and crispy. One thing I am learning with beef in particular is to use salt...lots. Even more than you think is lots. It enhances the flavour immensely, especially with the use of the BBQ. The parsnips were equally good, cripsy on the edge, soft in the middle. we had lots of leftovers so we sliced them and refrigerated them for lunch. Even when reheated in the microwave, the meat stayed rare and tender. This is the way all my roasts will be done from now on! Just by chance we had another sirloin joint in the freezer as it had been buy one get one free in the store....so tomorrow will be a repeat of last Sunday but with sweet potato BBQ fries this time.
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