Quadrillage, Flaming Lizards and Other Steak Grilling Tips

   

     

      Allow your steak to reach room temperature before grilling. This means at least 20 minutes ahead. Use a mesh plate cover or drape a towel over the plate to keep insects away. Steaks are whole muscle, so at low risk for food borne illness.
     
      Trim the steak of excess blocks or strips of fat. On the grill, fat shrinks faster than the meat, so large masses of fat will cause your steaks to curl up.
 
      Oil the grate. The simplest way to accomplish this is to grab a piece of trimmed fat, or olive oil soaked paper towel tightly with a pair of tongs and rub away. Preheat the grill for a few moments with the lid up.  This will give anything that crawls or flies a few moments to escape rather than making a dramatic flaming addition to your dinner party.
 
     Those sexy cross-hatch, chop house grill marks are called...quadrillage. They are really quite easy to make. Envision the item you are grilling, now known as the "grillee" as being the straight up and down hands of a clock at 6:00.  First place, the grillee so the "hands' are at 4:00 and 10:00.  Half way through the grilling time for this side, lift and reset the grillee so the "hands" are at 2:00 and 8:00. Flip the chop and repeat on the other side.
  
     When it is done, get it off the heat.  Don’t leave it while you run in the kitchen for the salad because you will want to change something on the stereo, then you will decide to go ahead and feed the dog so it is happy and stays out of the way, then you will turn back around for more wine, or worst case the phone will ring. 
 
 Let the steaks rest for 5 minutes before serving. While they cooked, all the juices retreated to the middle, while they rest and cool a bit, the juice will flow back through the meat, redistributing moisture, so the whole steak is nice and juicy. Now you can gather whatever you need from the kitchen, get the kids out of the pool, settle the pets and pour yourself a glass of wine.

From "Garden Table: A Celebration of Bare feet, Fresh picked tomatoes and Not waiting Until Sunday Night to Grill"  by Mango Dragonfly.  Available at Amazon.com

Cobbler, Crisp, or Sonker and Who's Betty?

  What is a...

~ Cobbler…a deep-dish fruit dessert or pie with a thick biscuit crust and a fruit filling

~Crisps…Crisps are baked with the fruit mixture on the bottom, crumbs on top. The crumb topping can be made with flour, nuts, bread crumbs, oatmeal,  cookie or graham cracker crumbs.

~Crumble…British version of the Crisp.

~Betty… fruit, baked between layers of buttered crumbs. Crumbs can be nuts, bread crumbs, cookie or graham cracker crumbs.

~Grunts or Slump…same as a cobbler

~Pandowdy – kind of like a cobbler, but you use brown sugar instead of white and the crust is broken up during baking and pushed down into the fruit to allow the juices to come through.

~Sonker - a deep dish cobbler unique to North Carolina.

Blackberry Ginger Crisp

1 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup old fashioned oatmeal

1 cup ginger snaps, crushed

1 to 2 tbsp mayonnaise

2 cups blackberries, patted dry

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Soften the butter.

Mix the brown sugar, oatmeal and ginger snaps in with the butter.

Add mayonnaise as needed until you have a crumbly struesel binding together. 

Scatter half the struesel in an 8" x 8" baking dish, clumps are ok.

Next scatter the berries evenly on top. 

Finish with the remaining struesel.

Bake 35-45 minutes until you have bubbling, gooey deliciousness.

Serve over ice cream...vanilla is classic...peach a special treat...coffee is nirvana.

From "Garden Table: A Celebration of Bare feet, Fresh Picked Tomatoes and Not Waiting Until Sunday Night to Grill" by Mango Dragonfly.