Grilling


Food as a special occasion.



This is my Weber grill. It's a classic, One-Touch Silver 18.5" (ed.: Fixed, was incorrectly stated at 22.5", 4/29/07) diameter model, charcoal grill. It's "mine" because Hsuan doesn't cook with charcoal. It ranks with our chef's knife, tongs, and cast iron skillets as one of my favorite cooking items. In fact, with those items alone (well, plus a cutting board), I have everything I need to cook something. Not that other items aren't useful, too, but I can make do with only those. I suppose I can even make chicken vegetable soup with just those items.

We have a gas/charcoal hybrid grill as well, which we use for most of our grilling outdoors. I have to admit that gas grilling is far easier, cleaner, and more convenient than charcoal grilling, but for special occasions -- or very special steaks -- I prefer the heat of charcoal and the taste of charcoal-grilled food. I like the classic, round design of the Weber grill. I like the rituals of food preparation and charcoal preparation.

Last year, I sent Dan some American Wagyu ("Kobe") beef steaks for his birthday, and I bought some for myself. I learned to love Kobe beef during my first trip to Japan, over a decade ago. Very little approaches the quality of Kobe beef. Maybe perfectly aged Allen Brothers steaks from Chicago. That's about it.

The problem, or rather the difficulty, with Kobe beef is the marbling. It's also the source of its tenderness and taste. However, all that marbling means the cooking times are shorter than regular choice top sirloins, for example. Last year, in addition to the New York strips, top sirloins, and the filet mignons, we got some Kobe beef strips, and I grilled them indoors using a cast iron skillet, as practice for the bigger, choicer cuts of beef. I was so nervous that I was tasting and eating small pieces of the steak as I cooked them, just to check my timing.

Then, I left the New York strips, and filets in the freezer and mainly forgot about them, saving them for a "special" occasion. (I later cooked up the top sirloins with not so good results; for some reason, I called them "burgers", too.)

Today, I wanted to cook dinner for my family, and given the long duration in the freezer, I decided I'd better grill the Kobe New York steaks. I spent a good hour or so doing food prep, plus another 20 minutes starting the charcoal. White corn on the cob. Sauteed vegetables (onions, zucchini, mushrooms with garlic and olive oil). Grilled asparagus.

Prior to grilling, I briefly pan seared the steaks on a cast iron skillet heated in the oven. When it finally came time to put the steaks on the grill, after I had cooked the vegetables for a while, I was shocked at how quickly the grill flared up. The bottoms of the steaks charred up very, very quickly, in about half the time a regular grocery-store-bought steak would have cooked. Plus, some of our outdoor floodlights need replacing, so I was cooking a bit in the dark. After just a very few minutes, I flipped the steaks and was shocked at the charred surface on the bottom. After another minute or two, with the steaks moved to the cooler edges of the grill, I decided to put an end to the grilling and bring the food inside.

Unfortunately, I had somewhat overcooked the vegetables, what with the flare-ups, but apart from the charred surface, I seem to have stopped the steaks at just the right time. In fact, the thicker steak was a tiny bit too rare even for me, so I brought it back out for another minute or so. In the end, both steaks were a perfect rare-to-medium-rare...

Tasty.

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Happy April Fools Day. No pranks or jokes on our end.

Also, Happy Palm Sunday. We spent a long morning at Mass today. For the first time, William went off with the other kids at Mass to the Children's Liturgy. According to William, it was some sort of play or play-acting. I had thought that they'd just have the same readings as the adult readings, but out of a Children's Bible instead. (I was a little nervous when William went off with the other kids while we stayed in the church, but he handled it quite well.)

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Jury duty this week. I called in, and I don't have to report tomorrow morning. I'll have to call in again tomorrow night to see if I have to report on Tuesday.

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Oh, yeah, today marks the 1 year anniversary of the start of this photoblog.

Posted: Sun - April 1, 2007 at 09:22 PM          

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