Meat Fest '08: Part 2 - Ribeye Steak, Saucisson and Andouille

Paul and I spent most of the afternoon contemplating song ideas and concept albums. All the while, we continued our Festival of Meats with a platter of meat (saucisson and the leftover andouille from the day before), cheese (Guinness cheddar, Brie de Meaux and havarti) and fresh bread from Balthazar by way of Union Market. Paired with the platter, we had a duo of West Coast beers - Stone IPA, brewed in North Country San Diego, and Anchor Steam Beer from San Francisco.

Meat and Cheese Platter

Buy local? Try "buy"-coastal.

For the main course, it was on to the ribeyes...

As the grill was heating up, I finely diced some shallots and coarsely chopped a white onion. When the shallots were sweating in two separate skillets, I ran outside and tossed halved red and yellow peppers on the grill. Then it was back inside to add port to shallots in one saucepan and veggies to the other. The veggie dish is something I came up with back in July for my mom's birthday; MB has been raving about ever since. It's simple enough - spinach, onions, shallots, roasted peppers and grilled corn - but there's something about the mix that works really well.

As for the steaks, I seasoned them, got the grill super hot and threw them on for about a minute and a half per side. Once they rested off the grill for a little while, I topped them with some port sauce and served them with the vegetables.

The main course

For dessert, I went back to the summer playbook one more time for another crowd pleaser. Earlier in the summer, we were up in Argyle, NY to see MB's family. When we were there, I tried a dish my sister and brother-in-law turned me onto - grilled peaches. Here's the recipe:

Take ripe peaches, halve them and remove the pits. Put them in a container with some brown sugar (between 1/2 and a 1 full cup) and rum (you can use any type but I would recommend Gosling's dark rum - it makes a beautiful sauce). If the mixture doesn't cover the peaches, add a little water. After marinating the peaches for several hours in the sugar/rum mix, throw them on the grill. The grill should be as hot as possible in order to get some nice grill marks on the peaches but once you've flipped them over, pull back the heat to make sure they heat evenly throughout.

Once the peaches are on the grill, take the rum/sugar mixture and put them in a skillet. Reduce the mixture just like you were making a caramel (if you've never down that before, watch this video). You'll know it's ready once it coats the back of the spoon. To serve, put the peaches in a small dish and top with a scoop of ice cream and, finally, the sauce.

More grilled peaches than we could eat. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post to see how we used the leftovers.

Blurry, but delicious

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Meat Fest '08: Part 1 - Andouille

I've been concentrating a lot of my posts on music lately but now I'm ready to switch things up a bit. When I'm not playing/recording/writing music with Paul this Labor Day weekend, I'll be preparing a variety of meats in a variety of styles. On the agenda: ribeye steaks, boneless center cut pork chops, lamb loin chops, and duck breast. For snacking between meals, we grabbed some saucisson, andouille, and cheese - Havarti, Guinness Cheddar and Brie de Meaux.


After MB and I grabbed the groceries from Union Market, we came back and fired up the grill to prepare the andouille for later in the weekend. We also decided to have a few links for dinner. While the sausage was cooking, I threw the pair of ciabatta rolls of to the side of the grill to heat them through. When the andouille was just about ready to come off the grill, I drizzled a little olive oil on the rolls and toasted them directly on the flame.

In the meantime, I split the sausages and cut some havarti. Once the rolls were ready, I put a few pieces of cheese down, then the sausage, and then a little more cheese; this allows the cheese to act as a binding agent between the meat and bread. If I were to do this again, I would have put something heavy on the sandwiches to smush them together but all in all, a pretty quick and easy meal for a Friday afternoon. Paired with the sandwiches, we had a couple of Magic Hat beers - Circus Boy Hefeweizen and Lucky Kat.

Crispy, melty, spicy goodness

Cheshire grin beers?

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