This is why I garden

In 1997, I moved from Canada to Houston. In Canada, you can grow rhubarb. In Houston, it is only sporadically available in grocery stores. I would carry my limp rhubarb with rotten spots on it to the cash register, and I would be asked "What is that?" and "What do you do with that?". And I would pay $7 a pound for the privilege. I would salvage what I could from this pale shadow of what rhubarb should be.

At home, all of my family grows rhubarb. And towards the end of the summer, every one of them asks who needs extra, because they have too much to freeze. The idea of paying for rhubarb is ridiculous. Rhubarb is everywhere. In all of my homes since 1997 - Houston, Baltimore and San Diego - rhubarb can't live. Houston is too hot. Baltimore is too humid (the roots rotted out of my attempts). San Diego doesn't have a winter, which rhubarb requires. But now, in Massachusetts, we can grow rhubarb.

We planted them last spring, and they've flourished.




And this weekend we harvested from them for the first time. Following my mother's advice, I harvested only the thickest stalks. Grasp them, and gently twist and pull. They come off at the base. The biggest stalks should be quite large on a healthy, established plant. Mrs. Dude is shown for scale:



Cut off the leaves (they contain toxic levels of oxalic acid). And chop the rest of the rhubarb into ¹⁄₈" chunks.

A simple and worthy dessert of rhubarb is rhubarb crisp. Preheat the oven to 375°F. For the fruit:

3 cups chopped rhubarb
1 to 1 ¼ C sugar
3 tbsp flour

Mix the rhubarb, flour and sugar and layer into a large, greased baking dish. Make the topping. If you like your topping crunchy, make 50% more topping than what is below:

½ cup oatmeal
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup flour
¼ cup butter, chopped
¹⁄₈ tsp baking soda
¹⁄₈ tsp baking powder

Mix the topping ingredients, and cut the butter into them. Mix well. When the oven is at temperature, sprinkle the topping evenly over the rhubarb. Place the dish in the oven, and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the topping is browned, and the rhubarb is bubbling through.



While still hot, scoop out crisp into bowls, and serve with vanilla ice cream. Perfect.



This is an excellent spring dessert to finish any barbecue. And this is why I garden.

By Bbq Dude

Pulled pork fishsticks

We first visited Joe Beef in Montréal a few months ago. It's a fun, meat-centric restaurants, with over-the-top, creative dishes and cocktails. I purchased their book, The Art of Living According to Joe Beef: A Cookbook of Sorts as soon as it was available, and have been salivating over their dish, pulled pork fishsticks, ever since. But I needed a proper occasion to cook this over-the-top dish.

Here's how it works. You make pulled pork. You smoke a pork butt for 8 hours and then pull it. Then you mix it with bbq sauce and dissolved gelatin. You form them into a tray and allow them to gelatinize. Then you cut them into sticks, bread them and deep fry them.

Well, our occasion arrived, in the form of Foodapalooza 2012. I'm going to present a slightly modified version from what I made, as I wasn't thrilled with Joe Beef's bbq sauce, but this is inspired by their recipe, and is guaranteed to delight meatlover's everywhere:

½ of a pulled pork butt
¾ cup pulled pork bbq sauce
3 tbsp finely chopped shallots
3 sheets gelatin
salt and pepper
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp Old Bay seasoning
2 eggs
2 cups panko bread crumbs
canola oil for deep frying

Soak the gelatin sheets in icewater while warming the bbq sauce in a small saucepan. When the sauce starts to boil, remove from heat. Squeeze the icewater out of the gelatin, and add the gelatin to the sauce. Stir until the gelatin dissolves.



Mix the sauce, pulled pork and finely chopped shallots. Mix very well, and check the seasoning. Adjust with salt and pepper. Line a small sheet pan with plastic wrap. Press the meat into the pan, making it about ½" thick all throughout the pan. Push the meat together tightly. Chill overnight.

In the morning, remove the plastic wrap from the pan, and remove the meat from the plastic wrap. Slice into fishstick-sized pieces (I cut these into 21 pieces). Set up a breading station. First bowl has the flour and Old Bay seasoning. Second has the eggs, beaten until foamy. Third has the panko bread crumbs. While you're heating the oil in a pan, bread the sticks. Coat them with flour, then coat them with egg, then coat them with panko bread crumbs.

When the oil hits 350°F, fry the sticks in small batches until the bread crumbs are a nice brown colour. Fish out of the hot oil, and set on paper towels to drain for a few moments. Serve.

Deep-fried, smoky, acidic goodness. This is a decadent little meat-bomb, and it's guaranteed to please.



By Bbq Dude

Foodapalooza 2012

October has been a rough month, for various reasons. So, when I e-mailed drricky and told him, "I'm feeling bummed out, want to come up and cook?", he was here less than two weeks later. drricky is the kind of friend that I am truly lucky to have. Friday, we spent some time exploring the Italian bounty that the Greater Boston area has to offer, and on Saturday we cooked up a storm, as we have done together in the past.

Twelve dishes, no repeats (nothing we've done together before). We've gotten better at timing the dishes, and giving ourselves enough prep time to throw everything together. We started making sauces on Friday, and started serving around 6 p.m. on Saturday.



Small dishes, small servings, served over 6 hours. More detailed descriptions will follow, over at drricky's blog and here.

We started with pizza scones, hoping that the word pizza would lull the children.



Next up, bánh xèo, a coconut milk pancake, wrapped around all kinds of crunchy goodness.



An easy-to-prepare course, the ham-tasting: 3 prosciuttos served with drricky's excellent homemade loquat jam. Interesting note, La Quercia's prosciutto Americano was the far-away favourite (and the least expensive).



The following dish was the evening's most fascinating dish (and one of the most successful, in my opinion). Huitlacoche-monkfish chowder. The grey of the huitlacoche is a challenge to make beautiful, but I think that is accomplished here against the bright yellow of the corn (source of the huitlacoche fungus) and the white of the monkfish.



Next up was the Burmese thoke, a crunchy salad with fried lotus root. Lightened things up before we went heavy again.



Salted, seared duck breast, served with blueberries we picked in August. Beautiful and delicious on top of home-baked sourdough. I know that several guests are looking forward to drricky's post describing how to make this sauce.



Beef oysters (Joe Beef, that is). A mix of soy sauce and salt beans made this a tad too salty for some, may require a bit of refinement for the future.



Another hit of the night, chicken-fried, home-smoked bacon, served with a trio of New England sauces. Blueberry, rhubarb and cranberry sauces, this is another one that I eagerly await the details for.



On Friday, I smoked a pork butt, and made pulled pork. We split the pork into the next two dishes. First, bbq pork potstickers, with a mustard-serrano sauce.



Followed by pulled pork fishsticks (I'll be posting about this soon).



The final two dishes: Scottish sundae, consisting of grilled peaches and jackfruit, served with caramel-oatmeal ice cream and candied oats.



And the final dish of the night, chokecherry panna cotta with a nutty cookie.



A crazy evening, but everyone went to bed with full and happy bellies. An epic evening, I can't wait to do it again.

EDIT: Will continue to update with links for individual dishes.

By Bbq Dude

Bacon shortage public service announcement

By Bbq Dude