28.4.02

26.4.02

Basic Recipe:

Sauce: 3 cans Tomato paste; 4 or 5 Generous tbsp molasses (I prefer unsulphured); approx 1 cup, (I like Free Range) chicken broth; 2 tbsp Worchestershire sauce; A good solid dash (about 1-2 tbsp) malt vinegar; some spicy sauce, salt and pepper to taste; A very small amount (1/2 tbsp or less) butter or olive or other oil; dashes of: cury powder, paprika, ginger and cinnamon, to taste;

Meat: I like boneless beef, but this works for chicken or pork; Marinate in a mixture of wine, vinegar and black pepper, tightly covered, for about an hour, adjusting to your personal taste;

Tofu Cutlets: one block of silken-style tofu; If you wanna make your own, go ahead, but I use the stuff from the store;

Kabobs: cocktail tomatos; quartered potatoes; carrot pieces; bell pepper; pineapple; skewers;

Dessert: Cored apples and bananas; brown sugar; about 1 1/2 bottles sweet white wine (Riesling works well, but it's your dinner); Butter if desired;

Technique:

Sauce: Put the tomato paste in a sauce pan on the stove, over medium heat. Add the molasses, stirring until combined. Add chicken broth, malt vinegar and worcestershire, again combining, following with other ingredients. If the sauce is too thick, add more vinegar. If too thin, let it heat for about ten minutes, then check it again. The liquid will, given a chance, evaporate. If your sauce tastes too much like ketchup, add molasses. To my taste, that seems to be the major difference between ketchup and barbeque sauce.
I like to add the chicken stock because I have a theory that a sauce for meat shoulc taste a little like meat before it comes near the grill. Again, I think it adds a certain concord between the base and the condiment.
Be careful with the seasonings. You don't want to kill the flavor of the tomatoes and mollases, and you don't want the sauce to be so spicy as to be inedible. On the other hand, you want a little flavor behind it, to add richness and depth. I like to add a little ginger and cinnamon so as to have another layer of flavor, behind the rest, a sort of christmas-y sweetness that will help the taster apprecate the bold, crass sauce.

Meat: I didn't do anything special with mine for this recipe. Indeed, I didn't even marinate. I just threw it on the grill and painted the sauce over the top. It came out a little al dente, but I like to feel the meat in my teeth, and none of my guests complained. If you want more tender meat, you can even boil it, but I can't give tips on that at this time.
This sauce works beautifully for beef, pork, chicken, and the following two also, but I don't recommend it for fish on the grill.
Let me just say: Boy, does meat cook fast on a grill. Watch it fairly closely, without letting opening the top too much, as it will let the heat out.

Tofu Cutlets: I know, I know, but I cook for a vegetarian, so I'm getting pretty good at playing with tofu. With this, I just pan fried the cut-in-half blocks of tofu until they were firm enough to hold together, then put them on a piece of tin foil on the grill, and brushed sauce across them. They come out like the most tender meat a grill has ever produced. I was proud, honestly, when my other, decidedly less vegetarian friend, spouted an Eeew upon the mention of tofu, then proceeded to eat a generous portion, making gurgilng sounds of pleasure.
These will cook a while if you let them, and they'll soak up lots of sauce in the process. Don't hold up the meal, but don't put the meat on until you've at least started the tofu.

Kabobs: These, we served as a apetizer, and cooked before the rest of the meal. They take, really, about five minutes, so watch them pretty carefully. We put the vegetables and fruit on the sticks, then layed them on the grill. I brushed them Very Lightly with the sauce, putting most of it on the potatoes, as they absorbed it nicely and tasted beautiful.

Fruit on the Barby: After the rest of the meal was done, I took two cheap-y foil meat-loaf pans, and put the cored apples and the bananas in them. I put brown sugar in the empty apples, and poured white wine over them, covered them with tin foil, and promptly forgot about them. about half-an-hour later, we went outside to play bocce, and I pulled the lid off of the grill. I peeled back the tin foil, and we ate the tender, lightly sweetened fruit with bamboo skewers. The finished product was more like applesauce than some people like, but adjusting the cooking time is an easy matter.

Ambience:

For this three-course afternoon, I just sort of put together an informal gathering of friends. The overt reason was to celebrate a mistake on the part of the local tax office, as they sent me a new set of licence plates for my car and insisted I change them. We had a platin' party, a tradition we started when two of my friends moved from Pennsylvania to Texas.

Apparently the PennDOT is notorious for keeping close tabs on its subjects, revoking plates when insurance is dropped, but not getting around to re-instating them when insurance is issued, even when there is an appreciable overlap time. One of these friends received a somewhat threatening letter from that group, demanding that, as she no longer lived in Pennsylvania, she must surrender her license plates Immediately, or face the full power of the law. We decided to have a platin' party, as I had tools and experience changing license plates, and a party is always fun. Plus, I knew where to get a pinata on short notice. Thus was the first platin' party born.

For this one, we just had a more relaxed sort of time, including Barbeque and Bocce, a game not unlike horseshoes played entirely with balls like shotputs.

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