If you read my Los Angeles food blog compadres The BBQ Junkie, The Survival Gourmet and Soul Fusion Kitchen, you know the four of us have teamed up to cook at the Autry BBQ contest on April 7-8, 2006.

We’re Team Four Q: “Where the blog meets the hog,” as in there’s 1,2,3,4 bloggers for the price of one. We’re a bunch of rookies up against a lot of competition-hardened pitmasters at the Autry. Come see us and cheer for the underdogs!

This contest is organized by the California BBQ Association, which follows Kansas City BBQ Society competition rules. KCBS teams compete in chicken, pork rib, pork shoulder and beef brisket categories. Each meat is blind judged, and champions decided for each category. The overall Grand Champion wins on combined points from four categories, so a team that’s gunning for the overall title has to do well in each category.

Our gang of four each took on a specialty. I’ve been assigned the pork ribs. Before April 7, I need to hone my skills at trimming meat, creating rubs and sauces, and of course, perfecting my fire control and cooking expertise.

Here’s two racks of ribs I made last weekend. It’s trimmed Kansas City style, which means the sternum and the flap meat have been removed from the rack, and the ends squared off to look pretty. It cooked for four hours at 200 – 235 degrees, and was mopped & re-rubbed three times during the cook. Howma doin’, team?

As preparation for this event, I did some field research on some top barbecue joints in Texas a few weeks ago. Stay tuned for my report from Luling, Lockhart, and Austin, Texas.

Get in a deep horse stance in front of a hot, open, oven door. Breathe out… breathe in. Grip wads of paper towels in both hands, and lift the unwieldy, 20 pound ball of 350 degree grease off a searing hot roasting rack. Lift with the legs, not the back. Rotate the hot grease ball a quarter turn to ensure evenly browned, crisp skin. Repeat at least four times, or until the medicine ball is cooked through.

I avoided this oven roasted turkey ritual this year by smoking my main course outdoors in a Weber Smokey Mountain cooker. And forget turkey. Even brined, butter slathered, free range, never frozen, organic, heritage birds aren’t as flavorful as a beefy prime rib. So as with my cranberry sauce recipe, I continue to stomp on tradition with my entree.

I’ve owned this smoker for about a year, and I’m confident enough now to cook my family’s Thanksgiving meal in it and not spoil an expensive hunk of meat in the process. There are several schools of thought on cooking prime rib, including these two:
1) The traditional English method: Start in a very hot oven to sear the outside of the roast, then lower the temperature to a moderate 350F degrees to finish cooking.
2) The low and slow: cook at 200 degrees for a longer period, then finish in a 500 degree oven to brown the outside.

Both methods will produce a rosy medium rare at the very center of the roast, but by using a gentler heat of method #2, more of that rosy pink is preserved closer to the surface. If you want to read more about the theory behind the methods, check out Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here for the Food, one of the books I’ll write up for my Required Reading list.

These principles apply to both indoor ovens and outdoor cooking over live fire. My friend Russ turns his prime ribs on an outdoor rotisserie using method #1, reportedly with great results. Since my Weber smoker is an outdoor oven that can hold temperatures in the 200-250 F degree range, it’s perfect for roasting a prime rib with the low and slow method. And if I say so myself, the result was fabulous. It’ll be long time before I roast another turkey in November.

He said “wood.”	Holding steady at 240	“Dam” fine pumpkin pie!

One tradition I chose not to stomp on this year is the pumpkin pie from the Filling Station Cafe, Orange County’s foremost pie bakers and my default purveyor of holiday desserts. Sure, I can bake my own, but for $20, I’d rather buy one that’s far better than one I can ever make myself. Note the height of the pie in the clickable photo. All their pies are singularly massive. A substantially thick, slightly sweet short dough crust acts like Hoover Dam and retains enough pumpkin to fill Lake Mead, yet crumbles under your fork like a Lorna Doone cookie. Baking this much pumpkin custard takes more time than pies of lesser size, yet it’s always perfectly done: never too loose, and never dried out. It’s flavored with just enough familiar spices to imagine your mama baked it, that is, if your mama got mad pie skillz.

Every year, they limit holiday pre-orders because demand is that high. When I picked mine up, I learned they stopped taking orders seven days before Thanksgiving. If you want one for Christmanukah, I suggest you call today. The caramel apple pie is my other favorite choice. Walnuts anchored by a hardened slurry of brown sugar “caramel” cascades like magma down the top crust of this massive, peaked, apple chunk volcano. The coating isn’t technically caramel but rather a sandy textured, dark brown sugar frosting. It’s a minor quibble with an otherwise damn fine pie.

Filling Station
This is their original location where the baking is done. Breakfast and lunch only.
201 N. Glassell St.
Orange, CA 92866
714-289-9714
and
195 Center Street Promenade
This location is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and has a small, well chosen list of interesting beers and wines.
Anaheim, CA 92805
714-535-2800

We got skunked on the Colorado elk hunt this season, but Gurlfren’s dad sent us home with several packages of frozen meat from last year’s hunt. I’d never eaten elk before, much less cooked it, so the process of figuring out how to prepare it was a fun challenge.

These medallions were marked backstrap meat. Hmm… what’s that? A little internet research reveals it’s from the loin of the animal, what we’d anthropomorphically call its lower back. Check. So it’s a tender muscle that can be cooked quickly over high heat. Right. Now what?

The butcher trimmed these raw crimson medallions a bit less than 2 inches thick, and sliced a pocket into it suitable for a stuffing. Backstrap meat has very little external fat and no marbling, and barely any connective tissue: very much like a beef filet mignon. Really lean meat.

So how do I approach this? That pocket called for a big wad of herb butter made with finely minced parsley and sage from my garden. As the steak cooked, the butter melted gently and infused the lean meat with herbs. I crusted the outside of the steak with cracked black pepper & salt, seared quickly in a hot pan for a couple minutes on each side, then tossed the pan in a 400 degree oven to roast for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, I started a couscous for the starch component of the meal. Finely dice carrots & celery and add them to boiling chicken broth, and let simmer until tender, about 5 minutes. Turn off the heat, add the couscous, cover and let it sit for ten minutes to steam. Easy.

Does elk steak need a sauce? It couldn’t hurt. We brought back a locally made Colorado wine made from sour cherries. It tastes like a barely sweetened cherry pie filling, with a big fruity nose and a bitter / tart cherry flavor. When I first tasted it, I immediately thought it will make a great sauce, and it did. To add more dimension to the sauce, I bought some frozen sour cherries at my local Persian supermarket.

I pulled out the medium-rare steaks from the oven and rested them on a warm casserole while I prepared a sauce using the same pan. I deglazed the pan with chicken stock, and reduced about a cup of it to a syrup consistency. I then added roughly a cup of cherry wine and the thawed, pitted cherries and reduced again to a thick glaze. Season to taste at the end. Simple, and not overwrought.

While the cherry sauce reduced I started a sage brown butter on another burner. Melt butter over a low-medium heat, add whole fresh sage leaves until the milk solids turn brown and the sage crisps nicely. Drain off the butter and sage leaves, and reserve it. To this pan, I threw in sugar snap peas and parboiled fresh fava beans (also from the Persian market), and sauteed over medium high heat. Season with salt and pepper, and add back the browned butter at the very end as a sauce.

Verdict: elk is delicious, and not at all gamey as I expected. It’s almost like beef with a firmer texture and a slightly stronger flavor. Considering the distances these large animals migrate in the wilderness, that makes perfect sense.

Sorry I didn’t keep track of the ingredients, so no recipe for this one. For me, half the fun of cooking is envisioning the final outcome and improvising a way to get there. For the next session of You Kilt It, Now Eat It, we tackle a frozen lump of elk roast and try not to screw that up too much.