Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Recipe: Summer Grilled Beef Salad

In honor of the last week of summer, I thought I'd post a favorite dish of mine. I love fresh summer salads, slightly wilted by delicious grilled meats. I made this Marinated Grilled Beef Salad in under 10 minutes, start to finish. Not only is this a fast meal to make when you are out playing late, like you should be, it's light for hot nights and healthy.

I don't usually buy packaged products or already marinated meats, but these boneless Hawaiian style beef short ribs from Trader Joes caught my eye. My first thought was "boneless short ribs, why?", but when I picked up the package I noticed something: the ingredient list was short and all normal food items. No five syllable additives, no high fructose corn syrup. In fact, the marinade sounded like something I'd make.
Sure, it's almost just as easy to marinate the meat yourself with the same 5-6 ingredients on the package, but like I said, we were out late playing in the sunshine. This seemed like a perfect comprimise.

My hunch is that this meat wasn't really from the short ribs, much like "Boneless Country Ribs" aren't really ribs. But the texture, marbling and grain seemed similar at least. I'll have to talk to a butcher and get back to you on that.

I made my charcoal fire good and hot, a two-layer fire with the grill grate close to flames. You can of course grill these with a fully preheated gas grill.

Grill the ribs on high heat, 2 minutes per side approximately, then let the meat rest while you make the salad. The beef came out tender, with a light sweetness from the marinade and, most importantly, not overly salty. So often commercial rubs and marinates are loaded with salt, but these came out nicely balanced.

The salad is simple: Arugula greens with broccoli slaw mix in a light sesame-soy dressing. Again, I make this classic dressing at home, but today for speed and ease, Mr. Paul Newman made it for me. What a guy.

Cut the beef against the grain, diagonally and toss. Mmmm, and not a speck of guilt.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Wordless Wednesday: Camp Bacon

Seattle's Child Article by Rebekah Denn

Wow. I realize this published in JUNE for the 4th of JULY issue of Seattle's Child, and it is now the end of AUGUST, but I just read Rebekah Denn's interview with me, so I'm sharing it now. I actually thought it didn't get published, and was too shy to ask why it didn't, but see now I was merely too buried in pork and brisket to find the article.

If you live in Seattle, you know Ms Denn. She is one of those writers that has her finger on the pulse of the Foodieville. She is one of the Big Girls in the Northwest and she does it all with a toddler in tow. We talked and e-mailed about the challenges of balancing family and work and neither of us came up with an answer. Sorry.

I guess we all have to roll with it. We also talked about giving yourself a break when you are trying to be a super barbecue mama. If you want charcoal, cook with charcoal. If you need dinner RIGHT NOW because the kids are so hungry they're spinning out of control and are mixing the entire bin of Leggos in the bathtub with a bottle of Molasses they somehow snuck out of the cupboard...go with gas.

Read more about our conversation here.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Smokin' Pete's BBQ voted Best BBQ by Seattle Weekly

Just coming up for air from a busy busy catering summer to spread the good news: Smokin' Pete's was voted Best BBQ by the Seattle Weekly.

Read the whole scoop here.

In other restaurant news, we are part of the InBallard.com group. Check out their website for all the best Ballard has to offer. Every Tuesday, there are special events during the summer.