Red, White, and (Slightly Soggy) BBQ
Chef Tom and I went to the Round Barn Winery’s Red, White & BBQ event Saturday and Sunday and had a great time, though on Saturday it was overcast most of the day and even rained for a while. It only cleared up just at the end, in time for the fireworks, but we left early to get back to Port 412, where we watched them from the upper deck. At Round Barn, we grilled burgers and some of the aforementioned bazillion shrimp on skewers. Tom had made a great coleslaw dressing, and we had a huge grill that was working much better now that they’d modified it.
Tom is a brilliant grill cook, so he manned the grill of course, so I was the prep guy. He definitely had the more difficult and sweatier job, and he’s about 6’3″, and the metal frame of our tent was about 5’11″, so he was knocking his head on that thing a lot. Some of the beams in the basement at Port 412 are rather low as well, and he’s cracked himself pretty good on those. And then there’s the beam that’s juuuuuust a little bit lower than his head so he scrapes the top of his very bald head on it. I can only imagine the cursing that results from that!
Except for being slow, we had a wonderful time, met lots of great people, drank some of their excellent beer. If you like beer, try their summer wheat, cocoa stout, and if you like hoppy beer, do not miss their oaked IPA, YUM! It remindeds me a lot of New Holland Brewery’s Mad Hatter and Bell’s Hop Slam. The stout is definitely better than Guinness, which isn’t saying much, so I’ll say that it actually has FLAVOR, lots of roasty toasty flavor, nice and creamy.
Since it was slow, I thought I’d make some of Cooking Illustrated’s Chipotle-Garlic Butter with Lime and Cilantro at home and bring it for the shrimp, or even some of the great BBQ that Double T’s next to us was cranking out. Everybody loved the butter, I mean, just read the name again! The stuff is so good I want to spread it on toast. The distributor for Round Barn liked it so much he grabbed another stick of shrimp and some more butter for one of his vendors. At least he said it was for someone else, but with that wild look in his eyes, I know he’ll be knocking on my door for some to put on his toast. I’m terrible with names, so I don’t remember his, but he and Tom got to talking and took care of us with beer on Saturday.
I’d never tried Mexican-style corn on the cob (elote), so I put together everything for that since Double T’s was roasting some. They were dipping it in butter, which always is delicious of course. For elote, you make a lime mayonnaise, which you brush on the hot corn, and then you sprinkle it with a mixture of ground chilies (I used chipotle, which is pretty hot, you can use whatever you’d like of course.), ground cumin, salt, and cotija, which is a dry, salty, crumbly cheese. Parmasean in the round, green, cardboard container is better than nothing. I bought a block of parmasean and used my wonderful I’ll have to try it again as I wasn’t incredibly impressed. There’s a roasted garlic herb spread for corn that I want to try as well, especially for the “Cooking with herbs” class I’m teaching this Wednesday. And I’m going to be doing shrimp pad thai for the cooking podcast on Tuesday. Busy.
On Sunday, Tom took a boat-load of shrimp to the drink folks under the tent, so that pretty much kept us going until we left that night.
And it was a beautiful night, so I drove back along Red Arrow with my windows down, listening to Prisoner of Azkaban, and thinking how much I love living here and how happy I am.
You’d be happy anywhere food is inspiring! Glad we only need so much and the bulk of the happiness is in sharing it. That’s why I have our little Monday night group, and why you’ve been blessed to be in such superb company! Thank God for Tom and Cameron and (the many others), and, of course, YOU!
Thank you, and don’t forget John, the owner!