Party on the Barbie

Yes, we are back on the grill! Okay, except for one element, but we will get there.

In case you missed it, lets review. Tonight we have steak, roasted red peppers, and a vegetable with a license to kill.

Ready? Good, let's get at it!

Roasted red peppers or any color that works for you.

In a dish, roll the peppers around in olive oil, salt, and pepper till the peppers are well coated on all sides.

Time to apply the heat, medium high will work well here.

Let each side get charred and keep turning. Don't worry, this is how we achieve flavor and it will work out.

Once the peppers obtain this level of char on the skin, pull them off the heat, place them in a bowl,  cover with foil, and wait. Why do this? Now that we have applied all this heat we are going to use the steam from the cooked peppers to help remove their skins. Trust me, otherwise it isn't easy to remove the skins. Now, cover with plastic wrap and wait another 10 minutes or so.

You will then be able to peel the skins off the peppers. *Warning* the peppers will be super hot still, so protect your fingertips and use a fork to pull off the skins or just wait a little longer until the peppers are cool enough to handle.

Here are your finished roasted peppers. These are amazing on salads, sandwiches, an olive or meat tray, soups, and pastas. Did I say pasta?

After you have gotten all your peppers peeled, throw a few in a blender with a bit of half and half or milk, salt, pepper, a garlic clove or two, and a little liquid from the roasted peppers. Congratulations! You have just made a killer roasted pepper pasta sauce. Oh, I suppose you would like a photo of that too? Oh OK -- here you are.

Roasted red pepper sauce complete.

This is fettuccine with roasted red pepper sauce, spinach, arugula, and a little sausage. Feel free to omit the sausage for a vegetarian version and this will still be amazing, I promise!



Steak:

We are using a rib-eye steak tonight. This cut of meat has the most flavor, it is pretty forgiving when cooking, and relatively economical. I recommend, if you can, finding a good butcher that will cut you the size you want. You only need 4 to 6 oz per person for a proper portion.

Alright, so before you cook a large piece of steak or pork, you want to set it on the counter for a little while to let it come to room temperature. Before you throw me into the fire, I can assure that you leaving a piece of pork or steak out for a up to a couple of hours won't cause you to take a trip to the ER or leave you on your death bed. If you left it out for a few days and moved it between hot and cold climates, more or less humidity, and exposed it to other contaminants, then yes, you would be asking for trouble!

Next, like our short ribs recipe, you want to salt the rib-eye pretty heavily, as shown in the photo (above). Again, this  heavy dose of salt isn't a sure fire sign of bad cholesterol or anything like that. If you have to add salt to your coffee, cereal, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner and dessert, then yes, you might have a bit of problem. Seriously, we are going to lose some of this during cooking and the meat is going to absorb this salt -- which = flavor.

Season well with fresh ground pepper as well.

Look Ma, no salt! The steak has taken all that in and created a glossy finish that will help develop color when cooking the steak.

The steak is done! Cook it for about 4 to 5 minutes a side for medium rare. Make sure the grill is hot, as medium high heat is the target. When the steak hits the grill, don't move it! You won't get the color you want if you keep moving it. You should only turn the steak a total of 4 times in the entire cook process. When you take the steak off the grill, let it rest. This will help the juices redistribute throughout the meat. I usually tent my steak with foil for another 10 minutes once it is taken off the heat.

I will give you a minute to take in these photos.

Last but not least, the 007 of vegetables....Sprout, Brussel Sprout.

I know of all the brussel sprout horror stories, but I think these photos will change everything. We make this a few times a week.

The formidable and intimidating brussel sprout.

First up, cut the stem end off as demonstrated here.

Cut the brussel in half, peel the exterior leaves that make look discolored or funny. The external leaves will come off really easily.

Heat a pan with a good bit of olive oil and put it on medium heat.

The brussel sprouts absorb the oil as they get good color on them. Put the brussels in a middle or large saute pan when it starts to smoke and get hot. *Note: Move the pan off the heat if it gets too hot. Place the brussels in saute pan cut side down.

After about 4 minutes you should have brussels that look like the photo below. At this point you want to add water into the pan about two-thirds of the way up. Don't submerge the sprouts in the water. Just enough where most of the brussel sprout is submerged. OK, turn the heat up to medium high and cook until the sprouts can be pierced with a easily with a fork with a little bit of resistance.

Congratulations, these are your finished brussel sprouts!



Put everything on a plate and enjoy!