Curt at the Outdoor Cooking Guild has started up a new monthly “challenge” centered around a different theme each month. The idea is to cook something around the theme, and bragging rights will go to those that submit the entries judged to have the best use of the theme, the best photo of the theme, and the most imaginative use of the theme.

This month’s theme is Farmers’ Markets. The rules as stated in the announcement are:

Farmers markets and farm markets are different things, so keep that in mind… A farm market is a market at a farm, with one cash register, etc. A farmers market is where several farmers set up booths, usually in a community based market and usually 1-3 days a week to sell the stuff they produce. So the challenge is to get stuff at a farmers market and cook with it outside!

Between previous commitments and limited hours of local Farmers’ Market, I found myself up against the deadline today and figured I better get off my butts and get going. Actually, the deadline for submission was today, I was actually supposed to do this before last Monday; my hope is that Curt will forgive me and take the submission even though it’s a bit late. After all, he didn’t send out the challenge until July 11th…

So off I went to the Vancouver Farmers’ Market, the closest one to home that was open today.

There were a lot of people at the market right around noon when I arrived. I’m guessing most wanted to get there early before the temperature got up in the 90′s. For a Farmers’ Market, there were a lot of booths that screamed “carnival” or “county fair” rather than “farmer”. I didn’t take pictures of these as nothing set them apart from any other county fair, and as usual, the few booths that had the nerve to put the word “BBQ” on their signs were either Asian-style grilled meat on sticks or completely devoid of anything resembling a smoker or grill. I didn’t bother taking pictures of these, and won’t name any names as I wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone. But don’t go there looking for BBQ.

There were some booths with local produce. I picked up some tasty onions and scallions from this place.

Then I found a really great booth stuffed way in the back of the market. They had great swiss chard (both red and white), fresh corn (3 ears for a buck, best price I’ve seen anywhere this summer up here), and large bunches of fresh cilantro. Oh, and blueberries too.

The one thing that was missing the most was any sort of fresh meat. The only decent thing I could find was some fresh albacore a couple of booths over from the swiss chard place. Seems all the best stuff was stuck way in the back…

So the menu was set. For starters, I mixed up a batch of blueberry salsa to go over the fish and stuck it in the refrigerator to chill. For those of you that simply must have the recipe, it’s below the picture.

Blueberry Salsa

Ingredients

• 3 cups fresh blueberries
• Juice of 1 lemon
• Juice of 1 lime
• 4 tablespoons diced fresh cilantro
• 2 jalapeno peppers, diced
• 1/2 cup bell pepper, diced
• 1 medium red onion, diced
• Dash of sea salt

Preparation

Coarsely chop 2 cups of the fresh blueberries (a couple of seconds in the food processor works best and preserves the juice) and mix with all other ingredients. Stir well, cover, and chill until ready to serve.

Once the salsa was in the refrigerator chilling, Bubba Ho-Keg was fired up and on went an ear of corn. My favorite way of cooking this is to soak the corn (while still in the husk) in cold water while the grill is coming up to temperature, then put it on the grill away from the direct flames for about 25-30 minutes, turning at least twice during the cooking process. Tonight I went one step further and sliced the cob into 1/2 inch sections that went back on the grill with the fish, onions, and chard.

The chard was grilled for about a minute per side; by the time I got 5 leaves done the rest of the food was ready to come off the grill.

The fish was joined on the plate by the blueberry salsa, and the chard was chopped and sprinkled with balsamic vinegar. It made for a tasty meal.

So there you have it, a visit to the Farmers’ Market followed by some time outdoors with Bubba Ho-Keg and a bounty of fresh food. Now if I can just convince Curt that I wasn’t too late for consideration…

It’s official, I’m certifiable. My friends have been telling me that for years, so I suppose none of them will be surprised. Today I took a judging class at the Cascade Country Cookoff and now find myself a certified judge in the Pacific Northwest BBQ Association (PNWBA).

In addition to learning all the necessary criteria for judging in the PNWBA (slightly different procedurally from the KCBS) we were able to practice on this group of folks.

These folks were all members of a cooking class taking place at the same time as the judging class. Instruction was given, and off they went to cook up some barbecue to be judged. I can safely say from this first experience that results varied wildly, from the pretty darn good to some of the most wretched BBQ I’ve had in a long time. Some folks just haven’t figured out how spices work yet…

On the other hand, here’s some guys that do have their act together. Left Hand Smoke is a team of BBQ-Brethren from the northern part of Washington that are competing in the “official” competition tomorrow. They were kind enough to put up with my ignorance and constant questions about how stuff works at the comps, and I wish them the best of luck tomorrow.

UPDATE: Left Hand Smoke took third place overall, which is really good considering the competition they were up against. Of larger note is that they scored a perfect 180 score in ribs! This is pretty rare that the judges are that WOW’ed, so this is a real achievement. It should also be noted that Lynnae Oxley of Sugars BBQ also got a 180 for her Brisket. Makes me wish I’d hung around to judge the real thing!

It wouldn’t be right to talk about a comp without at least a couple of pit pictures. Here’s an older Lang, a very impressive piece of equipment that was loaded up with food for sale, and also cooked some of the food we practiced on in the class.

And then of course there was the big Klose monster. I’m told this pit is for sale; I didn’t bother to go and enquire about the price as I’m a bit tapped out these days from buying furniture.

Tomorrow I’m gonna have to cook something for myself. All this time spent around all those barbecues and eating other food makes me want to try out some of the stuff I learned today…

Today I took a drive down to Aloha Oregon and wandered around the Pacific Northwest BBQ Association (PNWBA) Thriftway Classic competition mostly to see what the local competitions are all about.  Oh yeah, and to sample others BBQ and see how mine stacks up.

My soon-to-be 7-year old and I roamed around the Thriftway parking lot where canopies and smoke had clearly taken over.  We saw a little of everything in the way of smokers, starting with your basic verticals and offsets.  These belonged to a nice couple from the 2nd Church of BBQ, and as you can see from the ribbons and trophy, they’ve had some success on the circuit.  We sampled some of their pulled pork (we were too early for their brisket) which was a bit on the sweet side and had a hammy consistency rather than the shred that I was expecting.  They admitted they were unhappy with the results and were going to go back to using bone-in meat for their next comp.

There were a lot of WSMs in sight, along with some chest smokers as well.

Here’s another picture with a row of WSMs in the back, and a nice trailer-style stick burner with the obligatory competition bulldog down front.

They had some monster smokers as well; if I heard correctly this one was on sale for a mere $18,000.  No, I didn’t reach for my checkbook…

While I was there I ran into Saucyribs (Adam Cox, a fellow Twitterer) who wasn’t having the greatest of days.  Apparently they got the schedule mixed up and turned in brisket when pulled pork was due.  Needless to say they didn’t score very well on the pulled pork, but they did learn a valuable lesson for the next comp.  These guys had an Evo, which is a portable version of what you see in Mongolian BBQ joints.  Pretty cool little grill that Adam used to make Flambe on Saturday evening and a full breakfast (sausage, eggs, pancakes) Sunday morning.  You can see it in this picture off to the right trying to hide behind the bushes.  And no, Adam wasn’t in this picture; I think he was off handing in the brisket for the second time.

Not shown in any of the pictures are the nice folks from Slabtown Ribs, a relatively new BBQ joint in downtown Portland (2606 NW Vaughn, for those of you that might be in the area).  I chatted with them for quite awhile as they had a trailer stick burner and some well-used WSMs.  The WSMs were so well-used (nice way to say they were black all over) that I had to comment on them, only to discover that they got that way by being in use 6 days a week at their restaurant.  I’m gonna have to go by and give them a try one of these days, as their brisket and pulled pork samples were pretty tasty, and occasionally I like to eat other folk’s cooking.

All in all it was a nice morning.  I met quite a few nice people and sampled a fair amount of pulled pork and a few bites of brisket.  If you’ve reached this point in the post and are wondering why I haven’t said more about the food, it’s likely because I wasn’t overly impressed.  Some of what I had was really good, but none was great.  In talking with some of the competitors, they mentioned that they cook different at comps than they do at home as the judges typically don’t go for the real spicy varieties.  That might be a problem for me, as I figured out today that the real fun at BBQ comps is participating, not wandering through as a spectator.  I guess now I’m going to have to get an education and figure out how to get started…