Although I watch a fair number of cooking shows on TV from time to time, I generally haven’t followed the recent BBQ-themed shows as closely as one might expect. Part of this is due to lack of cable/satellite at home; part is I’d rather be cooking than watching TV. Having said that, I do plan on setting the DVR for The Ultimate BBQ Showdown set to air on CBS Saturday, May 28 at 11:00 AM PDT. Check your local listings for the time in your area; it appears to be on before a golf tournament.

The competitors are all respected names in BBQ, as are the judges. Joining the battle for bragging rights, the Kingsford Cup and a whole lot of cash are the well-known Myron Mixon from Jack’s Old South; Tuffy Stone from Cool Smoke; Neil “Bigmista” Strawder from Bigmista’s BBQ; and the guy who put Bubba in Bub-Ba-Q, Bubba Latimer. The show is sponsored by Kingsford, those friendly folks that make my charcoal briquettes of choice and sponsor Grilling.com where my articles show up (with my permission) from time to time.

For more information, jump on over to this article on Grilling.com and check out why you should step away from the keyboard and set your DVR to record. Go on, what are you waiting for?

Having wasted several other good ideas for the 2010 MOINK Ball Challenge by posting them in advance of the contest post it was time to get serious and come up with yet another MOINK Ball dish worthy of entering. For inspiration, I turned to a recent trip to Scotland where we were served Steak and Ale Pie and decided to mess with that tradition by cooking MOINK and Ale Pie. This is a savory dish following in the tradition of a satisfying meaty pie stuffed with a puffed pastry top.

And yes, there were four and twenty MOINK Balls baked in this pie…

MOINK & Ale Pie

Ingredients

24 MOINK Balls
4 medium roasting potatoes (gold, white, or red potatoes)
3-4 slices bacon, chopped
8 oz. fresh mushrooms, chopped
2 medium onions, chopped
1 heaping tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon butter
16 oz. dark ale or beer
1 cup beef stock
2 tablespoons of flour mixed well in 1/4 cup cold water
1 package puffed pastry dough (2 sheets)
Egg wash (1 medium egg and egg white from 1 medium egg)
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Prepare MOINK Balls per International MOINK Ball Appreciation Society guidelines. For this cook, I went with a rub consisting of Cajun seasoning mix, granulated garlic, and some crushed dried parsley and basil.

Do not add glaze or sauce at the end of the cook, and remove when bacon is done but before it is crisp (about 90 minutes on a smoker at 225°F should be sufficient). Roast the potatoes on your smoker while the MOINK is cooking; remove when cooked thoroughly but still firm.

Chop the bacon into small pieces and add to a skillet over high heat. Add in the butter and onions. Cook at high heat and stir regularly until the onions are caramelized.

Now add the garlic and mushrooms and stir thoroughly. Slowly pour in the ale or beer, giving it a chance to reduce a bit before adding the beef stock. Bring to low boil and stir in the flour and water mixture. Reduce heat, cover, and let simmer for 45 minutes to an hour. When finished, the mushrooms will be nice and soft and the liquid a nice golden brown color.

To prepare the pie, lightly grease or oil a cast iron skillet, large pie pan, or casserole dish. Dice the potatoes into 1/2 inch chunks and line the bottom of the pan. Cover this layer with the MOINK Balls.

Now cover evenly by spooning the onion/mushroom mixture over the top. When finished, the middle of the mixture should be above the upper lip of the skillet/pan/baking dish.

Brush some of the egg wash onto the edge of the pan to help the pastry dough stick. Roll two of the puff pastry sheets together carefully then place over the top of the pie. Trim off the excess pastry dough, leaving about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch around the outside of the pan. Crimp the edges of the dough with your thumbs and fingers to form a seal and stop the pastry shrinking during cooking. Brush the top of the dough with the remaining egg wash, then cut a few slits in the top with a sharp knife to allow steam to escape.

Cook for 25-30 minutes in a 400°F oven (or until pastry is golden brown).

Remove from oven, cut into wedges, serve and enjoy!

If you liked what you saw here, jump on over to the 2010 Challenge Results post and leave some comments on my entry. And if you don’t like what you saw here, go over there and leave some comments on one of the other entries. Remember, be nice…

You’d think by now that when I get email from someone with a title of “Here’s an idea…” that I would have enough sense to mark it as junk, send it to the trash without looking, and run screaming from the room. But I don’t. And occasionally it turns out all right, or at least not horribly wrong.

So here’s the deal. At the end of July Larry Gaian over at The BBQ Grail sent out a note to me and three or four of my favorite internet BBQ friends suggesting we use the same four or five ingredients to cook a meal. The only real rule is that the “protein” must be cooked outdoors. Once finished, we will link to the other posts so our readers can compare the results. This post is the result of Larry’s brainstorm. Whether or not it turns out all right or horribly wrong remains to be seen; regardless of the result it was fun to do.

You might be asking yourself “how bad could this be?”  After all, it’s just a few people with outdoor cooking blogs riffing on a theme, right? Did I mention that there were  four primary ingredients (protein, starch, veggie, and fruit) rather than just one? Still, how bad could it be? I’ll let you decide for yourself, as the four primary ingredients this month were fish, couscous, eggplant, and figs.

Now sit there for a second and absorb this. How many out there expect to go to a blog about BBQ and grilling and see a meal consisting of fish, couscous, eggplant, and figs? Seriously now, how many of you out there actually eat eggplant? Or have ever seen a fresh fig in the flesh (pun intended)? Some of you may be wondering what the heck couscous is, and I know for a fact some of my readers moved on as soon as they saw the word fish. On the upside, I can make fun of Pigdog all I want in the rest of this post and he probably won’t even see it…

Unlike many of my meals, this one was going to take some advance planning. Fortunately I was able to convince SWMBO that this was an opportunity for her to go shopping so that I wouldn’t spend all my time looking for fresh figs. At least they turned out to be in season. While she was shopping, I was planning out the meal and actually thinking through this in advance. I decided to go with a Mediterranean theme and cook as much of the meal as practical on Bubba Ho-Keg.  The menu was to be grilled mahi-mahi with sun-dried tomato couscous, fresh pita bread, baba ganoush, hummus, and grilled figs with a honey-ricotta cheese topping.

So the night before the cook I made up some fresh artisan bread dough and baked some fresh pita loaves during the day.

And yes, this was the first time I made pita bread on Bubba Ho-Keg. Or ever, for that matter. I figured what the heck, I’m already in unfamiliar territory, might as well stretch myself to the limit. After the infamous Dim Sum MOINK Disaster, how bad could it really be? And with the exception of the first loaf, the pita turned out really well. We won’t talk about that first loaf; I ate it, but I certainly wasn’t about to take pictures of it.

Once the pita loaves were finished, it was time to deal with the eggplant. Smoked baba ganoush was on the menu; in fact, this was what prompted the Mediterranean theme as none of us are real fond of grilled eggplant, and even less fond of eggplant fixed in some other mushy manner. The eggplant went on the grill whole for about 30 minutes at 400°F, and when it was done got turned into something tasty using the recipe that follows the picture below.

Baba Ganoush, No Excuses BBQ Style

Ingredients

• 1 Eggplant
• 1/4 cup Tahini
• 1/4 cup fresh-squeezed Lemon juice (1 large lemon)
• 2 tablespoons sesame seeds
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
• Paprika

Directions

Heat grill to 400°F.  Put eggplant on the grill over indirect heat for about 30 minutes or until soft.  If you wish, move the eggplant directly over the coals for the last 3-5 minutes to char the skin and make it easier to remove.  Take eggplant directly from the grill and immerse in a large bowl of cold water.  Remove from water and peel.

Place peeled eggplant, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, and sesame seeds into a blender and puree.  Add salt and pepper to taste (not a lot), then add about a tablespoon of the olive oil and mix well.  Refrigerate for at least 3 hours before serving.  When ready to serve, remove from refrigerator and top with a light sprinkle of paprika, the rest of the olive oil, and garnish with fresh basil or parsley.  Serve with pita bread or Mideastern flatbread.

Here’s a look at the finished product.  This recipe makes about 2-3 cups of finished product and easily serves 4 people.  Or at least it did tonight with all the other food we had.

Once this was done, I went back to work for the afternoon until closer to dinner as the rest of the meal wouldn’t take very long to cook.  Once work was over, the couscous went on to cook.  I had found a recipe online and (as usual) proceeded to not pay too close of attention to it.  This was cooked in the house, but as I mentioned to my wife at dinner could have been made on the grill it I had felt like it since no real cooking went on other than boiling some chicken stock.  Here’s the recipe as I cooked it.

Sun-dried Tomato and Raisin Couscous

Ingredients

• 1 cup couscous
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1/8 cup sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
• 1/8 cup raisins, chopped
• Fresh basil or parsley, chopped for garnish

Directions

Bring chicken broth to a rolling boil in a small covered sauce pan.  Stir in couscous, sun-dried tomatoes, and raisins, cover, and remove from heat.  Let sit for 10 minutes, then fluff with a fork.  Sprinkle on fresh basil or parsley, garnish, and serve.

For those not familiar with couscous, it is a pasta that tastes pretty much like whatever you put in it.  This particular recipe is a bit on the sweet side and will likely be made again in the future.  And yes, it was the first time I’d made it.  So far I’m three for three on this meal.

Since we were having baba ganoush I figured I’d go ahead and make some fresh hummus to go with it.  After all, we can’t have a bunch of pita bread sitting around leftover.  A can of garbanzo beans was drained and tossed in the blender with 1/4 cup tahini, 1/4 cup lemon juice, an 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, and a couple of tablespoons of minced garlic and EVOO.  A little salt and pepper was added and the whole thing was blended until smooth.  Into a bowl it went where it was drizzled with a bit more EVOO, sprinkled with paprika and a handful of pine nuts, garnished with a sprig of fresh basil, and stuck in the refrigerator until dinner.

Now it was time to go into completely unfamiliar territory.  I’ve never seen a fresh fig (at least not that I remember) in any kitchen I’ve cooked in.  But I’ve grilled fruit before, so how hard could this be.  The figs were sliced in half lengthwise and placed in a grill basket.  The tops were sprinkled with brown sugar, and the figs were put on Bubba Ho-Keg at 350°F directly over the coals.

They were joined on the grill by the mahi-mahi which had been drizzled with lemon juice and dusted with granulated garlic, red chili powder, and cayenne pepper.  About 10 minutes later both the fish and the figs were ready to come off.

Each of the figs were topped with a mixture of ricotta cheese, honey, a splash of vanilla, and a tiny fresh mint leaf.  The final spread actually looked pretty good.

The meal was surprisingly good given all the “firsts”.  About the only familiar territory was the mahi-mahi; those of you that have been here before (I think the number is up around 4 or 5 now) have seen mahi-mahi on the menu frequently.  I’ve made couscous before (and it is admittedly pretty hard to screw it up) but not this particular mixture, and the rest of the meal was uncharted waters.  My wife and I ate it all; the only complaint was that the fish wasn’t the best choice to go with the rest of the dishes.  A nice kebab of lamb or chicken would have been much better complement to the meal than the fish.  The kids were split on the couscous and hummus; each one liked the one the other didn’t.  Neither of them liked the figs, which left more for me and the wife.  They were actually pretty good, but I have to admit they are a pain to deal with as they have such a short shelf life.  If you are going to make these, don’t buy the figs until the day you are ready to cook them as they spoil quickly once they come off the tree.

Now that you’ve seen what I managed to make out of this unholy combination of theme ingredients, go check out the other blogs and see what they came up with.  These other cooks know their way around a grill and likely have superior camera skills so don’t judge me too harshly. And as long as you’re on their sites, stay and poke around for awhile; I’m sure they won’t mind.

This month the other two participants were Larry from The BBQ Grail and Rob (don’t call him Bob, only his dentist does that) from Into The Flames. Below are links to their respective posts and a little about each of them.

The BBQ Grail: Maple Planked Trout
The BBQ Grail website was created in 2007, initially to document the author’s quest to find the perfect backyard BBQ experience. Since that time The BBQ Grail has become one of the more popular BBQ blogs on the internet, including a listing on Alltop.com as one of the top BBQ blogs.

Into the Flames: Grilled Sea Bream with Fig, Orange and Saffron Butter
Into The Flames was launched in the summer of 2010 as a way to share Rob’s passion for cooking, eating, and exploring food.

Oh, and if you’re still here reading this, thanks for sticking it out to the end of one of the longer posts ever made here. I appreciate all of you out there that take time out of your day to see what sort of nonsense we’re up to around here; I know you could just as easily spend your time elsewhere. Now do yourself a favor. Step away from the computer, go outdoors, and cook something.

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…