Over the years since the tri-tip roast became more visible at the butcher shop (or at Costco), I’d not been bitten by the bug. Lots of people raved about it. I wasn’t convinced. Yes, I had some here and there when someone else made it. After all, it looks like a fillet mignon. It just doesn’t taste like one, and it certainly doesn’t chew like one. But I read an article recently for tri-tip, extolling its virtues. So, when I visited my local, favorite butcher and they had Niman Ranch tri-tips, rib eyes and porterhouses, I figured if Niman Ranch was producing them, and if my butcher was showcasing the tri-tips with its very uptown relatives, then maybe they were worth reconsidering.

If you’ve never been much of a tri-tip fan, I won’t be convincing you otherwise. I don’t really think I am, either. This recipe doesn’t make tri-tip taste or chew any better than a fairly chewy piece of meat. But if you enjoy a bit of chew, this preparation may be just down your alley.

Tri-tip is a cut of meat that comes from the bottom sirloin. If you’ve ever had a sirloin from the bottom end and noticed that it was a lot more chewy and less tender, well, this is cut from that end. There are only two of them on every animal, so that’s why we don’t see them all that often. They’re very lean, I’ll give them that. Although there are some sinews and a bit of gristle, there’s really very little. So, if you’re going to eat red meat, this is fairly healthy. It needs marinating to give it more flavor, and to tenderize it. At least 24 hours worth.

The recipe comes from Bon Appetit, June, 2002. My DH enjoyed the flavor. My opinion? Eh. It’s not the preparation I didn’t like; it’s the cut of meat. If you go onto epicurious for this recipe, there are countless reviews of it. Some loved it. Others didn’t. Most people raved about the relish. I didn’t make the relish because I still had some mango-strawberry salsa I made the other night. But I think the cherry tomato relish would be a much better complement to the beef than the salsa. The marinade has a more savory taste, and a sweet salsa doesn’t go. It just doesn’t. But, no matter what, you can’t change the taste or the chew of the meat. So, knowing all that, you can decide whether you’d like to try this.

I don’t usually post recipes here that I don’t just love, but since I thought maybe other people would like the meat better than I did, I’m posting it anyway.
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My DH (that’s dear husband) always thought he was the king of the grill. Well, he still is, but it’s been a circuitous route. All these years he’s told me he knew what he was doing, knew how long to cook a chicken breast. Mostly I believed him, but then we’d have a disaster on the grill. But then he’d do a perfect steak, and my faith was renewed. Seems like it was always the chicken breasts that got us.

So I signed up to take a grilling class (and took my DH Dave along). He got a lot out of it too. But whether he’d actually do all the different techniques we learned, well, I wasn’t altogether sure. But I figured if I did all the prep work – and set up the meat thermometer so it’s all ready to go, set for the interior grill temp and the meat temp, AND tell him what the drill is, he’d be willing.

My first attempt after we’d gone to the class was on . . . guess what? . . . chicken breasts. I’d learned that the temperature needed to be 155 when you take them off the grill. I’d bought a good probe meat thermometer (the one in the picture above), fiddled with the darned thing until I got it set properly, and we began. My thermometer happens to be a Polder brand, but there are others out there. I highly recommend buying one that takes both temperatures (interior oven/grill and meat). They’re more expensive, but worth the expense, I think.

The Polder thermometer only has a couple of things I don’t like about it: (1) the temperature rolls only in an up direction, and it goes clear to 600 degrees, so it takes a long time to scroll it through that; (2) the metal wire connector has to drape from the meat in the oven and gets squished in the oven door a bit . . . over the years I’ve had it, it now has flattened, and sometimes works erratically. But that has to do with the firm seal on my Dacor oven, I think, and can’t be helped. Not Polder’s fault.

So, here’s the very basic stuff we learned at the class: (1) Mark the meat. That can be done with almost any meat, poultry or fish. You need to have the grill temp set high enough so it will make marks on the meat. So, it’s like browning the meat in a skillet, but you brown the meat at a fairly high temp.

(2) Reduce the temp and move most of the meat types to indirect heat to finish cooking. The first try at chicken was sensational. Amazing what you can do if you cook the meat until it’s JUST done. You just have to learn when that is, and the meat thermometer will let you know (mine has an alarm) so when it reaches temperature you can remove it immediately. We moved on to trying some other meats, and I kept having to look it up – what temp does that meat have to be when it’s medium rare, or just cooked? So I started compiling a list. I took the notes from the grilling class, referred to several other books I have, and came up with my own chart. It’s what I rely on all the time now. Most of the temperatures and notes come from Hugh Carpenter, but I’ve added some others. My roasting grilling chart, that I created using Excel, is converted to a pdf – a one page sheet. If it will help you with your grilling and roasting (use it for oven roasting too), just download and print. Bottom line . . . it’s been like an aha moment. The techniques work. My DH has been a convert to the use of the meat thermometer, marking the meat, then using indirect heat. In fact, if he doesn’t think I’m listening he’ll likely tell everyone it was all his idea. <big grin>

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post, I’ve added a few more meat types and some added instructions on the roasting and grilling chart. It’s printed out and taped inside a kitchen cupboard door so both my DH and I can refer to it very easily. In addition, I have also purchased a Splash-Proof Super-Fast Thermapen (Gray) Instant Read Thermometer, Perfect for Barbecue, Home and Professional Cooking, a very expensive tool, but we’re converts to its use in all manner of things (including cakes and breads). If Amazon doesn’t have it, you can find it on many other websites, just search for “thermapen.”

If you don’t think you’re getting just the best results from grilling or roasting, I’d recommend you begin cooking by temperature (finished) and invest in a really good thermometer for sure.

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Believe it or not, I’m not certain I’d make this again. Not because it wasn’t good. It was. There are a variety of reasons: (1) the grill meister had difficulty keeping the cheese from melting right down through the grates (maybe the temp was too high?); and (2) once served, it didn’t stay hot very long (we didn’t put it on a hot, hot plate). Not long enough, anyway. The photo I took of the dish was taken in low light, so I’ve used a Food Network photo at left.

This is a Michael Chiarello recipe – a show he did a few months ago that was an all-grilled meal, from appetizer through dessert. On the program, grilling the cheese looked really easy. It didn’t appear to be so easy when we made it. Obviously there’s a technique here that we just didn’t get. According to the reader reviews at the tv food network, all who prepared the dish loved it, and I guess, had no difficulty with it. So it had to be something we did. The cheese and herb combination was good – as someone wrote, the herbs complemented the cheese well. I agree.

First you marinate the cheese – two chunks of cheese totalling 1 1/2 pounds – in olive oil, oregano, chile flakes, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper. Then you grill the cheese briefly, directly on the grates, just enough to put grill marks on the cheese. Michael said about 2 minutes per side. That’s when the grill meister ran into trouble. It began to melt, and he had no grill marks. You then transfer the cheese to a metal plate or baking dish (I used a small oblong metal pan that I encased in aluminum foil, so the grill wouldn’t damage the pan) and put that on top of the grill. You cook it until the cheese has begun to melt and “begins to brown on the bottom, about 3-5 minutes.” Well, we never got to the begins to brown part. Finally our grill meister removed the cheese and we served it, along with a bunch of baguette slices he’d also grilled. By the time we transferred it to a serving plate, the cheese was already kind of firming up again and cooling off fast. I think the trouble was with the grill temperature. The recipe does say moderately high heat. Maybe I will try this again and see what happens. Maybe we’ll start with half a recipe this time too. We had 8 people for dinner, and had lots left over. We did eat it – and it was delicious, but the cheese was cool within a couple of minutes, so be sure to place it on a piping hot plate.
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My friend, Sue, another of my friends who is a very good cook, served this sauce one night several years ago when we dined at their home. It was served as a major condiment on pork chops, I believe. And was it ever good! She told me the recipe came from a cookbook she’d purchased after hearing Lynne Rossetto Kasper talk about it on NPR. I tried to find the recipe online, but had no success at all. So, of course, I had to go buy the book too. Amazon being my good friend, it took no time at all to get it. I enjoyed reading it, The Italian Country Table, all on its own. The author includes lots of fun little stories about the different dishes, about the foodstuffs of Italy, and hundreds of little cooking tips. The sub-title of the book is: Home Cooking from Italy’s Farmhouse Kitchens.

The recipe suggests this can be served with almost any grilled meat. It would be wonderful with grilled Italian sausages, over chicken, or even served as a side to a pork roast. It has a jammy consistency. In fact, Kasper even mentions it in the recipe write-up, that’s it’s more like tomato jam than a tomato sauce. So, this isn’t a sauce for pouring over pasta. This is a tart and sweet reduced (side) sauce that will mound high on a spoon because it’s so thick and goes WITH a protein. Or maybe grilled onions. Or grilled portobello mushrooms. And one of the best things is that this sauce will keep for several weeks. The recipe indicates a week or so, but I’ve kept this much longer than that with no problem. You could also freeze it in small quantities too. I always double this recipe because we use it on lots of different things. Being this is the end of tomato season, you probably could make this with fresh tomatoes too; it just so happens that the author uses canned ones.
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My notes say I made this in 2000. It came from Cooking Light. I’d been to a grilling cooking class in the previous month and the instructor had talked about how easy it is to grill corn. I’d grilled corn before, but when I read this recipe it sounded so different. Worth trying, I thought.

Here’s what you do: you pull the husks down – but you don’t pull them off. Some nearly always fall off anyway, you just can’t help that, but you want enough husks to completely cover all the corn. No kernels peeking through if at all possible. You remove all the silk, spread with a little butter or olive oil spray, season the cobs with this herb and spice combination, very gently pull the husks back into place covering the corn and carefully take a loose, long piece of husk and tie the husks at the top, like a topknot, a ponytail. Grill about 15-20 minutes. Remove all the husks and EAT. Really, really delicious.

There’s nothing hard about making this. But it does take a bit of time to make up the dry rub. Since I’ve made this so many times now, whenever I’m out of the rub I make up another BIG batch. Well, usually enough to last the summer season. They say that once spices are combined with others they tend to lose their effectiveness, their flavor. So just make up enough so you’ll use it up in a couple of months. It’s just as easy to make this for 2-3 batches than for one. As long as you like seasoning and lots of it, you’ll be certain to like this corn.

You can smear the raw corn with some butter if you’d like. I usually spray it heavily with olive oil spray instead. Then you sprinkle on the spice and herb rub, covering it very liberally. You need the butter or olive oil spray so the spices will stick to the corn. And if you’re just too weary to do all the tie-up-the-husks routine, you can put the corn in foil packets instead. Maybe not quite as good, but nearly so. Before corn is totally gone for the season, I recommend this.
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Romesco Sauce is not your normal run-of-the-mill sauce. It contains some different ingredients. It keeps for weeks and weeks. I always seem to have leftovers of the sauce, so use it on grilled vegetables, even some plain grilled chicken too.

This is from one of Nicole Aloni‘s cookbooks, and was demonstrated at a cooking class she taught several years ago. I loved the combination of textures in this dish. I’d never had bread croutons threaded onto a grilled skewer of anything until this dish was served to me. But I liked it. You don’t want to use bread that will become hard and inedible, so think about that as you’re choosing the bread. In other words, an already firm chunk of sourdough with a very firm crust isn’t going to get any less chewy if you grill it. So, you need to use a softer crumb – like an Italian loaf or a soft type of baguette. I rarely buy grocery store French bread for just this reason – they’re more like white nothingness than a “real” baguette, but for the grilled crouton, it may just be perfect. And, you wouldn’t want to serve bread or another carb with this, either. By the way, Nicole now has a blog, so if you click here, you can take a look.

The Romesco sauce has a Catalan (Spain) origin. I thought it was Italian, but no. I finally found a bit of info about it:

• This Catalan tomato sauce is traditionally served with fish and shellfish but it is also ideal to serve as a dipping sauce. Authentic recipes are made with dried romesco chiles, which have a sweet and hot flavor. Unfortunately they are difficult to obtain outside Spain.
• What’s unique about Romesco is its use of almonds as a thickener, and flavor enhancer. It adds a lot, although you’ll have a hard time picking out the almond flavor once it’s incorporated into the intense red pepper-base. It’s not difficult to make and it keeps for awhile. I love it on hearty vegetables as leftovers too.

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The Los Angeles Times’ Food Section happens to be one of the better ones in the country. Maybe I should qualify that. It used to be one of the best. So few major newspapers are devoting money and staff to the sections anymore, but you can access the food sections of many newspapers on the net now (click on this link for a list of newspaper food sections available online). But this recipe was in the “good old days,” when the food section was quite large. The recipe comes from a restaurant in Los Angeles called Cha Cha Cha and was printed about 7-8 years ago. I’ve never been to the restaurant, but I guess they do a lot of highly seasoned Caribbean foods, this being one of them. Jerk seasoning was new to U. S. cooking circles back then, and having never had it, I was intrigued to try it. It’s been a summertime regular ever since. And I want you to read the nutritional analysis this time (a very good-for-you dish).

You need to have a sizable repertoire of herbs and spices in order to concoct the herb/spice mixture. I make it up in quantity. I think I’ve read that once you combine herbs or spices their lifetime diminishes considerably. My stash of this mixture is from last summer, so I hope it lasts a few more months.

The chicken breasts are marinated in a combination of the herb/spice mixture, canned pineapple juice, orange juice and Worcestershire sauce. Ideally for 24 hours, but I’ve done it in far less when I haven’t planned ahead to make this. It’s very simple once you have the dry mix ready; I always marinate meat/chicken/fish in a plastic bag – one of the freezer types so there’s no chance of puncturing it. Or at least very little chance of a chicken bone or something poking a hole in the bag. When I am unsure about how safe the bag is, I’ll put it into the bag, then in a large plastic bowl. Just in case.

The only other info about this chicken that is different is how it’s cooked. It is done on direct heat, but after grilling for a fairly short time on the grill, you remove the breasts and slice them into strips, dip in the marinade again, then finish cooking. The batch pictured above didn’t get that last step because the head griller had already turned the meat over and it was deemed “too late” to do the slice. So we just slathered more of the marinade on it and allowed it to cook that way. It’s very moist as long as you don’t overcook it. Remove the chicken when it reaches about 150-155 degrees, allow to sit a few minutes then slice and serve. Discard the marinade as it’s contaminated.

You could boil the marinade down if you wanted to and make it a sauce, but it might take longer than you have to devote to it since the chicken cooks in nothing flat. I’m going to try that sometime. The chicken is extremely low in fat because the marinade has no oil in it at all. None. So it’s just the fruit juices that help it retain moisture. Our family from Placerville was here, and they deemed it good. My daughter Dana has made this a few times and recommends buying the pineapple orange combination juice (Dole makes it) instead of using separate canned juices. Makes good sense to me. I may stock up on that, because I never have pineapple juice on hand.

The original recipe called for double the ingredients for the marinade, but I’ve been perfectly happy with a smaller quantity and if it’s marinated in a plastic bag, you can turn it over and back, and all the chicken is in contact with the liquid.
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It seems that I’m on a Hugh Carpenter roll. Maybe I’d better buy his cookbook, Hot Barbecue, since I’ve prepared several recipes from that cookbook and like them all. Yesterday was a beautiful Southern California day, perfect for a backyard grilled dinner. Since Dave is a diabetic, I tend to not prepare sweet barbecue sauces except on rare occasions. And that’s probably why I was attracted to this recipe because it has a limited amount of sugar in it. (And, in fact, I forgot to add the honey to the recipe at all, but next time I will.) I remember when I attended the grill class and these ribs were prepared for everyone – I enjoyed them then, and we enjoyed them yesterday. The ribs came from Niman Ranch, and they’ve been in my freezer for several months from an order I placed with them back then. If you’ve never had any Niman Ranch meats, you’re in for a treat. Only available by mail order or phone, they raise very healthy animals, no antibiotics, no hormones. Although, their bacon (which is excellent and contains no nitrates or nitrites) is available at some Trader Joe’s, and occasionally you can find their pork chops there also. If you get on the Niman Ranch email list, they’ll tell you when meats are on special. Find a friend who will order as well and the shipping will be less that way. These ribs were exceedingly lean. Maybe not healthy-lean, but certainly better than any ribs I buy locally.

First you make a sauce/marinade: peanut butter, soy sauce, Hoisin, ginger, garlic, sherry and some Vietnamese chili sauce, among other things. You marinate the ribs in the sauce for an hour or two. Or three, or up to 8 hours. The sauce isn’t hard to make – whizzed up in the blender – then you pile the ribs into plastic bags with the sauce and just let them stew in the refrigerator. Really very easy.

Carpenter has developed his own method for using the grill. He likes high heat at first, then you lower the temperature to let meat settle in for some long, slow cooking. This method is very similar to the Ribeye Steaks with Amazing Glaze that we made several weeks ago. Click HERE to refer to that recipe.

We sat outside overlooking our beautiful view of the California coast, under our new pergola, in the shade, sipping on a magnificent bottle of 2002 Iron Horse Alexander Valley T Bar Vineyard Merlot. We watched blue jays swoop down to our small table and grab little pieces of corn chips, while the ribs were slowly baking. The birds seem almost tame, as they would come within about 6 inches of my hand to pick up crispy pieces I’d toss their way. We’ve seen these birds before. They may even have a nest somewhere on our slope as they’d dive just over and down behind the foreground palm tree in the photo. Very entertaining. And very peaceful and relaxing. Off in the distance in the photo is the Pacific Ocean, looking toward Long Beach and Palos Verdes. It’s about 10 miles to the ocean, although it’s kind of hazy out in the distance. What a lovely end to a nice weekend.
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