James' Pork Tenderloin

Last week we ran into Sally and James while walking and collaborated on dinner. James was cooking plain pork tenderloin which he had rubbed with Jack's Gourmet Seasoning from Outdoor Home and he used hickory wood chips for flavoring. He cooked the tenderloin to a temp of 145 at 325 degrees on the BGE, about 20 minutes. It was a bit underdone so Sal put it in the oven for 10 minutes. While the pork was in the oven he cooked our asparagus and mushrooms brushed with with basel olive oil. The flavor of the meat was really smoky and good! Nice mid-week dinner.

Mother's Day Pizza May 8th

Pizza has been one of the things I had really been wanting to try on the GBE. Gary and I make our own pizza's in the our oven alot so we wanted to see if there was really a difference. I ran the menu by Mom and it sounded good to her. I googled and read several blogs and posts about how to do it. I decided to heat the grill to 500 degrees then put the grate on with the BGE plate setter, plate side up on top of it. The reason for that is that you need the pizza at the level of the grill opening in order to get it off without dropping or messing it up. We always use the Pillsbury pizza crust mix which you add a 1/2 c of water to and let it rise a bit. Gary has made homemade crusts but they really are not any better than the Pillsbury crust. We were having my folks and Randy so we decided to make 2 pizza's and have a nice big salad. I quickly put the pizza stone on the hot plate setter to get it heated up. We made our crusts, Gary rolled out the dough on the Corian countertop with some of flour underneath then put the crust on our Williams Sonoma wooden pizza paddle with Quaker's corn meal on it. We always use Kraft Mozzerella shredded cheese for the base then we added bits of hamburger meat, chopped red onion, chopped tomatoes, and fresh chopped mushrooms. We put Kraft parmesan shredded cheese on the top along with Penzey's Garlic and California Pepper. We added some oregano and were ready to put it on the grill. The temp was around 500 degrees when we opened the lid and Gary quickly slid the pizza on. The temp went down but I got it backup to 400. I am getting better with regulating the temp, thank goodness. It has taken a year. The pizza's got rave reviews with a wonderful flavor! We can't wait to grill another pizza!

Friday night Tilapia- May 7th

Dillons had some nice looking tilapia last week so I bought some for Friday night. One of my favorite BGE blogs is Mr. T;s Big Green Egg Recipe Blog. When I googled for a tilapia recipe I should have known he would have a good one. His was Baked Breaded Tilapia. The breading was made with 1/4 c bread crumbs which I made from a couple of old frozen hamburger buns in the Cuinsinart, pepper, Sea Salt, 1 T fresh lemon juice(Gary thought I put too much), 1/4 c Mayo, 1/4 c shredded parmesan cheese and some fresh parsley from the garden. I spread it on top of the fish. I put the fish in a BGE pan which I had sprayed with Pam and put the fish in the BGE at around 400 degrees for 15 minutes. The tilapia needs something since it is so mild and this did the trick. Did the potatoes in foil with rosemary and asparagus on the grill also. Very Good!

Back to the BGE- March 23rd

James was coming over for dinner so I got salmon at Dillons at lunch. I put it in a large baggy with lite soy sauce, couple of T. of honey, and a dash of brown sugar. This is close to what is recommended on the BGE website. James helped me with the fire which I have been struggling with since I got my egg a year ago. He helped me spread the coals out so the fire was not uneven. We got the temp up to 400 degrees and put the salmon on. We were able to keep the fire at 350 and cooked around 5 minutes on each side. I put olive oil on some asparagus and put it on a pan on the grill for 5 minutes. Then made a quick box of couscous with pine nuts along with a fresh salad and we had a great, quick weeknight meal.

Back from vacation and ready to cook- March 20th

We had a lovely trip abroad and here is a photo of my favorite cookie and sandwich shop in Amsterdam. I love their cookies and always bring some home. After good food in all of the places we visited I was ready to cook. The butternut squash at HomeGrown Foods looked wonderful so I got it hoping to replicate what we had had in Ireland. It was actually pretty close. Baked the squash for over an hour in the oven then pulled it out and blended it with onions, potatoes and carrots along with 6 cups of chicken broth. Not sure which website I got the recipe on but you get the idea. Very tasty!

A break in the weather

We had a nice last weekend in January so I cleaned out the BGE to prepare for cooking some things for the next week. Snow was predicted. The egg was almost out of charcoal which might have been part of the reason that the Christmas turkey cooking was completed. Nothing original just what I know and that was Hormel pork tenderloin with honey mustard, boneless Honeysuckle boneless turkey breat and Honeysuckle ground turkey breast. I added pecan chips to smoke and everything had wonderful flavors! One of my best. As a side note I had purchased some black lentils from Mamma Jeans and found a wonderful recipe in Food and Wine for an indian Black Lentil soup by Rajat Parr. Google it if you are interested. Really nice, different flavors.

Christmas continued

According to my notes at 7:30am the temp was 285 degrees and I had the top and the bottom wide open. At 7:45am I put the cap with holes on since it was spitting snow but by 7:50am the temp had dropped from 300 to 250 so I took the cap off. At 9:15am it was still 250 degrees. 10:00am 250 :(. By 11:00am it was 150 so we took the turkey off and put it in the oven at 350. By now it was snowing quite alot. The turkey breast temp was 140. The pumpkin and pecan pies were done, thank goodness. We took the turkey out at 12:30pm and it was done. This turkey was larger than the one at Thanksgiving and although it was good it was not as moist at the earlier turkey.