Winter Squash

While the pumpkins for Halloween were here, Safeway had all these variants of  weird looking pumpkins. I picked a colorful one out for grilling. Cutting in to it brought back memories of carving a jack o' lantern when I was a kid. The color, seeds and smell were the same as a pumpkin. It was pretty good, so I tried other varieties over the past few weeks. Doing some research, I've found  a website having pictures of the squash varieties I have tried so far in this Autumn season. Here are their names:

• Delicata Squash
• Carnival Squash
• Buttercup Squash
• Fairytale Pumpkin Squash

 

Sweet Potato Fries

In the past, I usually buy the frozen french fries and cook them in the oven while the meat is on the grill. Also, I have tried the frozen sweet potato fries, knowing they are more nutritious.

Lately, I just grill slices of a fresh russet potato. Now available at Safeway are sweet potatoes and/or yams in three different colors. For my last few barbecues, I've grilled in turn the white, red and yellow skinned varieties.

To prepare, I like to cut the potato lengthwise in six pieces, and brush on olive oil. Here are the yellow sweet potatoes after the first turn. I grill the vegetables first.

Here the potatoes are on the cool side of the grill while my tri-tip steaks drip fat and flare up flames.

Here the meal is served with A.1., my favorite steak sauce for puting on steak fries and steaks.

BBQ Blog Update for Summer of 2012

We have been watching a lot of Steven Raichlen and been inspired to grill a variety of foods. In the past year, we had quesadillas, bratwurst, fish and corned beef. And the usual chicken, steaks, country style ribs and corn in the husk.  For something we haven't grilled before, we had smoked sausage, Spam, and refrigerated French bread dough. We formed the dough into biscuits and split them after grilling to make sandwiches. The resulting bread was totally different: it's not toasted; it's not baked; but it's bread from grilled dough, and very easy to cook!
For the Father's Day camp out, we've had marinated three kinds of meat, beef, chicken and pork, which is our classic barbecue medley, and with grilled corn and jalapenos on the side. Then we tried another kind of grilled bread, refrigerated biscuit dough along with ground pork. For July 4th, we had ground turkey and grilled eggplant on sesame seed buns.
This brings us to our to-do list:

• Ground Italian sausage and refrigerated pizza dough. Not exactly grilled pizza. But after assembling a sandwich with a little pasta sauce and sliced cheese, it should approach the pizza flavor.
• Beef marinated in red wine vinegar, which has been sitting in the cupboard since we last marinated beef with it long ago. This time we'll try thin sliced beef to get maximum exposure to the marinade.
• Lamb, thanks to Steven saying it is very popular on planet barbecue.
• Pork tenderloin, an old favorite and long overdue for another appearance.

Grilling on a Saturday night

Here is what I'm cooking now while listening to Jose's Radio Show! Golden potatos, corn on the cob, and Caribbean Jerk Chicken.