Santa Maria Style Grilled Tri-Tip with Chimichurri

Posted on 05/18/2012 by Walter Blevins

I love me some beef!  It’s starting to get pricey and seems to me as if the less expensive cuts are the ones taking the biggest jump in prices.  So we need to be even more creative in cooking up a tasty meal which is inespensive.

So, let’s talk tri-tip for a bit.  This is a terrific cut of meat and it’s not too pricey.  It’s from the bottom sirloin and is triangular in shape.  It’s flavorful and cooked properly is tender and juicy.  Look for it on special and buy a couple of them to keep on hand.

Santa Maria style tri-tip is usually cooked coated in a seasoning blend of black pepper, garlic and coarse salt and is a fantastic way to prepare the meat.  This time, I used Chimichurri as a marinade as well as a sauce.  “True” Santa Maria Tri-tip is served with a salsa but who says the salsa has to be red!  And, Santa Maria style is also a cooking technique where the meat generally is seared over a red oak fire then cooked indirectly by raising the grill surface until the desired “doneness” is achieved.

Grilling Tri-Tip "Santa Maria Style"

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Go Green! With Chimichurri

Posted on 05/17/2012 by Walter Blevins

Last week I asked Mrs. CB what she would like for dinner on Saturday.  Her reply, “something with Chimichurri”.

She didn’t say steak or chicken or pork chops.  She said, “Chimichurri.”  That’s how much she loves this wonderful sauce/marinade that I introduced her to several years back.  This magic elixir which I make 2 or 3 times a year is one of our absolute favorites.

The first thing you have to do is get past the notion that you’re putting a bright green, viscous sauce on your meat.  We’re used to marinades and sauces that are some shade of brown or red or reddish-brown.

Kermit the Frog used to sing “It isn’t easy being green.”  Once you make and taste Chimichurri you’ll “go green” just like we do.

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A Slice of Summer Heaven–Rhubarb Cream Pie

Posted on 05/14/2012 by Walter Blevins

Hot summer evenings. Supper’s over.  The sun’s going down.  Crickets and cicadas are giving a concert.  It’s time for pie.  Pie a la mode.  Except as a kid you don’t care about a la mode…what you want is ice cream and it’ll be several years before you know what a la mode means.

Tonight it’s fresh rhubarb pie.  Funny, it looks like celery but it sure doesn’t taste like celery.  How come nobody makes celery pie?  Tart and sweet, dancing together on your tongue.  Creamy, cold ice cream smoothing it out and creating a party in your mouth.  Until later.  Later the rhubarb gets into a fight with your stomach and you’re reaching for the antacid.  At least until the first time I had rhubarb cream pie.  The “cream” just kind of mellowed the rhubarb out and took away the anticipated stomach burn.

I’ve had a hard time finding a good recipe for rhubarb cream pie.  So, I made up my own.  Plenty of recipes call for adding a couple of eggs—some even eggs plus extra egg whites.  But that just seemed to me like making a rhubarb “quiche”.  So I looked a bit further and decided to go for a bit more of a custard approach with the simple addition of some evaporated milk.  (I didn’t go for cream because it’s a bit too pricey for my taste especially when I can get a can of evaporated milk for $1).

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Old Fashioned Lard Pie Crust

Posted on 05/14/2012 by Walter Blevins

I’ve been fiddling around with making pie crust for quite a while now.  I love pie and it took me years to start getting the hang out of making crust.  I used to buy those boxes of crust mix and try to make it and it was pretty good but a bit pricey.  And a few times I’ve bought refrigerated pie crusts that you just open up, unfold and put in a pie tin and that’s pretty good but even more pricey.

But, with a name like “Cheap Bastid”, I thought I’d try to go “old school”.  You know, there’s nothing more rewarding than making it from scratch and it’s not really hard to do.  But quite frankly, if you’d just as soon not have the hassle of mixing dough and rolling it out—a process which just about doubles the amount of time it takes to get a pie ready to go in the oven, then I’d suggest using the pre-made, refrigerated dough.  Otherwise, make it from scratch.

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True Grit(s). Is it Polenta? Or is it Grits?

Posted on 05/11/2012 by Walter Blevins

There’s an old hayseed saying, “nothin’s gooder’n grits”.  I’ve always loved grits with breakfast—except you pretty much never want to order them at your favorite breakfast joint because they’ll probably be instant grits.  But real grits–with egg yolk running into them that you can scoop up on your toast with a bite of egg–that’s good stuff.

A while back I discovered that there’s “nothin’ gooder’n grits” with dinner too.  Especially leftovers.  And, especially “true grits” that you simmer for a half hour or 40 minutes to get just the right texture and flavor.  But—is that grits or polenta?

Well, I agree with “The Duke”.  They’re grits.  “True Grits”.

Ground yellow corn.  That’s grits.  Or is that polenta?  Apparently the technical difference is what’s known as “dent” vs. “flint” corn.  Dent is most often used in grits and has a soft, starchy center.  Flint has a hard, starchy center and is preferred for polenta.

There’s not much difference.  I did a bit of research on basic recipes for each and guess what?  The recipes are virtually identical.  And yes, there are different ways of doing them.  The basic recipe for grits found on the Bob’s Red Mill Bag is virtually the same as the basic polenta recipe by Food Network’s Giada di Laurentiss.

And the clincher to the argument is this observation from Bobby Flay: “You can’t charge a lot of money for grits, but you can charge a lot for polenta.”

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