[ May 18, 2012 3:00 am to May 19, 2012 3:00 am. ]
Manbque invites you to come take in a night of tasty meat, cold beer and loud rock n roll. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
$5 bucks gets you awesome, grilled food by the Manbque dudes and enough music to make your ears bleed. (in a good way, of course)
Great food, good music, somewhat ok [...]
You, readers and patrons of ManBQue, have questions about grilling. And honestly, it’s one of our favorite things to do to answer them. Especially because they’re often along the lines of “Can you grill X?” At one of the last events, a newer attendee was marveling at the variety of food, legitimately believing that the [...]
Archive for July, 2010
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Every July and August, Middle America celebrates the harvesting of sweet corn. There are corn festivals, road side corn stands, and surplus of fresh sweet corn at your farmers market. This is the time to grill corn on the cob.
What most people don’t understand is that outside metropolitan areas the corn being grown in those fields is actually feed corn, used to feed live stock, create whiskey, and turn into high fructose corn syrup. While driving through these fields reminds me of my hometown, I know that I can’t just pull over and pick some ears of corn from a random field and try to eat them. What I’m looking for is the Supersweet corn developed at the University of Illinois in the 1950’s. Supersweet variety is modified to create higher levels of sugars than regular feed corn.
The “sweet corn” you randomly find at your local grocery store isn’t the variety that tastes the best – it’s the variety that has the longest shelf life. Supermarket corn is usually deep yellow and is picked from god knows where, shipped in a box full of ice, and kept in a cooler for weeks. Who wants to eat flavorless corn where hundreds of hands have poked their finger nails into the kernels to see if it’s fresh. Here is a secret, unless noted it’s local, it’s not fresh. On the other hand, Supersweet corn is light yellow to white kernels throughout the cob – it’s not a uniform color but is melt in your mouth tasty.
I find that the road side stands are the best to pick up the fresh corn – this produce is usually picked hours before you buy it. It’s worth the drive to get your food from an honest working person to share their passion with you; you’ll pay for a dozen ears and notice while the farmer is putting the corn in the reused big box store plastic bag that he or she will put 13 ears into it. Better to give extra product than to short change the consumer, something that has been lost in most of today’s business. Of course if you can’t make it out to a road side seller – the farmers market is the next best option.
So corn should be simple enough to grill – just throw it on the grate and heat up right? Well, the answer is no. The way I grill the corn is for it to simmer in butter, salt and pepper using the husks to keep all the juices in. Who needs tin foil when nature gives a better option of keeping flavor in? Of course don’t be afraid to add parmesan, coriander, or any other spices to the corn before you cook it. Put all the flavor enhancers on first, then it’ll cook into the corn and you won’t have to worry about putting extra on after grilling. Soaking the corn is important, just as you soak wood chips or planks – you are preventing the husks to catch on fire. Adding butter also aids in this process because as it melts it’ll soak into the husks, keeping them from drying out. The below recipe is a fail safe method to grilling perfect corn on the cob, hell it can even make supermarket corn taste better.
The Setup
4 ears fresh corn with husk on
4 tablespoons butter (room temperature)
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
Butcher string or extra corn husk made into strips
Cooking
1. Soak corn in lightly salted water ½ to 1 hour
2. Set up grill for medium hot direct grilling
3. Mix butter, salt and pepper together
4. Carefully peel corn husk back, do not remove husks but clean silk away.
5. Cut off ¼ inch tip of corn – this will make tying the husks back together easier
6. Smother each corn cob with 1 tablespoon of butter mixture
7. Bring husk back up each ear of corn and secure shut with butcher string. If you don’t have butcher string handy use excess corn husk to tie shut
8. Grill corn on open grill over medium heat, turning about 1/6 of a turn every two to 3 minutes. Once corn is fully rotated place grill top on for another minute.
9. Let cool 5+ minutes before removing husks
(Note: The freshness of your corn determines the cook time which varies from 10-25 minutes.)
Posted in Blog, Recipes | No Comments »
By JB Mays
Not all pasta sauces need be giant chunky messes, slopped over innocent pasta with all the subtlety of an ice cream scoop. Here’s a pasta dish light enough for eating outside on a summer day, but hearty enough to be surprisingly filling. If you prefer, you can marinate the shrimp for a half hour beforehand with some juiced and zested limes (3), oranges (2) and a lemon, along with some garlic, olive oil, and salt. Just remember to get it yourself – I’m not throwing it in the ingredients list. If you don’t like shrimp, then replace that with some grilled and sliced chicken. Or it’s fine without a meat component (sacrilege!). Throw gummy bears on it for all I care. It’s some good pasta.
The Setup
8 oz uncooked spaghetti or linguine
1 tablespoon butter
3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 c fresh grated Parmesan cheese (Don’t use the mummy dust in the green can. Please.)
1 lemon, zested and juiced
12 large shrimp, peeled, deveined, and marinated if you feel like it
1 large egg, beaten (or 1/2 c heavy cream for a richer result)
1/2 c chicken broth
Salt and pepper
Cooking
1. Cook the pasta slightly al dente (8-9 min for the dried stuff, much less for fresh). Set it aside and drain the pot.
2. Knock the heat down to medium-low and return the (empty) pot to the burner. Add your butter and oil. When the butter melts, add the broth and let it heat through.
3. Turn off the burner, add your pasta, egg (or cream) and Parmesan to the pot. Cover it and toss, then add your zest and lemon juice. Season to taste and top with some fresh herbs if you’re feeling high and mighty.
4. Either fish your shrimp out of the marinade, or season them. Give them about a minute on each side on either the grill or in a saute pan. Add them to the pasta, and you’re good to go.
Posted in Blog, Fish, Recipes | No Comments »
By JB Mays
Occasionally, the mood may strike to eat healthy. Or perhaps you’re entertaining guests who do. Either way, it’s worth having a few dishes in your back pocket that satisfy health needs and don’t taste like boiled cardboard. Try this one out on them. The ancho chiles give it a strong, memorable flavor – you can find dried anchos in the Mexican sections of most (seriously, almost all of them) grocery stores.
The Setup
1 1/4 lb boneless chicken breasts
4 dried ancho chiles
1/2 oz cilantro (about 4-5 sprigs)
1/3 c canned tomato sauce
1/2 tsp ground cumin
4 radishes, sliced very thin
3 green onions, sliced
6 cloves of garlic, unpeeled (seriously, leave the skin on)
1/2 c yellow cornmeal
Salt
Butter*
Cheese* (Whichever kind you’d like, so long as it melts. So probably not Feta.)
*Leave these out if you’re feeling healthy. As for quantity, that’s really up to personal taste.
Cooking
1. Prepare the polenta first, so you can give it time to firm up. Bring 2 1/2 cups of salted water to a full boil. When it’s going well, add your cornmeal gradually. Stir frequently for 10-12 minutes, until it’s fairly smooth. (Add in your cheese and butter about halfway through if you’re going that route).
2. When the polenta is smooth, pour it into a baking sheet or pan sprayed with nonstick. Let it firm up in the fridge while you work on the rest of this.
3. Throw the chicken breasts, 3 sprigs of the cilantro, and 3 cloves of garlic into a large skillet. Poach chicken over medium heat, covered, for 12 min.
4. Take the chicken out and place it on a plate or cutting board to cool. DO NOT THROW AWAY THE CHICKEN WATER.
5. Take off the stems of the chiles and dump out the seeds (it’s a texture thing, you can add hot sauce later if you think you’ll miss them). Put the chiles in a bowl and pour the leftover cooking liquid over them. Cover it with foil and let it sit for 15 minutes while you do other things.
6. Roast the remaining cloves of garlic in a small, dry skillet. Cover the skillet in foil and you won’t have to clean the bastard later. Efficiency! When they’re blackened out all sides, dump them onto your cutting board and let them cool off.
7. If the chicken has cooled enough to handle, shred it. You can use two forks for this, but if you’d rather not have searing pain in your hands, best just to tear it up with your hands. Just wash them right after. And before.
8. Your garlic cloves should be cool by now. Pop them out of the skin into the blender, and add the tomato sauce, cumin, anchos, and hot sauce if you’d like. Liquefy that business.
9. Throw the chicken and newly-blended sauce into a pan and mix them together. Heat it up, cover, and set the heat to low while you finish the polenta.
10. Take the polenta dish out of the fridge. It should be cool and firm by now. Cut it into four squares and heat a pan with either nonstick spray (healthy) or oil (not so much) over medium high heat.
11. When the pan and oil have heated, throw in your polenta slices, going in batches if you don’t have enough room. Cook each side for 3-4 minutes, until it’s slightly crispy and golden brown. Don’t get impatient and turn up the heat – it will burn and smell like crap.
12. Top polenta with the shredded chicken. Add the radish slices, green onions, and any cilantro you’ve got left lying around. It’ll look approximately as fancy as pictured above. Enjoy yourself.
Posted in Blog, Poultry, Recipes | No Comments »
