Barbecued Beef Sandwich

I know, BBQ sauce is high in sugar, but that doesn't stop us from ordering meat dripping in that sweet molasses and spices goodness when we go out, even if there is Atkins-Friendly Grouper on the menu.  At least at home you can control the amount you use, and it makes it easier to opt for the healthier choices when you go out.

Because Smart & Final had trimmed tri-tip on sale for $3.99/pound on Monday when I went to buy something for dinner, and it seemed like the best deal going without walking to another store, Julie and I had tri-tip that evening.

If you buy a 2 to 3 pound tri-tip for two people, you should expect to have leftovers, even if you do painstakingly trim off as much extra fat as you can before cooking it.

We had well over a pound of meat left after dinner.  Rather than just wrapping it up and refrigerating it as is, I like to cut it into bite-sized pieces that can be stir-fried with vegetables or used to make barbecued beef.  After all, I already have the cooking dish and knife out, and using them to cut the remaining meat won't add anything to the clean-up time. 

As I've mentioned before, we don't like to eat the fat, so even though the tri-tip had been trimmed by the butcher and by me before cooking, as I trimmed and discarded any fat from the edge or rippled into the meat as I cut it up.  This is easy after the meat has cooled following dinner, and it means a lot less prep work when it comes time to transform the leftovers with Q-CC magic.

When I pulled the bag out of the refrigerator, I tried to decide if I should use it for two meals or one.  I decided to just cook it all in barbecue sauce rather than saving half to stir-fry.  Based on the amount we ate, this proved to be a good decision.

The recipe is really simple and obvious.  Add enough barbecue sauce to cover about a third of the meat. Add about the same amount of water as sauce, and stir it up.  The more barbecue sauce you use, the higher in calories the dish will be.  I'd say about a third of a cup of BBQ sauce and of water per pound of meat is right, but use your own judgment.  Keep in mind that some of the liquid will evaporate while cooking.

Does it matter exactly which barbecue sauce you use?

Perhaps it does to you, and feel free to use that special bottle you bought at Bar 3 or Hula Grill, but as long as you didn't mistakenly buy some really terrible brand from a bargain bin, whatever you have in your refrigerator or pantry should be okay.  I buy about any name brand (except Kraft, which I tried because it was cheap and didn't like) I happen to see on sale.  I already had a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's open, but it was down to the point where I had it sitting upside down in the fridge so as to allow the rest of its contents to drip down by the time I used it, so there was only enough for about a third of the meat.  I also had an open bottle of Bull's-Eye Texas-Style sauce, but knowing Julie finds that one a little spicy, I added only the same amount of that as the Sweet Baby Ray's so as not to overpower it.  For the final third of barbecue sauce, I added KC Masterpiece Original.  For those of you who consider region more than brand name, that would be 1/3 Chicago, 1/3 Texas and 1/3 Kansas City.  It wasn't necessary to bring one all the way from Memphis.

Put it on medium heat until it is boiling, then cover and reduce it to simmer for a couple of hours or more.  You can taste the meat every twenty minutes or so, and you'll see that what starts as beef dunked in barbecue sauce grows more tender as it is cooked, eventually becoming very tender, barbecue-flavored beef in sauce.

The better the bread you use, the better the sandwich will be.  You can add things like pickles or coleslaw to get some veggies in the meal.  We ate it on Sara Lee Delightful sliced bread, which is low in carbs but definitely not as stable or tasty as a crusty sourdough roll.  Julie toasted hers so it would have enough strength to hold together as a sandwich, but I ate mine open-faced with a fork, which had the added benefits of allowing me to use twice the meat as a regular sandwich would use. 

We ate on the balcony looking at the ocean for a great summer-evening al fresco meal.  Kona Longboard Lager proved to be the perfect accompanying drink pairing.

Is this a groundbreaking recipe?  No.  But it does make a tasty meal with an easy clean-up.

Grapefruit Done Right

Okay, preparing grapefruit isn't a big mystery, although I do know someone who peels and eats grapefruit like an orange, which seems wrong to me.

Wes, Dad and Mom

When I was a little boy, my mom would cut a Texas Ruby Red Grapefruit in half, and then run her knife between the rind and the edible part.  For many people, including chefs at diners and in cruise ship buffet lines, that is the end of the prep work, and most start with an inferior grapefruit variety, so it isn't at all surprising to me that little kids don't generally like grapefruit. 

Kids put their spoons into that fruit and sting their eyes when citrus juice inevitably squirts upwards.  They lean back, turn away and put the spoon in again, squirting juice onto the kitchen table.

Depending on how persistent they are, they can make quite a mess, which m uoms are unlikely to reward as a good efforts.  And what's the payoff if they manage to dislodge a mouthful and taste it?

A sour piece of fruit that's only a half step above eating a lemon.  Yeah, the comedic value of the expression at first taste entertains everyone else, but those kids may never try that healthy fruit again.

There is a better way.

The other day, I walked over to the farmer's market to buy some veggies.  With my asparagus and squash in the bag, I was heading for the exit, when I saw...could it be?...a bin of ripe, Texas Ruby Red Grapefruit.

I had been conditioned for several years to avoid grapefruit, because a sky-high triglycerides count had resulted in me being put on statins by a doctor at one point, and the one specific directive was to never eat grapefruit. I don't think it would have killed me, so I assume grapefruit must interfere with the helpful properties of the drug.

After a couple of years substituting low-carb meals for boxes of oatmeal cookies and Nutty Bars, I was able to stop taking the statins, or at least that's what I told myself, and just recently a new blood test confirmed that, which means I can now eat grapefruit again.

I picked one blushed redder than an Iowan librarian in the Caribbean, and yesterday I finally cut it open (the grapefruit, not the Iowan librarian).

Perhaps I should mention that there's a navel on top through which the grapefruit received nutrients from the tree before being picked.  Consider that navel as its north pole, and cut it in half along its equator.  That is as hard to describe clearly as it is obvious to anyone who has ever eaten a grapefruit (except that guy who eats it like an orange).  Put one half in a soup bowl and cut around the inside of the rind. 

To take it to the next level like my Mom, cut along the white radius lines you'll see in the fruit.  That way, you can easily scoop out a bite-sized triangles with a spoon. 

For some reason, I remember one day when my mom forgot to cut one line, making a double piece, and I chided her for missing it.  When I was little, I must have taken the fact that she did so much for me to mean that she was my personal servant.  That's another apology I owe Mom, and it's a tribute to what a great job she did that missing one cut on a piece of grapefruit was her most egregious error in my childhood.

When I tasted my grapefruit, it was unusually sweet, so I ate the first half, and then quickly followed by preparing and eating the other half. 

Sometimes, however, no matter how carefully you select your grapefruit, it might not be sweet enough.  Mom used to sprinkle sugar on for me, and she usually put a Maraschino Cherry in the middle. 

These days, Splenda is a great choice that won't spike your triglycerides, but now that I think of it, maybe I should keep a jar of Maraschino Cherries around to dress up food and drinks.

Grapefruit is an easy breakfast in every way, although if you're like me you might want to follow it up with some toast or bacon and eggs.  Grabbing a dozen Dunkin Donuts instead on the way to the office will most likely result in being banned from grapefruit eventually, and you don't want that.

Dry-Rubbed Chicken

Amy in Santa Monica last week.

The decision to enjoy chicken and noodles for Amy's farewell dinner delayed implementing Julie's alternative plan to try dry-rubbed chicken by a day.

Most of these Q-CC recipes start based on meals that Julie thinks might be good, because what I might suggest would frequently be too spicy, mustardy, bell peppery or flavorful in some other "exotic" way for Julie's more discriminating palate. 

After spending the first few years of my life eating mostly cereal and bananas, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or hot dogs, and hamburgers or fried chicken for breakfast, lunch and dinner, respectively (or irrespectively), it's actually quite surprising that I evolved into someone who enjoys Indian food, escargot and sauerkraut.

Interesting, too, that my son Jay went through a similar metamorphosis.  When he was a little boy, for example, we would nuke a hot dog in a bun, wrap it in foil and bring it for him to eat when we joined his cousins Kendra and Kelsey and their parents at Taco Bell for high-brow international cuisine.  Now, he'll try anything, and he frequently introduces us to delicious foods, like the Chinese Northern Style Spare Ribs from the Happy Hour Menu at P.F. Chang's China Bistro.



Julie and Jay by our old Manhattan Beach house.

After going to the horse races last Father's Day, we decided to make similar ribs on our barbecue at home. After careful deliberation, we chose Rancher's Reserve Cowboy Blend with Coffee Steak Rub to go on our homemade ribs, and they turned out great, although they didn't taste much like P.F. Chang's dry-rubbed ribs.

Apparently Julie came across that jar of rub in the cupboard, prompting her suggestion to make dry-rubbed chicken.  This steak rub, as the name implies, is not supposed to be for ribs or chicken, but I decided to follow the steak directions, brushing both sides lightly with Pompeian Fresh Harvest Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  Actually, I don't have a cooking brush, so I used a teaspoon.  I'm not saying I could paint the Sistine Chapel with it, but a spoon worked okay for spreading oil on boneless, skinless chicken breasts, which I had already placed in a glass cooking dish lined with Reynolds Non-Stick Pan Lining Paper.  

I used another spoon to sprinkle the dry rub on both sides of the chicken (you don't want to put a spoon that has been in contact with raw meat back into a jar of spices you plan to use later) and then massaged it into the chicken.  The chicken didn't give me a tip, but I never expected an 18% gratuity.



Laszlo, Gina and Emma appear skeptical of Q-CC ease in NYC.

I baked the chicken for 31 minutes in the convection oven set at 375 degrees.  A regular oven would be about 35 minutes at 400 degrees.  Some people might like it less done than that.  There's always a tradeoff between juiciness and safety, but I personally like poultry to be a little drier anyway. 

Pick your favorite vegetable dish to accompany it, and enjoy this tasty, healthy and quick-clean cuisine.  It's about as easy as going to Church's or KFC, and probably faster.

Mom's Divine Noodles

"Would it be weird if I said I wanted noodles again?"

We had cooked homemade noodles on Monday and ate leftovers on Tuesday, so of course Julie and I quickly replied in unison, "Not at all."

Normally we eschew "carbs," and any time we have flour and mixing bowls, quick-clean cuisine doesn't come readily to mind, but we love homemade noodles, even when they don't turn out as good as the ones my mother used to make.

We'd been flouting Dr. Atkins for the week anyway, so what was one more high carb meal?  Well, make that two more, if you count leftovers, and since Amy was flying out Saturday morning, she ate noodles for breakfast the next day.

This is the third time I have written about homemade noodles in this blog, so you may rightly ask why write about them again?

The answer is simple.

This time they turned out perfectly.

So perfect, in fact, that I wonder if we had a bit of divine help.

Do I sense you scoffing at the idea?

Let me give you a little background.

If you never met my mother, you should know she was one of the most loving, thoughtful, sweet, kind, generous and helpful people who ever lived.  When she made her transition to pure spirit five years ago, we were all deeply saddened, but we also had no doubt that she would have eternal life with eternal rewards. 

Five months later, Amy and I were driving through our neighborhood in my Ford Escape, when a GM Yukon XL, a true monster of an SUV, blew through a stop sign and broadsided us.  We were immediately spinning through the air.

We landed on the opposite side of the street next to the curb, thrown thirty feet in the direction the Yukon was heading and moving only a car length forward.

The side of the Escape was caved in, and both axels broken, but miraculously, Amy and I walked away from what could have easily been a fatal accident.

Could that have been my mom intervening, or possibly she and my late dad, whose birthday was around that time?

We were rather calm, even when the other driver, who seemed irate with no care that she had nearly killed us, got out demanding to know if we had stopped for our stop sign.  Rather than going off on her, I pointed out that we didn't have a stop sign, which made her burst into tears of remorse. 

Flash forward to Friday, when we took out the mixing bowl and began preparing noodles once more.

After our last effort, Julie said she thought the recipe might be 1 egg to 1 cup of flour, so I poured flour into a measuring cup.  This was the end of the flour in the canister, and before adding a new bag, I thought I might as well put the rest in the noodles, bringing it to two heaping cups of flour, which I poured into the mixing bowl.

Amy whisked two eggs in a measuring cup and added them to the flour, with a pinch of salt.  As she mixed those together with a spoon, I rinsed out the measuring cup and put a tablespoon of butter in it.  I microwaved the butter for 22 seconds and poured that into Amy's mixing bowl.  I added a half cup of low fat milk to the bowl, and Amy continued mixing them by hand until it was a big ball of dough.

I dusted a piece of parchment paper with flour, and Amy put the ball on it.  I pressed it as flat as I could get it by hand, and then Amy rolled it out with the trusty heavy Guinness glass.

We then left the noodles out to dry as we walked over to the Portofino Hotel for a happy hour drink at Balleen, which was something we had on the to-do list while Amy was here.  I don't remember exactly why, but somehow the fact that green peas were among my favorite vegetables as a child found its way into the conversation.  I said that I remembered my mom and grandmother sitting on the back porch of my grandparents' old farmhouse shucking freshly picked peapods on hot summer days in preparation for dinner.

When we returned home, we boiled two boneless, skinless chicken breasts with a tablespoon of minced onions in a Teflon pot over medium heat for 35 minutes, and then took them out to cut into smaller pieces.

I tried to find Cream of Chicken Soup in the cupboard, but there was none left, so we used Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup instead.  We stirred in the mushroom soup and a cup of low fat milk.  This time, we added no salt of any kind.

We chopped up celery, but Julie suggested using peas instead of carrots this time.  Because peas are definitely high in sugar, this was a surprising suggestion by the queen of low carb herself.  I looked in the freezer to see if we had any, and there was only a partial bag of C & W Petite Peas there.  We added them, and lo and behold, it looked to be just the right amount of peas.

It was at this point that it occurred to me that exactly what was on hand resulted in three of the choices: the amounts of both flour and peas as well as the choice of mushroom soup over chicken soup. 

After adding the celery, we mixed it and let it simmer awhile.  I mistakenly left the cover on the pot, which resulted in soup overflowing and making a mess, but we had a team clean up effort that saved the stove from extensive damage and then returned the soup to simmer.

We separately heated the water with a mandatory teaspoon of salt in the pasta pan, adding the noodles when it reached a full boil.  After it returned to a boil, we cooked them for three minutes.  Our sampling confirmed in the minds of all three of us that the noodles had turned out perfect, so Julie carefully added them to the soup to avoid undue mess on the stove or countertop.  We let it all cook together for a few more minutes.

Now that is exactly how to make Homemade German Egg Noodles....well, except the boiling all over the stove part.

Third time is a charm.

By the way, if you clean up as you go rather than just piling stuff in the sink, this really doesn't require that much extra clean up, and it is well worth the effort.