X-Mas Eve Feast

Merry Christmas!

Every year, our Christmas day is a complete rat race, first going to Sheila's father's house, then to my parent's house. It is a lot of driving and a lot of rushing around. So years ago, we started our own tradition of having a great feast Christmas eve at home, and opening our presents to each other.

This year, I have been extremely busy the last few weeks, so I did not put a lot of thought into the meal. The last minute plan was to make filet mignon with sauce Bearnaise. However, when I got to one of my meat spots in the afternoon Christmas eve, they had boneless prime rib roasts that were marked down so low that I had to grab one.

Rubbed it with turbinado sugar and Schwartz's of Montreal steak rub. I would have preferred to cook it in the Weber Smokey Mountain, but since there is a foot of snow on my patio I decided to just use the oven.

Roasted at 375 degrees until it was around 120 internal, then held under foil until the scalloped potatoes, veg and crescent rolls were complete. Took a little too long, and by the time the meat was sliced it was closer to medium than to rare.

We usually pull out all of the crystal and other stuff that we got for our wedding and rarely gets used for this meal.

Overall dinner was great. While I usually prefer prime rib with au jus, the Bearnaise came out awesome and went well with the beef.


Dinner was a success!

Now, the rat race begins.

NEBS Holiday Party

Went to the NEBS holiday party yesterday. A good time was had by all. Had some good food, saw some friends and made a few new ones. Below are a few pictures from the day.

Full picture album HERE. We didn't take too many though....

Q Haven Meets NASCAR

Next year, Q Haven BBQ will be catering the tailgate party for two NASCAR Sprint Cup Series bus trips run by Norwich, CT based Bokoff Kaplan Travel.

Click HERE for Information about the bus trip on May 31st, 2009 to Dover International Speedway in Dover, Delaware.

Click HERE for information about the bus trip to New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon, NH.

Thanks to Bokoff Kaplan Travel and TLG Travel Management for partnering with us for what will surely be a pair of great events!

Daisy May's BBQ, NYC

Not a full review or anything, but had a few hours to kill in NYC today and headed over to Daisy May's BBQ. I really was just craving the chili, which is just awesome. Got the chili and figured since I was already there, a half rack of Memphis dry rubbed spare ribs.

The chili was everything I remembered and then some. Served with cheddar cheese, red onion and sour cream. Big chunks of beef. Still my favorite chili.

The ribs were really spicy. I like them spicy so it was all good. The flavor profile reminded me a little of my competition rib, so that was a good sign.

Sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures....

I love sweet tea, so I gave that a try. It came in a large mason jar, ice cold, with a sprig of mint. My new favorite place for sweet tea!

Ate half the chili and half the ribs, brought the rest home. That means I will be having a great lunch at work tomorrow!

Click HERE for the post about my previous visit to Daisy May's.

Images Of 2008, Part One

The next few posts will be some of my favorite pictures from the competition circuit in 2008.

Thanksgiving Turkey

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. Sheila, Max and I went to my parent's house in Orange, CT for Thanksgiving dinner. I really felt like cooking, so I volunteered to smoke the turkeys. There were going to be 12 of us, so I planned to do two 13 pound turkeys on the WSM.

Brined with apple juice, brown sugar, salt, oranges, pretty much the apple brine recipe from the Virtual Weber Bulletin Board. Spent 24 hours in the brine.



After the brine, the turkeys air dried overnight in the fridge, then it was into a cooler for transport to my parent's house.

Fired up the WSM's, got it up to 325, brushed the turkeys with melted butter and hit it with my seven spice poultry rub and in they went.

After about three and a half hours, pulled them off when the breast hit 160. Held in foil for about an hour, then it was carving time.

The meat was moist, flavorful, delicious.

Complimented with sides of mashed potatoes. sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, mom's sausage stuffing, cranberry sauce and pan gravy, it was an epic feast enjoyed by all. Oh, and we can't forget Cristiaan's appetizers. He made jalapeno poppers, scallops and bacon and baked brie in puffed pastry. Dessert was Mom's pecan and pumpkin pies, along with a killer apple pie made by my sister. It was all awesome, a true team effort. I ate way too much.

Le Jardin du Roi, Chappaqua, NY

I usually don't stray too far from the world of BBQ on this space, but want to give props to the restaurant where my brother and teammate Cristiaan works, Le Jardin Du Roi in Chappaqua, New York. Sheila and I went there again for dinner Saturday night, and as always everything was great.

Cristiaan

Even though it is a French bistro in an upscale town, Le Jardin doesn't project a stuffy feel to it. The food is great, and you can have either a high end special or a hamburger at any time. They also serve breakfast until four in the afternoon.

Cristiaan set us up with an appetizer sampler that included scallop spring rolls with curry dipping sauce, garlic shrimp sauteed in olive oil and roasted red pepper, along with pan sauteed goat cheese with carmalized onion and potato crisps. All were outstanding, I especially enjoyed the scallop rolls, which were different.

Knowing your waiter helps. Cristiaan then hooked us up with a pasta course, which was a serving of linguini with pan seared scallops and a tomato cream sauce.

For dinner, we both ordered off the specials menu. I had the rack of lamb with a green peppercorn sauce and truffle mashed potatoes. I received the entire rack, which was cooked to a nice medium rare. Sheila ordered the shell steak with Bearnaise and steak frites, which was great. That remins me that half of her steak is still in the fridge, I'll take care of that later...

We moved up to the bar and had cappuccinos and a rich chocolate cake for dessert. All in all, it was a great feast, and a fun night out for our first actual dinner out by ourselves since Max was born.

One thing that distinguishes Le Jardin from so many restaurants where I have eaten in the past is the service. waiters will not hesitate to help each other out, and seem to work as a cohesive unit to bring the best possible service to diners. Cristiaan is a large part of that, as he has been there for a long time and really sets the tone for the floor service.

All in all, New York area readers should take a trip up and try Le Jardin sometime. Reservations are suggested, and make sure you request to sit in Cristiaan's section. They will certainly take good care of you, and you may end up sitting next to the Clintons!

2008, The Year In Review

2008....this has been a great year, complete with high highs and low lows. The highlight obviously is the birth of our first son Max, but there were a few BBQ highlights too. Here's the recap of 2008.

*

FYBO

*

In what seams like forever ago, the season got underway at the end of February with the Freeze Your Butt Off contest, held at the end of February in Maynard, Massachusetts. While most think it is nuts to go cook out in the cold in the New England winter, I disagree. This type of event is great for so many reasons. It allows teams to get a competition under their belts after a long layoff, and try out those recipes we have been working on all winter to see how they fare with the judges. We got calls for 4th place chicken and pork, along with 5th place brisket and finished 5th place overall. Pretty much all the top New England teams were at the contest, so 5th was OK. It was my first contest cooking on the new Backwoods Party as well.

Brrrrrr.... Next came a couple of grilling contests, and some especially bad results. First was the Snowshoe Grilling Challenge in Abington, Massachusetts. Just missed the mark here, no calls, although I was pretty happy with what we cooked. There were 17 teams, and we finished 9th overall, just missing calls with 6th place sausage and vegetable.

The following event was the worst we have ever done in a contest. it was the Oyster Bay Smoke N Steam grilling contest on Long Island. I'm trying to forget this contest. We finished second to last, and probably would have had our first DAL if one of the teams had not been disqualified in the steak category. In summary, the steak was awful, the pork wasn't much better, I burned the wings and apparently got a table that hated oysters Rockefeller. Here are the oysters, which I thought were very good, followed by a very pregnant Sheila at the contest.

The highlight of Oyster Bay was seeing our good friends Brendan and Julie Burek turn in a truly dominating performance, taking home almost all the trophies and being grand champions.

In between those two grilling contests, I attended a judging class and became a Kansas City BBQ Society certified judge.

After Oyster Bay, it was a long layoff for me. Sheila was pregnant and due in mid July, so I didn't want to schedule any contests for June or July. That meant events that we had cooked in previous years in New Hampshire and Lake Placid, New York were taken off the calendar.

I did get to wear my judging hat for the first time in June, however. I judged the Peter's Pond rib and brisket festival in Sandwich, Massachusetts. It was a good learning experience to be on the other side of the table for the first time.

Meanwhile, we didn't want to lose our spot at the Harpoon New England BBQ Championship at the end of July. So we entered, even though it was on July 25th, and Sheila wasn't due until July 22nd. The plan was to have my brother Cristiaan cook the event himself if I couldn't make it. The good news was that Max was born healthy and early on July 11th, which allowed me to be able to go to Harpoon for the whole weekend.

And it was sure worth it.

We got calls for 9th place chicken, 7th place pork and 1st place brisket, winning reserve grand champions in a field that featured all the top New England teams, and some big national names such as the Slabs from Kansas City and the Smoking Triggers from Texas. We missed taking grand champion honors and an automatic trip to the Jack by 2.2 points. Oh so close....but what a great time regardless. Even if we had finished last, this was an awesome time. The only regret was that Sheila was not there to enjoy the moment.

A few weeks later brought our next contest, the Hudson Valley Ribfest just outside of New Paltz, New York. We didn't cook the grilling contest at Harpoon to focus on vending, so this was our first grilling event since the disaster at Oyster Bay. While we didn't get any calls here either, the showing was a lot better for sure. With 33 teams cooking, we took 7th place in pork chop and fish, and 12th place in steak and were 9th overall. Not great, but nowhere near DAL. As for the BBQ, 53 teams cooked. We got a great call for 3rd place ribs, chicken was 10th place, but pork tanked at 23rd place and brisket REALLY tanked at 40th place. Overall, we were 11th out of 53 teams, not our best showing, but it could have been a whole lot better. Life goes on....

Here were the ribs cooked for Saturday night's dinner for friends.



The best part of the contest was again being located next to our good friends Mike and Kris Boisvert from Lakeside Smokers.

This was also our first contest bringing Max along. He was a huge hit with the crowds. While I'm sure his presence was somewhat of a distraction, I am so glad that our BBQ friends were able to meet him. They will be seeing a lot of him in the future for sure.

After another month, our last contest of 2008 was the Blues, Views and BBQ in Westport, Connecticut. In our two-plus years of competing, this was our first contest in our home state. Our tight site:

Long story short, we got called for 3rd place pork out of 45 teams, and finished 9th overall. We struggled on a lot of levels at this contest. Max was difficult, and we didn't work very well together on the iron chef entry. But like every contest, we learned a few things that will help make us better down the road.

So in summary, 2008 was an interesting and exciting year. We didn't get to hit all the contests we would have liked, but it is hard to be upset about that because of the awesome life changing event of having a child. We got to spend a lot of time with friends and family, and made some new friends as well. To me, that is what BBQ is all about.