Revisiting The Barbecue Wars: Texas, will it hold up?

This is a post from a ways back but I was thinking about barbecue since I am on a plane headed to RWA in, gulp, Texas. They do barbecue in a BIG way. ManO even told me he's abstaining from NC barbecue because he knows he's going to indulge in all things Texan especially BBQ while he is there. So what about YOUR region's barbecue? Do you have any restaurants in town that do it a "foreign" way? We have one that does Texan barbecue. We will see how the real thing lives up.     

When I moved to North Carolina a few decades ago,  Man O took me to a company picnic.  When it was time to eat, we went up to a huge horizontal black oil drum. Hmm, I figured out it was the catering company’s grill. Hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, bratwurst floated through my mind. With a lot of hooting and hollering, the lid was opened and I jumped…BACK. 

There was half a pig, including hooves, grilling. The catering guy pulled out two huge knives and started hacking at it, not slicing it, but creating something called “barbecue.” No way!  Up in my neck of suburban DC, barbecue is what others call sloppy joes. Not this whack attack on Porky the Pig.  But I had one taste and was in heaven. Then I discovered North Carolina’s not so secret civil war.

When you get married, you find it is a series of compromises.  Colgate versus Crest. Jif versus Peter Pan. Coke vs Pepsi. We navigated those with ease compared to what we were facing now: Man O’s preference for Western North Carolina barbecue versus my affinity for Eastern.  I kept having to remind myself that Man O and I were both raised with relatives who went to Piggly Wiggly grocery stores, we both loved chili on our hot dogs, and this would not tear us apart like it did so many other North Carolina couples. 

Here is a  quick education in  the East vs West, very emotional, knock-down drag-out debate:

Eastern NC barbecue, dating back from colonial times, involves the whole pig, pit smoked and chopped. Its sauce is simple: Vinegar, red pepper, black pepper and salt! Western NC barbecue is a youngster, dating from the 20th century. Smoked pork shoulders are chopped but doused in ketchup based sauce. Man O is a Western die hard while I am an Eastern total fan. Now, I must admit it is harder for me to eat Western barbecue because the ingredients in the sauce are a mystery. If there is High Fructose Corn Syrup in the base, I am done for. But I just like Eastern better.

Recently Man O had been in South Africa for a while and I wanted to fix him a local meal for his return. 

What do Man O and this lion cub have in common? They both like meat!!! And they are really cute.

I missed him so much I made him Western Style barbecue, the quick way. I don’t have a smoker or a grill so this is how I did it:

Easy Oven Pork Barbecue:

Western Sauce: Puree one small sweet onion in a food processor. Add one teaspoon Penzey’s Barbecue of America [Click for more information on Penzeys Spices, the best spice company IMHO] spice mix, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon brown mustard, one cup or so of organic ketchup and one half cup water.  

Place one package (2-3lbs) pork tenderloin in a small roasting pan. Pour sauce over pork and seal tightly with aluminum foil.  Roast at 250 degrees for 3 and ½ hours, until you can “pull” the pork apart with two folks.  Mix meat into the juices.

See the two forks? Use them!

Serve with a slotted spoon to let juices run out and serve on the side with slaw or on buns. 

PS: When I am not as obliging, I make the Eastern style.  Quick Eastern Sauce: 1 Cup Apple Cider vinegar, 1 teaspoon each red pepper, black pepper, salt and sugar. Follow the same directions or just use a half cup water in with the loin and drizzle on sauce afterwards.  

Man O was happy and I was happy to have him home. So, at least in our house, barbecue peace reigns.

Screaming for Ice Cream

Father’s Day, you know it is Father’s Day this weekend, right?  Mothers get a lot of attention on Mothers Day. Dinner out, flowers, chocolate. But fathers? Not so much. I asked my sister the other day what we did for Daddy when we were growing up.  It was a tradition to take our mom to a really special plant nursery and get her every flowering plant she desired. But Daddy?  We couldn’t remember. We both felt awful because what we remembered was Dad grilling FOR US on Father’s Day. 

Well, this weekend Man O is grilling!  It was enough to make me scream.  I feel so guilty. What could I do to make his Father’s Day dinner special? After much pondering and head banging against the wall - oh, that was when I came to bed late and Man O had the lights off, I narrowed in on what my guy loves. Ice cream tops the list.

Let me be more specific. Man O loves Goodberry’s Frozen Custard. It is thick and creamy with a texture hard to beat. But he will eat anything frozen made of milk and cream. My dad turns his nose up at cheap ice creams with a lot of gums and other ingredients. I must have gotten ice cream snobbery from him. Even so called "healthy" non-dairy substitutes are full of guar and xanthan gum. YUCK. No way am I eating that stuff in a carton or making recipes with extra ingredients to make it "taste" like ice cream.  It's better to just have a smaller serving of the real thing. Daddy and Man O both like a smooth texture and mouth coating appeal. The richer the ice cream the better. And wouldn’t you know it, that works for me. So what could I do?

My favorite website for anything gluten free is Gluten Free on a Shoestring.com. Recently, they shared an ice cream recipe I couldn’t believe. Only three ingredient. No need for an ice cream maker. Bonus? I could make it and eat it (in limited quantities) because, tah dah, Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed milk doesn’t have corn sugars in it!!!!  Again, IT DOESN'T USE AN ICE CREAM MAKER. Could you hear me yelling for joy? How great is that? But would it taste as well as it looks? I had to do a test run on Gluten Free On A Shoestring's Amazingly Simple Vanilla Ice Cream  

Random Factoid: Did you know a man named Gail Borden invented sweetened condensed milk in the 1850s after he saw infants starving on a boat trip when the cows on board stopped producing milk? Stop focusing on the cows on ships and think about the miracle of the product!  He made a fortune during the Civil War when he supplied the Union troops with the canned milk beverage and cooking ingredient that wouldn't spoil and sicken the soldiers. Soon, Eagle Brand was credited with reducing infant mortality, making the life of a harried cook simpler, and being the go-to ingredient for everything from fudge to key lime pie.

Hmmm, back to my dry run for Sunday. So I got out my THREE ingredients: Sweetened condensed milk, one carton whipping cream and vanilla.

Yep, that's it. Three ingredients.

I put the condensed milk and one tablespoon of vanilla in a freezer safe bowl that also has a matching lid. You could use plastic wrap and aluminum foil if you don't have a lid. I mixed the ingredients until blended and stuck it in the refrigerator.

Condensed milk with a splash of vanilla makes a great Rorschach test, you know the one where you look at an ink blot and say what you see? I am trying to decide if  I see a puppy or a flower.

I whipped the whipping cream on medium high until I had “semi stiff” peaks.  It looks pink only because I was wearing a red tank top that is reflecting on that white cream. Food stylist, I'm not.

I folded the whipped cream into the milk and vanilla until blended but not over blended, smoothed the top and put on the lid. Then I stuck it in the freezer. Once again, remember you don't need an ice cream maker!

Then the hard part.  I had to wait for at least four hours to see how it turned out! Um, I couldn't quite wait that long.

If you have the patience to wait longer, it will be a bit more solid. I couldn't!

Oh, so creamy. The mouth feel. The richness. Sigh. I probably should have added more vanilla. But I will be making my infamous chocolate sauce to make it special Chocolate sauce recipe here. and voila! Because the only thing my guy likes better than ice cream is chocolate on his ice cream AND his kids.

PS. I ended up serving Man O this ice cream and chocolate sauce when the crazy storms of the week passed through and I, ahem, couldn't cook dinner. He was thrilled. So there you go, Man O approved.