The Worlds Greatest Biscuits

We can't take credit for this recipe, it comes from the book "Baking From My Home To Yours" by Dorie Greenspan. I have to say that these are the easiest and the best biscuits I have ever tasted. They contain no butter at all yet are still the super flaky and just all around superb. They are actualy supposed to be sweet cream biscuits but we do them savory. The batch below has garlic and rosemary in the batter and are topped with sea salt and smoked paprika and finally cheese before baking. We've done them with pretty much every spice imaginable though and they are always super fast and great. You can actually make the batter before and have them on the sheet pan before the oven is up to temp!

Sweet Cream Biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
2 Teaspoons Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 1/2 Cups Heavy Cream

Preheat the oven to 425. Mix the dry ingredients (adding any spices you like), add the heavy cream working as little as possible but incorporating fully. Shape into a disk about half an inch high on a sheet pan. Top with kosher salt and cheese and any more spices you choose. Bake about 15 minutes.

Chocolate Hazlenut Torte

It's dessert time! While dessert is never one of my favorite thing it appears to be most people's so I guess it's time to put our take on it! This is a hazlenut and chocolate torte that we made for a birthday of one of the ladies I work with. I highly recomend it, the shortbread style crust is really really nice compared to the regular tart dough, although it is definately on the richer side of things!

Shell Recipe

10 oz Butter

1.5 Cups Icing Sugar

o.5 Cups Almond Flour

0.5 Teaspoons Salt

0.5 Teaspoons Vanilla

2 Eggs

3.5 Cups All Purpose Flour

Beat the butter with a mixer until creamy, mixing on low add in the sugar, almond powder, salt, and vanilla and keep beating until smooth. Then with the mixer still on low add the eggs one at a time until fully incorporated. At this point turn off the mixer and grab a spatula, slowly work in the flour without over mixing. The dough should now look like this: At this point form the dough into a ball, wrapping it in plastice wrap and place it in the fridge for up to a couple days and at least an hour (preferably 4 hours)
Once it is out of the fridge place it on a well floured work surface.

Roll it out with a rolling pin into a large disk and place it into a tart shell.

Fill the shell with pie weights or pennies or anything, I used black beans this time. Let it cool for at least 30 minutes in the fridge. Then bake it at 350 for 20 minutes.

Filling Recipe

2/3 C Nutella

4 3/4 OZ Dark Chocolate (we use Callebaut)

7 Tablespoons Butter

1 Egg

3 Egg Yolks

2 Tablespoons Sugar

1 Cup Hazelnuts

Now it's time to shell the hazelnuts.

The best way to get the skins of them is to boil them for a couple of minutes in water mixed with baking soda.

Then hit them with some cold tap water in a strainer, the skins basically fall off now.

Toast the hazelnuts in the oven for about 10 or 15 minutes at 350 (the kitchen will be fragrant).
Now the fun begans, look out all of the filling ingredients to make your life a little easier.

Spread the nutella on the bottom of the shell as evenly as possible.

Get a double boiler ready and add the chocolate, do the same with the butter in a seperate one.

Once both the chocolate and the butter have melted (AND COOLED until they are just warm to the touch). At this point add the egg to the chocolate mixture stirring in ever widening circles very carefuly (you don't want to add air). Then do the same with the yolks followed by the sugar and finally the melted but cooled butter.
Add the mixture on top of the nutella. Then drop the toasted hazelnuts in. It should look something like this.

Now bake the tart at 375 degrees for 11 minutes. Cool till it's room temperature and eat away!

While it si a bit of work it's worth it!

BBQ on the bypass

Our last competition of 2010 was the bbq on the bypass in Langley BC. Paul had planned to come down from Calgary but due to work commitments he wasn't able to make. Out friend Taurean and his wife Tiara stepped up and came along for the ride, even though the poor guy had never bbq'd before!

I loaded up the truck on Saturday morning hoping to pick up our new team mates at about noon and getting to the comp at 2 in the afternoon.......Well things didn't go as planned and the back window of the truck got taken out by a table, creating one heck of a mess. We ended up covering it with plastic and putting it together with duct tape for the trek to Langley. This didn't look bad at all, plus there was still glass everywhere unloading the truck was not going to be fun!
The truck was crazy full and we had to have a cooler in the cab......real comfortable with three people on a bench seat with a massive cooler and a sleeping bag! Add to that we missed the ferry and were now on pace to reach the comp at midnight! Good times!

Once we got there the fun continued as the rain started coming and coming and coming. We set up as quick as possible and Taurean and Tiara got started on the parsley. They look so happy......

After a bit of a cold and rough nights sleep we shockingly look reasonably happy, I do think we had coffee by this point though! And the cupcake girls had set up beside us and were filling us up with cupcakes!

Then the day got awesome......The chili tank arrived! They actually make chili in this old cast iron tank, it has a couple fire boxes in it and cooks while you tow it, super cool!

Unfortunately the rain didn't let up......I won't comment on the next picture but let you infer.....

T and T did great jobs on the parsley boxes as well as giving out samples.

But the rain just kept coming soaking everyone and everything.

The matches were garbage, it's a good thing the good folks at House of Q were willing to share there fire starters!

Finally turn in times came around. We were fortunate to make the times, we actually didn't start cooking until 5:30 in the morning with the first turn in being 11am.

The pork came out really really really good. We filled in the box side ways by accident but the appearance actually ended up looking much nicer! Better to be lucky then good!

The brisket looks a little dry in this picture but it really wasn't. It came out very well, moist and flavorful, maybe a touch over cooked but still good.

For some reason (just because it's close to home.....) we're still using those big chicken thighs. We've got it cased now though with some readjusted cooking times the chicken came out absolutely perfect!

And the last turn in of the day was ribs. We thought they were perfect but in hind site looking at the turn in pictures we were far too sloppy with the sauce. So it goes.....

And for the first time ever Team 58 received calls in all four categories, at our toughest comp of the year!

Chicken 2nd place out of 30 teams!

Pork 6th place out of 30 teams

Brisket 10th place out of 30 teams!

And ribs 6th place out of 30 teams!

This was a great way to end our season! The weather didn't cooperate but we had our best all around result in a tough tough field!

Team 58 is looking forward to next year and planning on doubling our number of competitions from 3 in 2009, 6 in 2010, and now we're targeting 12 in 2011! Wish us luck and see you on the trail!

Saskatchewan BBQ Championships

Team 58's good friend Rob Reinhardt from Prarie Smoke and Spice (the 2010 Canadian BBQ Champion) decided to put on the Saskatchewan BBQ Championships. We decided to attend. Pauley took off from Calgary on Saturday morning and head to bolt before the awards on Sunday. Colin came from Yorkton on Saturday and went back home Sunday. I loaded up the dogs and all the equipment on Thursday and headed off the Island on the 30 hour trek.......

The dogs may have had better times in there lives, exceptional company they were.

We all arrived on Saturday morning. Colin and I went and picked up the worse pizza either of us had ever tasted from a place called Verns and a pile of pilsner. Although Colin did try to buy some low carb bull shit beer until the girl at the counter mocked him into switching. After that we set up at the market in down town Saskatoon.

And Colin had a pop......

The only turn in on Saturday was a supplied pork loin. We didn't have much planned for it so we sliced it into chops. Brined it. Cooked down a marinara sauce with a pile of mushrooms and stuffed the chop with that mixture and cheese. Then we wrapped it in bacon, breaded it and grilled it. To finish it off we tossed it on a herb and garlic bun.

We didn't have a plan for presentation so Pauley ran too Mcdonalds, borrowed a tray and a few burger wrappers and we were set........

The judges didn't see our humor and gave us a 0 on presentation! That's hard to do. Needless to say we finished last in the optional pork loin category.....so it goes.......

After a little sleep we got the cookers fired up at about 3am, Paul loves smoke.......

Our meats weren't our best today but our presentation was different than the past. The pork was good but not cooking as fast as we would normally like.....

The head judge came and spoke to us and apparently our slices weren't cut all the way through and could not be judged so we were only judged on our chunks and pulled. Shockingly we still managed to finish 8th our of 24 teams. No call but still good.

In between the pork and brisket turn in the cops showed up and had the truck that was stolen and dropped off behind us the night before towed. They literally totaled this beast.

Our brisket came out ok. Not as tender as we would have liked but nice overall. Good smoke ring and decent size slices. We were ok with it but not thrilled. Luckily the judges were and we finished 3rd out of the 24 teams!

Next up was our chicken. For some reason we were still cooking our bigger thighs. They turned out perfectly thoug and we were thrilled with these puppies. So were the judges and they took 4th place!

Finally was the ribs. We kept the recipe and everything the same and nailed them! We Got all the slices off one rack and nailed the texture. The only issue was they were a little light in color, still darn good though.......The judges agreed and we managed to get FIRST place in ribs again!!

Since Pauley had to bolt Colin and I were the only ones around for the award ceremonies.

We managed to finish 3rd place overall. This was our most succesful comp of all time and we had a blast! Time will tell if we make that crazy trek to cook back in Saskatchewan again!

I stopped in Calgary during the trip home so Pauley could have the awards!