BBQ's and best friends - Dairy Foods

I had a BBQ at my house on Tuesday evening with the PCG gang (PCG stands for Park Cottage Grove, my high school in my home town). I am still very close with my high school friends and my best guy friend Nick (we call him Lobo) is visiting this week from Fort Collins, CO. I was pretty ecstatic to have my dearest friends hanging out, eating good food and enjoying a beautiful MN summer evening.

The menu included:

Bruschetta with tomatoes and basil
Gazpacho
Jicama and watermelon salad with a tequila lime vinaigrette
Portobello mushroom burgers
Black bean burgers
Blue cheese beef burgers
German potato salad
Roasted red potatoes
Strawberry shortcake
Beer

Kristin brought the gazpacho and salad and both were perfect for a summer BBQ, light and refreshing. Mel and Justin brought the dessert and I made the rest (with Libby's help).

Bruschetta with tomatoes and basil is a simple, tasty appetizer that I've been making quite a bit thanks to Dehn's Garden (an herb stand at the Mpls Farmer's Market), they have the best basil and I buy a bunch every week. This recipe is from Simplyrecipes.com, a great website with endless recipes. Perhaps this is cheating but I just use fresh tomatoes and skip the part that requires parboiling.

Bruschetta with Tomato and Basil Recipe

Ingredients

6 or 7 ripe plum tomatoes (about 1 1/2 lbs) (In my opinion any tomatoes work fine)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
6-8 fresh basil leaves, chopped.
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 baguette French bread or similar Italian bread
1/4 cup olive oil

Prepare the tomatoes first. Parboil the tomatoes for one minute in boiling water that has just been removed from the burner. Drain. Using a sharp small knife, remove the skins of the tomatoes. (If the tomatoes are too hot, you can protect your finger tips by rubbing them with an ice cube between tomatoes.) Once the tomatoes are peeled, cut them in halves or quarters and remove the seeds and juice from their centers. Also cut out and discard the stem area. Why use plum tomatoes instead of regular tomatoes? The skins are much thicker and there are fewer seeds and less juice.

Make sure there is a top rack in place in your oven. Turn on the oven to 450°F to preheat.

While the oven is heating, chop up the tomatoes finely. Put tomatoes, garlic, 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil, vinegar in a bowl and mix. Add the chopped basil. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Slice the baguette on a diagonal about 1/2 inch thick slices. Coat one side of each slice with olive oil using a pastry brush. Place on a cooking sheet, olive oil side down. You will want to toast them in the top rack in your oven, so you may need to do these in batches depending on the size of your oven. Once the oven has reached 450°F, place a tray of bread slices in the oven on the top rack. Toast for 5-6 minutes, until the bread just begins to turn golden brown.

Alternatively, you can toast the bread without coating it in olive oil first. Toast on a griddle for 1 minute on each side. Take a sharp knife and score each slice 3 times. Rub some garlic in the slices and drizzle half a teaspoon of olive oil on each slice. This is the more traditional method of making bruschetta.

Align the bread on a serving platter, olive oil side up. Either place the tomato topping in a bowl separately with a spoon for people to serve themselves over the bread, or place some topping on each slice of bread and serve. If you top each slice with the tomatoes, do it right before serving or the bread may get soggy.



German potato salad is a fantastic side dish and a really nice departure from the typical mayo-based types. My friend, Siobhan (who happens to be traveling to Columbia today!) made this for me last summer and I got hooked. German potato salad is vinegar based and gets flavor from mustard seeds, onions and bacon. The recipe is from Food Network.


German Potato Salad


Ingredients

3 pounds new potatoes
1 yellow onion, quartered
1/2 pound bacon, diced
1 large red onion, diced
3/4 cup cider vinegar
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
1/4 cup canola oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
8 green onions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves

Directions

Preheat the grill to high. Place potatoes in a large pot with the onion and cover with cold water. Cook, on the grates of the grill, or on a burner, until tender. Drain, discard the onion, and cut the potatoes into cubes when cool enough to handle. Place the potatoes in a large bowl and cover to keep warm.

Place a large saute pan on the grates of the grill. Add the bacon and cook until crisp. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel-lined plate.

Add the onions to the rendered bacon fat and cook until soft, about 3 to 4 minutes. Carefully add the vinegar and mustard seeds and cook for 2 more minutes. Whisk in the canola oil and season, to taste, with salt and pepper. Add the hot dressing to the potatoes and toss gently to coat. Fold in the green onions and parsley. Season again with salt and pepper, to taste.


Note, this recipe oddly doesn't say when/if to add back in the bacon, but obviously it tastes better if you crumble the bacon and fold it into the potato mixture. I also threw out about 3/4 of the bacon grease before I added the onions, no one needs that much grease!