Wednesday, September 09, 2015

Last Minute Barbeque

So the heat finally broke here in Joshua, Texas, dropping down from over 100 daily to about 85 today with some rain and continually overcast skies. Chepa surprised me this morning with a call to say that one of her mother's sister's boys was in town and I should make a barbeque. But I have someone coming who needs some frog sweat medicine, so that meant, after I wrote a short piece for the Fort Worth Weekly, that I had to race to the store. I got 1 1/2 pounds of shrimp, eight chicken thighs, and a rack of baby back ribs.
   Race home. Person coming is a little late. Put the dogs' chicken legs in the oven, wash dishes, clean kitchen, vaccuum, cut thighs and put them in the oven to partially cook them so that the barbeque will be just 15 minutes and they will still be juicy.
   Cut two heads of garlic and a large onion. Put in bowl. Add oil, vinegar, other secret liquids and spices and have marinade for everything ready.
   Skin the shrimp, put in bowl.
   Cook potatoes and eggs for potato and egg salad.
   Cut broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini and yellow squash for later use. Put in pot of cool water. Don't cook till later.
   When the time is right, I'll take out the chicken thighs and put in marinade. Wash glass Corning Ware pan and put a little olive oil and garlic and pepper on the ribs, then put them in the oven, slow cook.
   When the chicken goes out to the grill later--which will be manned by Chepa--I'll toss the shrimp and by then cooked veggies into the marinade. When chicken is near done, I'll finish potato and egg salad, skewer shrimp and remove them and veggies from marinade for Chepa to grill, then I'll turn up heat on ribs to brown after I drizzle some tangy barbeque sauce on them.
   Somewhere in there I'll make good basmati rice.
It's touch and go, especially since I'll have someone puking from the frog sweat medicine during the main events, but should wind up just about perfect.
   I love a challenge. Gets my blood going.
   And if you're in the neighborhood, come on over. I'm sure there will be enough for everybody.

3 comments:

Katherine said...

local paper article, frog sweat medicine and a barbecue - the modern shaman hard at work :) love your books, and now your blog . . . thanks for writing what you do . . .

Bill Freimuth said...

Sounds great, Peter. Now, about those secret ingredients . . . . Don't be stingy. Lay 'em on us.

Peter Gorman said...

You know better than that, Bill. Barbeque marinades are very personal. I gave you a lot, just not all of it. Like Kim Davis, I believe my barbeque god would smite me to hell if I gave up the recipe, or something like that......Yikes!!! Did I just say that or was it the wine talking? We'll never know. But wine is not one of the barbeque liquids.