Grilling For All Reasons

Much as we’ve adopted an Italian food tradition for Christmas Eve, on Christmas Day we’ve settled in with elements of a traditional English Christmas dinner with a beef rib roast as the centerpiece served with some form of potato dish and one or more green vegetables.

I kept the menu relatively simple this year (at least in terms of the number of items):

Sweet Potato Soup w/ a Mascarpone/Chive dollop

Prime Rib Roast with Jus

Potato Gratin with Caramelized Vidalia Onion and Fresh Sage

Ginger Braised Greens

and Fresh Pumpkin and Apple Pie with whipped cream topping for dessert

I will tweak recipes I use repeatedly to move them toward my views of perfection.  I’m getting close to that with this rib roast recipe – dry aging (yes, even a USDA Choice grade can benefit from aging), a marvelously rich jus using onions, tomatoe paste and braised oxtails as the base, and minimalist seasoning on the rib roast – salt, pepper, a dijon mustard rub and some dried thyme.  I also added a brief hit of smoke early in the roasting – I didn’t want to overpower the natural flavors, just to enhance and sharpen them.

This potato gratin recipe is, in my humble opinion, the best you will ever eat.   Paper thin sliced potatoes, fresh heavy cream are the traditional base ingredients.  But add the heavenly sweetness of caramelized Vidalia onions and the aromatics of fresh sage and your taste buds will pop!  Bobby Flay gets the credit for originating this recipe.

OK, so we’ve covered the meat and potatoes.  This rich meal needed some balance, and what better choice for the time of year than a mix of fresh winter greens – kale, red swiss chard, and mustard greens – braised to tender perfection.  Give Ming Tsai credit for putting some zing into a simple basic recipe by adding julienned fresh ginger.

So what about the sweet potato soup, you ask?  Sorry, no recipe to share on this one this time.  I opted for a commercially-prepared soup to round out the menu, adding a dollop of mascarpone cheese mixed with some chopped chives.  I will say though that it was very good and a great opening course for the delicacies to follow!

I should note that all grilling this season was done over natural lump charcoal.  Temperatures in the 20-degrees F range offered some challenges, but regulating the grill temps wasn’t as big a challenge as I thought it might be and simply required closer monitoring.  Regardless the time of year and weather, there is nothing better that food cooked over an open fire!