Dinner Tonight: Updated BBQ

My dad is very steak-and-potatoes kind of guy. He took it remarkably well when I announced I was going to go vegetarian at the wizened age of 10. (It never really took, but when I went food shopping with friends a few months ago, one of them told me she'd never seen anyone get quite so excited about vegetables. I take that as praise of the highest order.) He's taken my culinary experiments over the last few years in stride, which is quite an accomplishment considering how far astray I have wandered from time to time - did you know that basil in brown butter tastes like lemon, especially when poured over breadcrumbs made from sourdough? And that lemony flavor does not go with butternut squash or zucchini at all. My family knows this, bless their hearts.

Sometimes, I take pity on my dad and try to reign it in for a regular steak-and-potatoes kind of dinner. That's what tonight's menu was supposed to be:

Burgers

Corn on the Cob

Cole Slaw

Potato Salad

Run-of-the-mill weekend barbecue fare, right? The problem is that I seem to have an inability to make anything quite the way I should. My boyfriend says I'm a "tweaker:" I will take something that is perfectly fine the say it is and find a way to tweak it. I am not sure that this is a good thing. So that menu morphed into this menu:

Pasture-Fed Hamburgers on Brioche

Roasted Corn

Purple Cabbage Slaw

Potato Salad with Cucumber and Chives

The burgers were from the great operation that is Lindenhoff Farm, and unfortunately my mother obscured the really nice flavor of grass-fed beef with a handful of mesquite chips - the smokyness destroyed the sort of grassy, nutty notes I was expecting, and dried them out a bit. I think cooking them under the broiler might have been a better choice, but it wasn't terrible.

The brioche was leftovers. (Who has leftover brioche? Nutcases like me who bake for fun. Try it sometime. Punching down dough is cheaper than therapy.) The taste was good, but never again in my life will I use slices instead of buns. That was just a dumb idea.

To roast the corn, I peeled back but did not remove the husk, cleaned off the silk, and then put the husk back in place. I tied the tops shut above the ear, and let them sit on a cooler part of the grill and just hang out for almost an hour, as the coals caught and got ready for the meat. Next time, I would like to soak the whole ear, husk and all, in water for probably about half an hour before doing that. The corn cooked ok, but the husks dried out very quickly, which allowed the mesquite smoke in. Mesquite corn is interesting, but not something I am rushing to try again.

The cabbage salad was absolutely stellar. I used purple cabbage (why? 'cause it's what we had) with slivers of carrot and green bell pepper, tossed with salt, pepper, olive oil and sweetened rice wine vinegar, also known as sushi vinegar, in an adaptation of this recipe from Simply Recipes, which I love. (Ok, a really loose adaptation.) I loved it, especially since a mayonnaise cole slaw would have just turned everything pink, but this allowed all these beautiful colors to really pop. Dad was not of the same mind or palate, but he did at least enjoy...

The potato salad. A similarly loose interpretation of Alton Brown's cold potato salad, it was made with a half dozen russet potatoes from the farmer's market, a cucumber from a friend's garden that I threw in because it was getting kind of punky, and the small half of a small sweet onion, finely diced. I dressed it with mayo, mustard powder (a little more than called for,) and garlic, as per the recipe, but I substituted the parsley and tarragon, which I didn't have, for some fresh chives from the garden. It worked really well, even dad liked it. But at the end of the day, steak and potatoes is not something I do very well, because steak and potatoes can get too darn boring, and the kitchen should a playground!

PS - I did has cheesburger by putting some of Highland Farm's delicious French feta on top of my burger - yum!