Favourite cooking experience

[FR33_MASON]

I though I would leave you all this weekend by sharing a favourite cooking experience that only just happened this summer.

It was a late August weekend and I had invited a friend and her son out for a picnic at the local park. The fire pits at the park are all equipped with a swivel grate. After a thorough cleansing, I started the fire and soon had a raging bonfire to which I built a nice deep bed of coals. Now I have used just spruce to cook with but I had brought a couple of nice 3`` diameter green birch logs with me and that was about as fancy as I was going to get that day. I brought three beautiful 1`` thick rib steaks that I had bought from the local abattoir. Along with the steaks I had made a nice garden salad from greens picked from my garden first thing that morning. A homemade peppercorn and bacon ranch dressing. Was to accompany it. I also picked up a freshly baked baguette and made a nice container of herbed butter to spread. Not to waste herbed butter, I also picked up some fresh peaches and cream Taber corn. I made watermelon fructe de fresca to drink.

I de-silked the ears of corn and wrapped them, avec husk, in tinfoil and cleared a spot in the coals and started roasting them. I then took my baguette and sliced it in half, lengthwise and also wrapped it in tin foil. I double checked the temp with my handy dandy thermometer, my hand! I put the green birch logs on, slapped the steaks on with nothing more than salt and played a quick game of catch with my friend and her son. It was sooo hot out that day and although there were people all around it was one of those days where sound did not carry far. We were in our own little bubble of utopic sunshiny privacy.

The corn was done, the steaks were perfect to the touch and the bread was nicely warmed a few minutes prior. We ate the salad while the steaks rested for a minute to which I ground some fresh black pepper on top and the rest as they say was history.

The crescendo to this wonderful day which makes it one my favourite cooking experiences was that both my friend and her son who are no strangers to fine dining both gave me the biggest compliment to which they stated that especially the steaks were the best steaks they had ever had. So simple yet so wonderful.

Cheers to the weekend people!!