Off to our BFF’s, the Knibbs, today for a wee BBQ with Chest, Andre and his partner. It became a mini-ChillaxBBQ with the net-new 8 visitors to the house. So 11 are all up for an early dinner BBQ today. And holy moly did Knibbsy and I cook up a storm. Quality food, like quality with some big critics.
The Chest has never eaten our food, which I did not know until the night before, so massive pressure. Also with an Asian partner, Mivkey, who lives in HK above a superb hawker. Our roast pork is going to come under massive scrutiny it seems – yes he had already called that out. Wow, no pressure…
So let’s have a little foray into the world of ChillaxBBQ that is still alive and kicking, despite Covid-19, with new Chef Knibbs and I at the helm. A two-beard wonder machine, operating in near-perfect harmony with lots of shouting, swearing and laughing. A thing of beauty.
Produce today comes from our BFF’s Andy @ New Zealand Fresh, Chris & Ching Yin @ The Cheese Shop and Shaun @ Orca. Just brilliant chaps. Your amazing produce makes the cooking job so much easier.
Folks, if you want to order some amazing cheeses, meats, fish and shellfish, and have it all online and delivered to your doorstep, click on their logos below and it will take you straight to their website.
Post-Xmas ChillaxBBQ @ The Knibbs 2020
Hell’s Kitchen? Maybe… Here we go…
My little Sous Chef and I went shopping early to get the ingredients to make it happen today. Bless him. Super-helpful.Dory fillets with citrus and 5 fresh herbs are all ready to go on the BBQ. Beautiful. It’s for the infamous ChillaxBBQ Fish ‘n’ Chips…Amazing 15/21 prawns from Andy @ New Zealand Fresh, which means that is how many you will get in a Kg. So the lower the number the more monster the prawns will be and these were goliaths. Marinated with olive oil, sea salt & cracked black pepper, lime juice, garlic powder, honey and smoked paprika – and sat atop freshly sliced lemon.Beautiful Kiwi boneless lamb legs from Andy @ New Zealand Fresh. I trimmed a little of the cap (the thick white fat) off first. I then stabbed these all over with my tenderiser, doused in olive oil and gave a good sprinkle all over of sea salt & cracked black pepper. Then I ‘stuffed’ the inside with fresh rosemary, thyme, crushed garlic cloves, garlic powder and fresh lemon quarters. Roll that bad boy up and tie with string to keep the stuffing in, as you can see from the picture. I put this in the oven at 90 degrees – for as long as you can basically. I did three hours reverse sear and then charred her up on the BBQ when we got to Knibbsy’s.For the last 15 minutes of the three hours, I whacked up the heat to 150 and drizzled honey over the top. And here she is reverse-seared for the total 3 hours awaiting a charring. If only you could smell this.The kids loving the big outdoors space. Man, I wish we could afford a house. One day…The next Lewis Hamilton?1st batch of those prawns done. Absolutely stunning. A wee squeeze of fresh lemon and done. You beauties!!! How good do they look?I reckon that is a bunch of very happy campers as the food starts to come out.A rustic tomato & mozzarella salad with basil oil. Again, if only you could smell this.Then Andre arrives and plate after plate of yummy goodness is going out one by one…I am really proud of this one. A quick char on the BBQ and that lamb leg is gyros grade. Carved thinly. Pink2Pink. A squeeze of lemon over the top and that is done. I served this with a home-made chilli and basil sauce. Some toasted pitas (beneath the meat) and a home-made sour-cream ‘w’ spearmint, chives & lime dip. Wow this was awesome. All served up in that uber-cool dish that Kat gave me after her anniversary Chef table. I love it.Saganaki or Halloumi cheese – who cares? It was good. A little olive oil in the pan, season with sea salt & cracked black pepper and fry until golden – I then cubed this and threw it in with a load of Heirloom tomatoes and my home-made balsamic dressing.A stunner of a salad to look at and to munch too. This is a keeper for any future events. So nice.Masters of the grill. Sirloins on now with the second batch of the prawns. Marinated in Chinese rice-win, chilli, vinegar and soya sauce for 4-hours or so. Great work from Chef Knibbs. He made a wonderful jus reduction from the sauce too – see that in a minute.Beardy Chefs having fun on the tools today. A perfect partnership, complimentary and aligned. Some amazing dishes being sent out to the table. More of this to come, that’s for certain.It’s a good look!!!Chef Knibbs works his magic with three sirloins. Pink2Pink medium-rare. I sliced it super-thin across the grain and it was so very tender. Beautifully cooked. And here is Chef Knibbs pouring his jus reduction over the platter of delicious meat. Stunning dish. Just sorry the photo is poor.And here is the final plating. A stunner to look at and to eat. A little sea salt & cracked black pepper and then the jus. It almost looks like tuna tataki. So delicious. Cracking dish.His Knibbs up agin, knocking the tomahawk out of the park. Beautifully reverse-seared to medium-rare perfection and then charred and basted with a little thyme butter. BOOM!!!2-cheese fondue inspection by Chef Knibbs. It all adds to the flavour haha. We added some corn-starch, thyme, 1/2 glass white wine and a good dash of cognac to this. Slowly melted down this because a superb fondue served with some crusty bread. Always a favourite at any of our ChillaxBBQ gigs.P2PP. AKA; Pink2Pink Perfection. who needs sous vide? This is how you cook a steak to perfection!!!Smug or what? Rightly so though, as this is perfectly cooked and just super-tasty. Great work, Chef Knibbs.And another happy customer joins the table. We’re running at about 60% served food by now. I am actually very impressed with how much food so few are packing away haha.Here is that so-good 2-cheese fondue ‘w’ thyme, wine and cognac. It was insanely good. Like really insanely good. Always a favourite.Another fast-becoming ChillaxBBQ requested favourite is the 5 herb citrus BBQ fish, AKA Fish ‘n’ Chips. Today the fish is Dory and it is layered over black truffle crisps. Oh yeah, baby!!!This was the test. Chest was on point to critique this in comparison the HK roast meats from his favourite joint. No pressure then, NOT!!! And guess what? ChillaxBBQ recipe was the winner. Low and slow reverse-seared for 4 hours in our special and ‘secret’ marinade and then crisped up under fierce heat for 30 minutes or so. Superbly fragrant with a super-crispy skin. Today served with two mustards – tarragon and chilli. Chest even commented the day after about this. Must have been good then, right? Proud ChillaxBBQ crew for this one, an all-time favourite.
And that was that Post-Xmas ChillaxBBQ @ The Knibbs 2020. Chef Knibbs and I worked so very well together and created an amazing array of dishes with flavours, colours and textures all over the place. It was great, it really was. Nine dishes in all for 11 PAX which is also a great effort. I am so happy with the feedback to from everyone, but especially from Chest and his pork call out in comparison to a heritage dish in Asian food culture. If you want some of the same all you have to do is ping us and you will.
