We Could Get Used to This!

Harvard Fall Festival
Harvard, MA
September 14-15, 2013

The grilling competition categories were boneless chicken, shrimp, wrapped in bacon and dessert. 

We learned something about people’s choice.  One of the categories was sliders.  Chuck put together this pretty little thing:

Which was well-liked, but we didn’t make enough.  Note to selves: make two steamer pans of it next time.  They will be happy to replenish your supply.

This was our teriyaki chicken.  It tasted good, but was a little over done at the edges.  Also, our garnish still holds a lot to be desired.  Not pretty at all.

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For the wrapped in bacon category, we actually made a bacon lattice for the bottom of the container.  Then we made bacon fatties: sausage stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon and sliced. 

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I don’t think the judges liked that you couldn’t see the bacon because it was around the edges.

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I forgot to take a picture of our shrimp box, but here it is.  It is the same crab-stuffed, bacon-wrapped shrimp we made at Brookline.

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Lastly, Cris made bananas foster chimichangas.  Good gracious, but they were delicious.  Only a scoop of vanilla ice cream could have improved them.  

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In the KCBS competition, we were judged poorly.  The judges didn’t respond well to the legs, although I thought they looked and tasted great.  The ribs over-cooked and then didn’t slice well.  The plate was sticky and sloppy.  We tried handing in the pork in multiple ways: pulled, burnt ends and sliced.  Again, the judges were underwhelmed.  My brisket consistently turns out dry.  This year we had a fiasco.  I had filled my water pan with sand to help hold the heat.  In the middle of the night, the temp shot way up.  In my 2am blur, I forgot about the sand and dumped water into the water pan.  It immediately made steam, coating the brisket with a fine layer of sand.  I almost didn’t hand it in.  Oddly, I got some of my best scores to date.  Go figure.

Our efforts this weekend paid off.  We took 2nd place in shrimp, 5th place in dessert and 3rd place over all in the grilling competition.  We also took 2nd place in people’s choice sliders.  See? We should have made more.