Cooking, kind of
The Sunday Grill: Meat and Trash
Max George
Issue date: 4/11/08 Section: Features
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I must admit to you all that I am a repeat offender of a most embarrassing culinary sin; I have been "grilling" out of a frying pan on the electric stove of my apartment.
For a number of reasons - cold weather, lack of friends, fear of lepers, fear of leopards and general laziness - I have avoided the outdoor grills scattered around the Old Apartments forest, in favor of a less authentic, less effective, and entirely less American technique. But this column is not called "Max's Fears," so last Sunday I decided to use those old iron beasts to cook, kind of.
It all started with a text. Late on Serendipity Saturday, in a drunken stupor I relayed the following message to Mr. Miller: "Let's grill tomorrow, I'll call you." His response was impeccable: "Sweet!"
And so the next afternoon, after a long morning of regeneration from the weekend's bacchanalia, I met up with Max and a couple new cooks, kind of, Colin "No Cologne" Bussiere-Nichols and Nick "Cro-Mag" Hunter, at Teeter.
Although new to my scene, these boys were no rookies when it came to meat. Altogether we spent about 40 bucks on steak, pork, burger patties, shrimp, and other important items, like chocolate milk.
Colin donated some veggies from his recently successful dumpster diving run, disproving the common myth that just because it looks and smells like trash, does not mean it tastes like trash.
Back at the Apartments we apprehended a table from an unsuspecting Hrothgar and set up shop next to a decrepit old grill. As has become customary in the exploits of this column, we made a near fatal error in our preparation for the cooking; we forgot to buy charcoal. Some tough negotiating with a local got us enough to get started and another trip to Teeter landed us a huge bag of charcoal on sale.
Meanwhile, Colin started on marinating the meat, a sloppy job by anyone's standards, but no match for a man with the nickname "No Cologne." He gracefully threw the pork and steak into a huge bowl, poured a whole Sierra Nevada in, and dumped on an assortment of spices, especially paprika. Next we skewered the meat and veggies, artfully alternating between red peppers, white and red onions, steak and pork pieces. Bailey "I Make It" Rayne Arnold peeled and marinated the shrimp in Cajun powdered spice and skewered it separately.
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