BBQ Contest Foods: Steak and Sausage

I'm getting a bit bored writing about the foods we cooked for the Hudson Valley Ribfest, so today I'm combining two posts into one and finishing off the NEBS sanctioned grilling contest. I'm sure you're getting bored reading them as well and we still haven't talked about the foods for the KCBS sanctioned BBQ contest!

The last two items for the grilling contest were steak and sausage and they were both Brooklyn classics. For the steak entry, we chose porterhouse steaks from an old Brooklyn institution, Landi's Pork Store and the sausage was a classic Italian style with roasted peppers sausage wheel hand made by John's girlfriend's ex-husband.

Now wait a minute? You bought your steak from a pork store? You betcha. Landi's is so much more than just a pork store. It's a classic butcher shop where all of your meat needs can be satisfied. We even purchased our polenta for the apple dish at Landi's.

While I'm not a big fan of Brooklyn living, I do have to say that the one of the best things this borough has going for it is the little shops. We still have butchers, bakers, pasta makers and fish mongers. In Brooklyn, you can still do your shopping and never set foot in a chain or mega store. Oh you pay for the privilege, but when you need/want service or quality the little guys are the only way to go.

Mike grilled the steaks using an old family recipe of his that includes bathing the steaks in a pool of olive oil after they are removed from the grill. It's a process I had never seen or heard of before, but he and Mike and John all swore that Mike's method produces the most succulent steaks you ever put in your mouth. Now even though I am of Cuban heritage and my Abuela used copious amounts of olive oil, Spanish only please, in her cooking I was skeptical of the procedure.

Why would you need to bathe a great piece of meat in oil? I tasted it and all I could taste was olive oil, and Italian olive oil at that; not that there's anything wrong with that. I didn't think the steak would do well and I was right, the judges hated it.

For the sausages, it was John's turn to cook. He grilled three rings of the sausage and if I remember correctly he sauced two of them and left the last one plain. Well, the two with the sauce burned and we submitted the sausage plain. Looking at the picture now, it's not very pretty, but it looked great on the table. I guess we were all tired. I'll tell you, that homemade sausage is some of the best I've ever tasted, but unfortunately the judges didn't agree. The public did however, they ate it up and many asked where it could be purchased. Sorry babe, this is for family only. Fuggetabodit. Yo.