Tropic-Al's: Almost Surfside Dining
We started "cooking " Friday night the third of July for our big shindig an Saturday. I spent three and one half hours formulating my famous BBQ sauce, grilling eggplant slices, making salsa, grilling the sausage for the stuffed peppers and, finishing the menu.
Saturday at 6AM I began cutting the veggies, cleaning the grill and making sure the weather would hold up. Well the morons at the weather desk got it wrong again. While the sun shown brightly the wind whipped about all day scattering napkins and tortillas all over the island.
The 4 pound pork shoulder I had on the charcoal pit should have taken only three hours to cook. The wind prevented the inside of the grill from heating up enough and the internal temp of Porky the Pigs' shoulder was stuck at 130* for over an hour!
To remedy I added a layer of coals on the opposite side of my Smokenator 1000 and that fixed the problem. Two forks tore into perfect pork and pulled it apart into thousands of perfectory pieces that were then soaked down with "Partial Eclipse" BBQ sauce. The final product was devoured by the guests leaving me with only two fork fulls!!!! So much for "Kiss the Cook". Ended up taking almost fiver hours!
Also on the menu: Tortillas with spices and cheese, fajitas with all the fixins, eggplant with capressa, corn on the cob, spaghetti squash, sausage IN peppers, shrimp, shark, clams, scallops, garlic bread. NOT ONE HOT DOG OR HAMBURGER WAS GRILLED!!!!
This was gourmet 'Cue devoured by 20 guests. The guests left the island just after 9PM. We then sailed down wind and watched the fireworks from a high point and felt good seeing more than a dozen other islands scattered about celebrating Tropic-Al's "Revolutionary Picnic and Carnivale"
Tropic-Al's: A Banana Republic in The Catskills
