Slow-cooked barbecue to go a grilled delight.
Buy your meal from chefs at the farmers market grill
Today, the Food section launches a new, summer series called Market Meal. Twice a month, we will profile a meal that is available, ready-made, at a farmers market somewhere in the Edmonton area. If you have ideas for meals we should check out, please email lfaulder@edmontonjournal. com. (NOTE: Though we are nuts about perogies and kubasa, we are trying to stay away from the take-away meals we are already familiar with.) Thane Chambers and her husband, Jason Webb, are professionally trained chefs. But their day jobs prevent them from spending as much creative time in the kitchen as they would like. So the two have opened a booth at the 124 Grand Market to give them opportunity to have fun with their food.
The booth is called Low and Slow Barbecue, and it’s a new player on the market scene. Chambers (who is no longer a working chef, but a librarian) and Webb (who cooks in an assisted living facility) thought barbecue would be the perfect meal for people to grab-and-go while shopping at the market on a Thursday night.
While the kind of barbecue may change weekly, from jerk chicken, to southern-style ribs, it will always be prepared using traditional barbecue methods, which focus on cooking the meat for a long time over a low heat to coax maximum flavour.
Last week, when I visited the 124 Grand Market, I purchased their traditional pork rib that had been first coated in a secret spicy rub, and then left to sit overnight before being smoked over applewood chips for a couple of hours. Webb then barbecued the ribs over hardwood charcoal for about three hours at less than 250F/120C. Throughout the smoking process, he sprayed the meat regularly with a mixture of apple cider vinegar, brown sugar and water to keep it moist.
Webb made a barbecue sauce that diners can reheat with the ribs, or keep on the side for dipping, and Chambers put together a spicy slaw made with red onion, cabbage and carrots, plus potato salad, and corn meal muffins. Two servings of tiny, perfect, chocolate chip cookies were also tucked in with the meal for afters. The package was $30.
The meal would keep five days in the refrigerator, Webb told me, if, for some inexplicable reason, I chose not to eat it right away. To add a punch of green to the meal, visit Lactuca before you leave the 124 Grand Market. The booth is manned by urban agriculture specialists, Travis Kennedy and Kevin Kossowan, and offers $5 mixtures of triple-washed greens, nestled inside a plastic container like emerald jewels.
The greens — which can include exotic varieties such as Black Seeded Simpson and Red Saladbowl, depending on the weekly harvest — are grown but a few blocks away in the Westmount area. Kennedy pulls them to market on a big trike.
Take Lactuca’s pride and joy home, and combine it with whatever you happen to have in the fridge, a couple of sliced, hard-boiled eggs, some roasted pecans, a fistful of cranberries. Toss with a very light dressing, as you don’t want to mask the flavour of the fresh greens.