The simple joy of grilling

Animal protein cooked over a fire. Nothing could could be much simpler or more primordial than that. Tonight, I cooked a couple of New York strip steaks over charcoals. I have a propane grill, as well as a "real fire" grill, but my propane level was a little low. However, I have plenty of charcoal. What I was lacking was charcoal fluid. I started to think that it was pretty silly to use charcoal fluid when there are better alternatives to start the charcoal. Thus, I went to my nearby Lowe's and bought a charcoal starter. Instead of using petroleum distillates to start my charcoal, I will now use newspaper.

At 1830 (6:30PM for you civilians out there) I stuffed some newspaper into the bottom of the charcoal starter and filled the starter with charcoal. I lit the news print and after about 15 minutes, all of the charcoal was covered in a downy ash and was ready to go. I dumped the charcoal into my trusty Weber grill and waited a few more minutes to allow it to heat up. After about 5 minutes, all of the charcoal was ready and I placed upon the grill two strip steaks (which had been seasoned with a little salt and pepper). I cooked the steaks for 12 minutes (6 minutes a side), removed them from the grill, placed them on a wooden cutting board and then covered them with aluminum foil to allow the meat to rest for 10 minutes. A few crumbles of blue cheese where sprinkled over the steaks, and while they were resting I put a few spears of asparagus on the aforementioned grill. After 4 minutes on the grill, I removed the asparagus spears from the heat and served them with the steaks. While the steaks were cooking, I also prepared some cus cous.

I am happy to report that dinner was an unqualified success. The steaks were medium-rate, the asparagus were still crunchy but properly cooked, and well, it is pretty hard to screw up cous cous. Life agrees with me...