Got your grill going? Join Hank for some Memphis ribs! ~Elise

There are wet ribs, sticky with a succulent, spicy barbecue sauce, and there are dry ribs, where the flavor is all in the dried mixture of herbs and spices, melded into something greater than the sum of their parts by time, smoke and pork fat. This is what they do in Memphis, Tennessee, and it's why Memphis-style ribs are some of the best in the world.

What goes into a Memphis rib rub is up to you, but most recipes rely on paprika, brown sugar, black pepper, cayenne, garlic and onion powder. All sorts of other ingredients find their way into everyone's "secret recipe," but the most common are cumin, dry mustard, celery salt or celery seed, dried oregano or rosemary, chili powder, ginger, allspice or even white pepper. Serious pit masters spend years perfecting the exact ratio of spices for their own personal styles.

Cooking these ribs is simple: Rub the spice mix all over the ribs and cook them slowly over

Summer peaches, pork, grill, herbs, yum. There's something wonderful about this combination. As you know, pork plays well with fruit. Here we're pairing pork tenderloin with fresh peaches, and grilling them both for smokey goodness. Tender as it is, pork tenderloin on its own isn't the most flavorful of pork cuts. But it lends itself to all sorts of spice rubs, in this case herbes de Provence, a mixture of herbs typical of the south of France. The mix I'm using includes thyme, rosemary, tarragon, and lavender. The floral notes of the herbs work great with both the peaches and the pork, and act as a flavor bridge between the two.

In preparing for this recipe we experimented with a few different rubs, with the herbes de Provence winning out over the others. Do you have a favorite spice rub for pork tenderloin? If so, please let us know about it in the comments.

• Prep time: 30 minutes
• Cook time: 15 minutes

Carne asada shown wrapped up in a flour tortilla with pico de gallo and avocado

Carne asada is the thinly sliced, grilled beef served so often in tacos and burritos. It is also commonly served as is, with rice and beans on the side. Although almost any cut of beef can be butterflied into thin sheets for the carne asada, typically it is made from flank steak or skirt steak. It can be grilled just with salt and pepper for flavorings, or it can be marinated. The following is a recipe for marinated carne asada.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 pounds flank or skirt steak
• Olive oil
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

• Marinade:

  • 4 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 jalapeño chile pepper, seeded and minced
  • 1 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seed (best to lightly toast the seeds first, then grind them)
  • 1 large handful fresh cilantro, leaves and stems, finely chopped (great flavor in the

Sing along! ♪ Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam♫ ... and the deer and the antelope play; where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the sky is not cloudy all day. ♫

Yes we do break into song occasionally around here. It's good for you and it warms the soul. What better song to sing than Home on the Range when enjoying an all (North) American buffalo burger. And yes, this is more accurately called a bison burger. For the record we are talking about an American buffalo (bison), and not an Asian buffalo. There used to be just a few American buffalo still alive, but now they are no longer endangered, and enterprising ranchers are raising bison as a leaner alternative to beef.

Have you ever eaten bison? Imagine a really lean, deep red, grass-fed beefy beef. If you like the taste of a good steak or beef burger, you'll love buffalo. Ground buffalo is not that expensive, and is readily available at good supermarkets. We got ours at Whole Foods. There are also several

Please welcome guest author Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen who brings us this Chinese-American classic, Broccoli Beef. ~Elise

After moving out of the dorms in college, I found an apartment to share with 3 others. My job was to cook, and as long as what I put out on the dinner table was better than instant ramen, I didn't have to clean the kitchen or vacuum. A mighty fine trade of labor, if you ask me! But then pretty soon, friends of roommates discovered my cooking talent and would conveniently drop by at around 7pm. I knew cooking was my calling back then, because each new friend would try to find a suitable trade to be able to snag a coveted spot at our dinner table. No more grocery bill, laundry, ironing, washing the car or studying!

Broccoli Beef was one of my specialties, mainly because broccoli was cheap and beef could be sliced thinly to stretch and feed unexpected guests.

So, how do you get the broccoli crisp-tender and the beef juicy, succulent? Well, the secret

My father made the most succulent, tender, "Wow" beef short ribs this week. Yes, it is a 2 day process, but the actual hands-on cooking time is at most two hours, and is broken up over two days. It is really quite easy to make. The key step is after the initial slow cooking, to let the ribs cool and then chill overnight in the refrigerator. This makes it much easier to remove the generous amount of excess fat that ends up solidifying in the chilling process. The beef ribs also spend the whole night absorbing the flavor of the stock. You must use a good bottle of wine, the better the wine, the better the result. Veal stock can be hard to find, we got ours at our local butcher. Use it if you can get it, if not, beef stock will do. The recipe on which this dish is based came from the Campton Place restaurant in San Francisco. (We found it in a magazine years ago, but we can't identify which magazine from the clipping.)

My mother grew up in a house where there was constant entertaining. My nanawas somewhat of a social bee and even I remember how every night was a party night when as a child I came to visit during the summer. Mom and dad were reminiscing the other day about one of their favorite recipes of my grandmother's, her pulled beef, braised in BBQ sauce. Mom remembers Nana once feeding 80 people this dish at her small adobe house in Tucson. It's terribly easy to make, you can easily double, triple, quadruple the recipe, making it perfect for serving large groups of people in an informal gathering, and it's absolutely delicious.

INGREDIENTS

• One 3-pound chuck roast, rinsed and dried
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes (preferably plum tomatoes)
• 1 18-ounce bottle of your favorite barbecue sauce (or 2 1/4 cups of your favorite homemade barbecue sauce)
• Salt and freshly ground