Surf and dry aged turf

I simply have too much stuff stored in my freezer and have been trying to use up what I have in stock.  While digging through it looking for something to make, I realized I had some nice 8 oz lobster tails and a few 60 day dry aged prime ribeyes—Score!  The ribeye was seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, while the lobster tail got basted with olive oil, butter, and crushed garlic:




Before cooking the surf and turf, I set the BGE up for some baking to cook a loaf of Italian bread:



While the grill got up to temp for the steak, I couldn’t resist sampling the bread with some butter:

There is just nothing better than freshly baked bread.  It’s just soul stirringly good.  I’d say this loaf cooked up mighty nice.
The dry aged ribeye and lobster tail went onto the grill, just as my camera’s flash decided it didn’t want to work:

I gave the lobster tail a nice bath in a garlic butter sauce, and dinner was served:



This isn’t my first dry aged steak cook, so I won’t go into detail on taste, except to say that it was awesome as usual.  What I was suprised by was the lobster.  I can typically take it or leave it.  Everyone talks about how tender and sweet the meat is, but I’ve never really had any that had much taste to it–which is how I feel about a lot of seafood.  This lobster tail, however, was the sweetest, juiciest, and most tender I’ve ever had.  And with the kiss of char from the grill—good grief.  I forgot about the dry aged steak on my plate for a minute.  I can’t wait to cook the rest of them.
I started on the dessert earlier in the day. I was really craving some bread pudding.  The goal here would be to duplicate the texture of the bread pudding that I love to order from some of my favorite eateries, as up till now, I’ve not quite succeeded.  I started with some smoked oranges, and used their juice, cooked down along with water and sugar, to make a smoked orange syrup:



A half loaf of challah bread was finely shredded and tossed with melted butter and 2 tbsp of orange zest:


Three eggs were separated, blending the yolks with 6 oz of smoked orange juice, and beating the egg whites separately.  These two components were then blended together, and added to a heated mixture of milk, heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla extract:



Some of the custard mix was used to moisten the challah bread, which was then poured into a buttered pan:


The rest of the custard was used to moisten diced croissants, which topped off the bread pudding:




On the smoker (@325):

Fresh off the smoker:

Dessert is served:

Oh man.  The citrus flavors were intense.  The light sweetness of the bread pudding paired nicely with the intensely orange, sweet, smokey syrup.  A big round scoop of french vanilla ice cream made for the perfect combination.  The best thing was that I finally got the texture I’ve been trying to perfect–soft, supple, velvety smooth:


Damn good eats.