Bobby Flay Everyday!: Chimichurri Streak

Welcome to Bobby Flay Everyday!

I am not an expert. I have never even taken a class. I have no formal training - but I love to grill. I love the food off the grill and I just like the idea, the fun and the relaxation of grilling. So naturally Bobby Flay is a hero. I have his books, I watch his shows and I try out his recipes. So my idea is to grill one of Bobby's grilling recommendations everyday and see how it goes. Bobby Flay Everyday!

The idea to grill and blog is not original. Julie Powell wrote a blog that became a book and then a movie when she cooked all 524 recipes from Julia Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. But this is not French Cooking - this is backyard, after work, tailgate, American male grilling. I grill outside in a man-cave in every kind of weather. There is no "grilling season" for me - its everyday, year-round. We will skip around through Bobby's books and TV shows and grill what we like. But grilling is more than food, its an experience - so we will also report on what music we listened to or what ball game was on while we were grilling. We will keep track of what we were drinking during the grilling and later with the food. I'll try to figure what went wrong when we fall short of Bobby's perfection and pass on any tips I know about or discover along the way. Maybe it will give others some ideas as well.

The photo is of me and two of my brother-in-laws roasting the Thanksgiving turkey on the grill last year. That's me on the far right. In real life I am a college professor and pilot. I have written 12 books, but they were all about flying - here we write about grilling. We write about Bobby Flay Everyday!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Chimichurri Streak

From Bobby Flay’s book Boy Gets Grill (page 204) this is Black Pepper-Crusted Strip Steak with Chimichurri. This really turned out great and you should try it sometime! I made the chimmichurri by combining parsley leaves, cilantro, garlic, chopped serrano chilies, honey, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper and olive oil in a food processor. You can see that it made a great, green colored sauce due to the parsley, cilantro and Serrano chilies. I grilled the strip steaks as usual with a brushing of canola oil, kosher salt and fresh ground pepper. I pre-baked some potatoes and then put them on the grill as well with salt and pepper. When the steaks were about done – about 140 degrees interior temperature – I brushed on some chimichurri. When the steaks came off the grill, I topped them with more of the sauce as you can see in the photo. The chimichurri was not too spicy but had great complementary flavor to the steak.

What was on? Olympic Alpine Skiing. My favorite event of the Winter Olympics is the Downhill. I have been watching it since Jean Claude Killy. In 1968 Killy won the triple crown of skiing – The Downhill, the Giant Slalom and the Slalom – in Grenoble, France. Except for Killy, Peggy Fleming and Apollo 8, 1968 was a terrible year. But I remember Killy and Fleming and later Franz Klammer in 1976 at Innsbruck. Klammer won the Downhill when I was in college and I remember going over to the Learning Resource Center on campus so my friends and I could watch it on a color TV using headsets for the sound. It was sort of like a library and we got in trouble when we cheered Klammer’s victory in the otherwise quite room. The reason that the Downhill is the best Winter Olympic event is because there are no judges. The fastest person down the hill wins – no subjective opinions, no Russian judges, just speed. This is the way God intended sport to be – one person against one mountain with no other human interaction. The Downhill is the best event until the next 100-meter sprint in the next Summer Olympics. And again at the next 100-meter race, the fastest man alive will be crowded with no judges to interfere. Just the fastest guy across the line. Period.

Grilling on the other hand is not fast. In fact, it is supposed to be slow and relaxing. Count on more speed down the mountains of Canada to come, but also count on more slow grilling to come.

Paul