Flight Test Chicken

Grilled Chicken Salad Sandwich with Whole Grain Mustard Mayo and Grilled Rye & Pump Bread from Boy Meets Grill page 79. This is a great, fast, week-night grill recipe. I grilled thin slices of chicken breast on the grill with butter spray, salt and ground pepper - thats all. Meanwhile I mixed the dressing that would turn this into a grilled chicken salad. It was mayo, whole grain mustard, chopped celery, red onion, lemon juice, parsley and thyme. When the chicken came off the grill, I let it rest and cool, then sliced it across the grain into chunks. The chicken chunks went into the dressing and got all stirred up. The Rye and Pumpernickel bread was sprayed with butter and put right on the grill until the slices were toasted but not crispy. I added the bacon - because everything is better with bacon. On the side was a Kosher dill pickle and a beefsteak tomato with mozzarella, parm and oregano. It only took 30 minutes from start to finish. 

Weather Report. Great flying weather. And a great day for some flight testing experiments. 

That is the wing of a Diamond DA20 airplane that I was flying this morning. As a class experiment, a student taped down strips of yarn all over the wing as you can see in the photo. In this shot the airflow is pushing the yarn straight back and in straight lines. We did several maneuvers that made those yarn tufts dance. At various times the yarn stood up, or went round-and-round, and even bent forward depending on what I was doing with the rest of the airplane. What was doing including slow flight, inverted flight, stalls and multiple turn spins. I have no still shots of all that, because I was too busy getting back right side up to take any photos, but we shot HD video from a mounted camera down the wing to see all the action. And what is that red funnel doing trailing the wing? On the way to the airport, I stopped by a hardware store and picked up two funnels. We attached the funnel to each wingtip with fishing line. We were hoping that the funnels would get caught up in the "wingtip vortex" and spin around in that airflow. It worked. You can't tell that it is twirling in this still shot, but the video captured it. I will be using these videos and more for training advanced pilots about "unusual attitudes" and, most importantly how to escape from a bad situation. I wish those pilots in Buffalo last year had taken my course. 

Deliberately throwing an airplane out of control, just to bring it back is pretty exciting - time for something a little more relaxing - Time to fire up the grill! Paul

Green Chili & Red Pepper Stuffed Chicken

You gotta try this one! Its Grilled Chicken Breasts stuffed with Cheese and Green Chili-Cilantro sauce from Bobby Flay's Grilling for Life page 124.  I started by chopping up poblano chilies, a red onion and two garlic cloves, then added lime juice, honey, olive oil, kosher salt and ground pepper into a processor. I added cilantro after the entire mixture was blended into a chucky sauce. I put the sauce aside and then went to work on the stuffing. It was mozzarella and feta cheese, with chopped black olives, roasted and chopped red peppers, thyme, and olive oil. When I was at the store, I found some thin sliced chicken breasts - about a 1/4 inche at their thickest point. The thin chicken slices were the base where I spooned on the stuffing. Then I rolled up the chicken with the stuffing inside, tieing it off with a wire. It looked like a chicken canoli! I grilled the rolled chicken first with direct heat to get the outside char and later with indirect heat to bake the chicken through. Once on the plate, I sliced it across the middle and spooned on the Poblano-Cilantro sauce. Yes it was spicy - but the lime juice and honey balanced the poblanos, onions and cilantro. Like I said, you gotta try this one!

What was on? Sugarland. The group that goes by the name Sugarland is Jennifer Nettles and some other guy. I am sure that "the other guy" is really good, but lets face it - this group is nowhere without Nettles. I am not a huge country music fan -even after growing up in Nashville, but I know what I like no matter what the label. Sugarland is good stuff and great in concert too. We saw them at last summer's CMA festival. Check then out at http://www.sugarlandmusic.com/
Try to figure out who the other guy is and ask yourself - did this guy make some kind of deal with the devil to be on the same stage with Jennifer Nettles?

Back to the grill stage! Paul

Pepper-Olive Salmon

From Grilling for Life by Bobby Flay (page 100), this is Grilled Salmon and Peppers with Black Olive Relish. Properly grilled Salmon is just so good - and as an added bonus, its healthy. I used the cedar plank technique again. You can see the plank smoking a salmon on the grill on a previous blog entry. You soak the plank for several hours, held underwater in the sink. Bring it out of the water and right to the grill. Let one side of the plank heat up to the point where it starts smoking and popping. Turn the plank over and place the salmon, skin-side down on the smoldering plank. Close the grill hood and let the grill and the smoke go to work. It reaches an internal temperature of about 130 in less than 20 minutes. The only seasoning on the salmon when on the plank for this recipe was canola oil, kosher salt and ground pepper. Before the plank hit the grill, I sliced up some red & yellow bell peppers. I had them in a pan with canola oil over the grill to cook and become tender. When the peppers were done I stirred them into a bowl with the black olives, garlic, parsley, thyme, red winr vinegar, and honey. Properly grilled peppers (either roasted, direct heat or indirect heat) have a slightly sweet taste, but when you mix in this Black Oil Relish - which includes honey - they really becomes tangy. Eventually the Peppers and Olive relish topped the salmon. The tangy relish with that peppery salmon was terrific. Another grill recipe you must try!

I successfully picked only one of the Final Four - Duke. The brackets were very unpredictable this year, but I think that is a okay. Good thing the grill is so predictable! Paul

Final Four Wings

Game time is wing time. These are Chipotle-Honey-Glazed Chicken Wings with Toasted Sesame Seeds and Green Onion from Grill It! page 79. These were the perfect combination of heat and sweet that produced tangy wings with a kick. I don't especially like super spicy wings that are extra spicy just so they can claim to be the hottest. I don't like them if they are named "three mile island" or "lava flow" wings. These Bobby Flay wings had chipotle, cumin, ancho chili, paprika and coriander, so it had its share of heat, but they also had canola oil, honey and Dijon mustard to balance with sweet. I will stack these wings up against any at any wing joint from coast to coast - they are perfect. I brushed on the glaze after the wings made their last turn on the grill. I did this last because I didn't want the honey to burn. Then when they came off I spooned on more of the glaze. I toasted the sesame seeds and onion in a small sauce pan and sprinkled them on over the glazed wings to finish it off. These wings were worthy of a championship. 


The Final Four. My bracket has only one possible Final Four team left. 

Duke plays later today, and even though this is the 18th anniversary of Laettner's shot to beat Kentucky, they could still lose to Baylor. If that happens, I will have missed the entire Final Four. I don't think that has happened in 25 years. I used to run a NCAA pole back in the late 1980s and early 1990s in North Carolina with my college students. For one dollar, a student would draw a name out of a hat. The names were of the 64 teams in the NCAA tournament that year. That generated $64. These were all pilot students. Back then you could rent an airplane for about $35/hour, so the student who pulled out the team that ultimately won the championship would get one free hour of flight time. The rest of the money went to a scholarship fund. One year we ran three different contests. This method was probably illegal, since technically it was gambling inside a state college - but we called it a "drawing" not a "lottery" and we always got away with it. Flight time for basketball - a pretty good deal. Of course that was also back when college basketball really was college basketball. Now the NCAA is just the junior varsity for the NBA. Kentucky, with its freshman starters bound for this year's NBA draft, lost - so they are one-and done. You can't create a dynasty (and a true following) with players who are on your team only one year. So maybe all these NCAA upsets have been a good thing. It would be nice to see a college basketball player hoist the championship trophy in his senior year. It would be nice to see a real student athlete cut down the nets after working and studying for four years, instead of a kid in his second semester making a cut and run. But on the other hand, college is supposed to prepare students for a productive and profitable career. If a 19 year old, with two semesters under his belt can make $50 million  (more money in one year than a pilot will make in a lifetime of protecting the safety of others), then I guess college did its job. Nevertheless, since all my teams are out, I will support the team with the most seniors and a coach without a multi-million dollar shoe deal. Go Butler?! 


Grilling always puts you in the Final Four - regardless of your year in school or grade point average.
Paul

French Chicken Salad Sandwiches

Grilled Chicken Nicoise Sandwiches from Bobby Flay's Grill It! page 258. This is really just a jazzed up chicken salad sandwich with one difference from the actual recipe. I used grilled chicken instead of grilled tuna. I figured tuna was the chicken of the sea - but I was on dry land - so I went with chicken instead. But no matter if you use chicken or tuna, what made these sandwiches terrific was the dressing and the bread. Bobby reports that this recipe is reminiscent of a classic that originated in Nice, France. The dressing was olive oil, red onion, lemon juice, honey, cayenne, garlic and mayo. I mixed this all up together and set it aside while I grilled the chicken breast filets. I used indirect heat on the chicken, which means it takes a little longer, but insures that it will be tender. When the chicken was ready I brought it off the grill and let cool on a cutting board. I thinly sliced the chicken when it was cool enough to handle and then shredded the pieces. Next came the dressing - I poured it on and stirred it in.  The chicken soaked up the dressing as I added basil, salt and some capers. The capers (little pea shaped pods) added a salty taste - but I didn't mix in too many. I lightly toasted a two foot long French baguette and then sliced it long-ways and then across into four sandwiches. Then came the chicken/dressing combination. I stuffed the sandwiches as you can see and it was a feast ready to go. 

Since this was a sandwich with origins in France, I thought it would be fitting to included a little French wine. 

                          

Here are two special bottles of French wine. They are special because they are from France. You think I'm crazy now right? All French wine is from France and you can pick up as many bottles of French wine as you like in any wine/liquor store. All that is true, but these bottle were actually purchased in France and flown across the Atlantic to my house by a friend of ours who is a Boeing 777 Captain for United Airlines. He makes a couple trips to Paris, France every month. An airliner's captain has a special luggage area where he/she stores their own personal stuff for the flight. These bottles came over in that special cargo hold. When you buy French wine in the U.S. it has been imported by some U.S. company and has some English on the label that lets you know who imported it. Not these bottles. There is no English on these, because they were not imported via an American company. Now after telling you all this, it is difficult to say that we did not open either bottle to drink with our French inspired sandwiches. I just couldn't open them - not yet. The story of their Atlantic crossing needs more time to age. We ended up having an American Chardonnay from Hogue with the chicken salad and it was great.

In general we prefer American wines to French wines. I certainly am not an expert and my opinion is not worth much, but the French (old world) wines seem dull in color and flavor when compared to American wines. The American (new world) wines are called "fruit forward" because you really can taste the fruit whereas French wines are, like I said, more understated (dull). The French wines kind of taste like they have been down in a musty, dusty cellar - and there are thousands of people that prefer that - to each his own!

Speaking of French and American wines - you need to watch the movie Bottle Shock if you have nit already. It is the 1970's story of when an American wine beat a French wine for the first time and put California on the wine map. We take it for granted that America wine is world class, but it was not always so. Watch Bottle Shock and learn the story. You can get the DVD and a bottle of the wine that made history from my friends at Wine of the Month Club. Go to: http://www.wineofthemonthclub.com/product/bsp/wine-gift-baskets

More New World wines and New World Grilling on the way!

Paul 

Thunderstorm Grilled Chicken

Take a look! Grilled Chicken Cutlets with Lemon, Black Pepper and Arugula-Tomato Salad from Bobby Flay's Grilling for Life, page 120. This is an easy mid-week meal, so give this a try sometime on a Wednesday or Thursday. When I got home from work, I first pounded the chicken. I put regular boneless chicken breasts between two sheets of wax paper and hit it a hundred times with a mallet. This is a good stress relieving exercise after just getting home from work! The pounding flattened out the chicken into thin cutlets which were great later for quick grilling. Following Bobby's instructions, I marinated the cutlets with chopped shallots, lemon juice, olive oil, lots of ground pepper and I threw in some red wine vinegar. I put the cutlets in the mixture, then turned them over to insure they were coated and put them in the fridge. Then I watched the first part of the first NCAA game. After about an hour in the marinade, I took the chicken to the grill and put them over flames. I turned the cutlets after only a couple of minutes. I wanted that high heat to sear the meat and get those great grill marks, but then I moved the chicken to a cooler part of the grill to allow some indirect heat to cook the chicken through. This technique produces a crispy outside, but keeps the inside tender and juicy. It is easy to over grill a thin piece of chicken. If you over grill you end up with a dry piece of leather. Preparing the salad took just a few minutes as the chicken finished off. The salad is just lettuce, sliced tomato and shaved parmesan cheese with olive oil and red wine vinegar over the top. The whole meal - from pounding to plate took less time than it took Butler to upset Syracuse. My broken bracket suffers more busting. 


If you have not done so already, check out the lower right side of this page. There you will find all the great Bobby Flay grill books, used here on Bobby Flay Everyday! Pick up a couple of these books and follow along. I will always give you the book and page reference for every grill feast. And if you purchase through this blog site, you get a discount from Amazon. 


Weather Report. Springtime in Tennessee - which means noisy weather!

Cold air and warm air do not play well together. The warm air had settled in over the past several days, so when some colder air came sweeping through at grill time, a battle ensued. The warm air is lighter (think of a hot air balloon rising when heat is added into the bottom of the balloon), so when the thicker, colder air approaches, the warm air rises and gets out of the way, which allows the cold air to just slide in underneath. But the rising warm air forms vertical clouds as it is pushed upward and this produces thunderstorms. The line of thunderstorms, as you can see in the photo, is just the rising air on the leading edge of the oncoming cold air. This time of year, its not summer (warm air), but winter (cold air) is not quite over, so the warm and cold shift back and forth jockeying for position like armies across a battle line. This is why the spring across America is thunderstorm and tornado season. The United States is not so far north that it is always cold and not so far south that it is always warm - we are in the middle - between two armies. The thunderstorm and tornados are just collateral damage in the war between warm and cold air. This makes it difficult, but not impossible to grill.

                       

The storm hit just about the time I was firing up the grill. Big drops (like the ones splashing here) means there is more violent turbulence up in the thunderstorm, because the drops get thrown together before they get flushed out the bottom of the cloud. The storm begins with that rising warm air - but what goes up, must come down. Like a fountain, the air and water drops eventually stop going up and start coming back down. When they do, they come down hard and fast. That is also why it gets suddenly cooler under a thunderstorm. The air and the drops that are striking the ground have come from 25 or 30 thousand feet up - and it is always below freezing up that high. 


The good news is that lines of thunderstorms pass on leaving behind, cool, clean, fresh air - great grilling weather. Of course, I think every weather is great grilling weather!
Paul

Game Hens

Cornish Game Hens with Sausage-Wild Rice from Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill Cookbook (page 145)! I know what you are thinking. Isn't Cornish Game Hens a little to high-brow for Bobby Flay Everyday? I thought about that and determined that it was okay because, 1) it is a Bobby Flay recipe and 2) I grilled these guys over an open fire on a turning spit - not in an oven. They did turn out great, but really that wild rice was the star of the show.  I started by grilling chopped opnion in canola over in the pan on that upper grate. Then I added sausage chunks, then chicken stock and brought it all to a boil. The cooked wild rice came next with garlic, thyme, more stock and feta cheese. I basted the hens as they turned throughout their grill time with butter and added kosher salt and ground pepper. The hens were done when the internal temperature reached 130 degrees. I cut the hens just like a chicken when I took them off the spit - then piled on that cheese-sausage-wild rice.

Getting ready for the next round of NCAA.

               

Here is part of my bracket. As you can see, it is a disaster! But I am not alone. I saw that 5.4 million people filled out an electronic bracket on the ESPN site, but going into todays games, only 54 people have a perfectly correct bracket! 54 out of 5.4 million - that means only .00001% are correct. Or said another way, I am among the 99.9999% (including the President) whose bracket has been busted. Two of my Final Four picks, including my pick for National Champion, are still alive - so we will see how it all turns out.

More Hoops and Grill fires on the way!

Paul