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!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Apple Butter Chops


This turned out to be the most surprising flavor combination of any recipe yet. You sort of know what to expect with chicken and beef, but molasses, mustard and apples on pork turned out to be better than expected. This is Bobby’s Molasses-Mustard Glazed Pork Chops with Apple Butter (page 166 of Grill It!). I started with the Apple Butter by mixing some onion, garlic and two peeled and chopped Granny Smith apples in a pan over the grill. I added brown sugar and cinnamon as it all simmered. When the apples were soft I took it off the fire and let it cool. In about 15 minutes I dumped the mixture into the processor with a stick of butter and let it whirl into a paste. The pork chops had the molasses and mustard glaze. Later when the pork chops came of the grill I topped the chops with the Apple Butter.

I really don’t like mustard that much as a stand alone, but blended with all these flavors, as I said it was the biggest surprise of any recipe so far.



What to drink? We pulled out the first of our Wine-of-the-Month Club selections. It was the Punti Ferrer Monte Blanco Cabernet from the central valley of Chili. We saw a difference in color the moment it was poured into the glass – it was more red-ruby than dark plum. The taste was big with fruit, but dry fruit, not sweet. There was a lot of tangy flavors in this meal, so this wine was a great balance. We have enjoyed wine from Chili for a long time. If you look a globe you will see that central Chili is the same distance south of the equator as California is north of the equator. In other words, they experience the same angles to the Sun and therefore will have very similar climates. Around the globe about 30 to 50 degrees either North or South Latitude is wine growing country. France, Italy, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Spain and Tennessee are all in that zone. Tennessee has a wine region? Yes, but more on that later.


What was on? Flag. That’s right, the album by James Taylor that has only a semaphore flag as the cover. This is music from the distant past but for me it also has a story. When I was in college I let my sister, Suzanne, borrow my Flag album. This was an actual LP phonograph record, not a cassette or anything that came after. It took months to get it back from her, in fact I had to drive a good distance during a school break to pick it up. She was staying with family friends who lived on a farm at the far end of a long steep valley. I arrived to confiscate the Flag album just about the time it started to rain. Tom, the farm owner, said, “you should probably get going, because the road floods during these rains and you might get caught.” I didn’t leave immediately because another conversation began. I was holding the Flag album, when Tom took it from my hand and started looking it over. I inquired, “Are you familiar with Flag? It’s a great album.” He said, “No, I just have never seen an album that was worth more than your car.” Well its 2010 and it all seems ironic now. The car was a 1974 Chevy Vega that has been in the junkyard for at least 25 years. The Flag album is still in my collection and still just as good as ever. In the end, Flag did turn out to be more valuable than my car.

More grilling and less car stories to come.
Paul


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