Red Wine BBQ Sauce

I saw this recipe on Bobby Flay's TV show Grill It! It is grilled salmon with a Red Wine Barbecue sauce and dried cherries. The topping is a hazelnut and honey butter. To make the Red Wine sauce Bobby's recipe calls for a mixture of molasses, brown sugar, honey, chipotle and ancho chili powder and of course red wine. I put all these in a small metal sauce pan and heated it up on the grill until it was simmering. The liquids boiled off for about 15 minutes leaving this rich, thick sauce. I put the salmon, skin side down, on the grill grates. I usually grill salmon on a cedar plank, but using Bobby's "Grill Perfect Salmon" directions, I put it right on the grill. The worry is that the salmon will flake apart - but it doesn't do that it you leave the salmon on one side long enough for the skin to char and get a crust. After that happens, turn the salmon slowly and carefully and it stays together. I wanted an internal temperature of 140, but before it got that done, I turned the salmon one more time and brushed on the sauce. The salmon reached 140 with a bubbly layer of the Red Wine sauce. I added the dried cherries to the sauce in the process and once the salmon was on the plate I poured the rest of the sauce, including the cherries over the salmon and topped it off with the hazelnut-honey butter. The distinct flavor of salmon blended perfectly with the red wine sauce and those cherries. 


What to Drink? The Red Wine for the dinner and the sauce was the Wine of the Week at Tim's Premium  Wines and Spirits - The Roogle Red from Southeastern Australia. One of Bobby's rules is that you must cook with wine that is also good enough to drink. The Roogle obeyed this rule. Tim Miles, the owner of Premium wine is now also on blogspot. Please check him out at http://www.chillwineandliquor.blogspot.com You will learn about wine from Tim's blog titled "Explaining the Miles of Wine."


Weather Report. LIFR (Low Instrument Flight Rules) - low cloud ceiling, extremely poor visibility, and drizzle from stratus clouds.


The clouds are not so low however that we can't find our way back to the grill!
Paul