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