Grilled Chicken Ala Chris

Before I discuss the chicken, a comment about the weekend. I’ve always been a history buff and find myself watching the History Channel as much as any. This past weekend, I watched nearly all of their series on “The Revolution” and am even more appreciative of our forefathers and George Washington. I didn’t realize it went on so long nor how close America came to not happening. Now for some chicken.

Thanks to my blogging buddies, I have book marked 18 chicken recipes that I definitely want to try and several of them are for the grill. There is a dive of a store in an older area of North Knoxville called Chicken City that I like to frequent to buy jumbo wings for the smoker. They make the selling of their chicken parts simple – it’s all fresh and comes in a 5# bag and priced by the bag. It’s less expensive than regular supermarket prices but higher than the on-sale prices, but after about 25 years of buying from them, I’ve always been well pleased with their meat. I’d mentioned in a recent post that the breasts I find in the markets look like they came from an elephant chicken and while I like them for the smoker, they are bigger than I like for the grill. So while at Chicken City last week, I bought 15 # of fryer breasts, froze them individually on a cookie sheet and stuck them in the freezer in zip top plastic bags.

Since we had some of that good Cruze Farm buttermilk, we decided to go with Chris Henry’s Cruze Dairy Farm's Buttermilk Grilled Chicken. I thawed the chicken breasts the day before and made up the marinade per his recipe (except used regular black pepper and I only had ¾ of a lemon – but it was a big juicy one). I used an immersion blender to create the emulsion, put all but a cup and the chicken in a gallon plastic bag and stuck it in the fridge about 9 pm for a 21 hour soak – I massaged and rotated it a few times.

I would have used the Weber, but we wanted to eat at the lake so I used the gasser that’s down there. It seems at least 10 degrees cooler in the shade down by the lake and makes standing around a hot grill much more pleasant.



Before starting the chicken, I began boiling the potatoes along with some garlic cloves on the side burner. When cooked, Bev minced the garlic into the drained potatoes and mashed them with butter and buttermilk.

When I started the grill, I set a skillet of oil on top to start warming up for the other side dish – out of the garden fried ripe tomatoes. I’ve been eating fried green maters all my life and have had fried ripe ones a time or two, but when I saw the recipe for them on For The Love Of Cooking, I decided to give them a try along with her buttermilk basil dressing – have you noticed there is buttermilk in each dish? For the tomatoes, I used one red and one yellow for a comparison and I followed her recipe except had no flavored panko, so I just gave each tomato slice a sprinkle of Italian herbs between the buttermilk (verses regular milk) dip and the breadcrumbs.


After I took the taters off the burner, I put the skillet on and fried up the tomatoes while Bev mashed the potatoes.


Here’s my plate.


I thought the chicken was outstanding – moist tender and a flavor I liked. The taters also turned out good with just boiling the garlic – Bev’s not a big fan of the roasted garlic flavor. Bev thought the buttermilk made them a little tart. I liked the tomatoes but the crust didn't stay on very well, so I think an initial dusting of flour would have helped. I really liked the sauce on them and will find more uses for it. All-in-all, a darn good meal. Thanks everyone for the recipes - I love being able to cook your creations.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Lawn Problems And Garden Produce

We dropped Alex off Sunday for her week and Camp Wesley Woods, so Bev and I are all alone. Not knowing what else to do we just spent Monday making love all day – and I have some ocean front property in Arizona for sale if you buy that.

We finally had some nice weather the last week with highs in the 80’s, low’s in the low 60’s (back in the 90's now), and the humidity was so low it felt like fall – the downside is we need rain. Fortunately we have a watering system for the lawn and the garden.

Speaking of the garden, we’re staring to get some tomatoes – mostly paste type but still delicious. I grow mostly the paste type tomatoes for canning and a few slicing varieties to eat on. Notice the absence of low foliage, which had to be removed due to the fungal blight – the cooler dry weather helped out though.



Our blueberries are now ripe enough and Bev picked a few while I mowed the lawn. They start out green, then get pinkish, and then blue, after which they get pump and that’s when to pick them. Here they are on the bush and the bowl – they are so sweet and delicious - I've been just getting a hand full and eating them like peanuts.




Our neighbor across the road can’t get his blueberries to grow due to not acidifying his soil, but he has a crop of tame blackberries that are doing great and they are delicious. The plants are just loaded with red berries that will mostly go to waste if we don’t help them by eating a few :-) – it's their vacation home and they are only there occasionally.




I had a volunteer come up in my compost pile and was in hopes it was a melon of some sort, but it turned out to be a pumpkin and this one is the entire crop - I believe it is a carver and not an eater.


I used to try, with reasonable success, to have a Southern Living quality lawn, but after untold hours, chemicals, and money, I’ve decided to quit fighting Mother Nature and work with her. My place is bordered on two sides by woods with all of the plants and seeds native to them and on the other two sides by a cow pasture and a yard, both of which are full of clover and Bermuda grass.

One of the difficulties of growing non-native plants in this area is the high amount of fungal problems brought on by the hot humid weather. It creates issues for vegetable growers, fruit farmers (especially peaches), and cool season grass lawns, such as fescue. I took some shots of my lawn to show you the problem. Too often when a lawn starts browning, the natural tendency is to water it, but this could well make the problem worse. Grass suffering from drought stress will usually take on a bluish hue before browning, whereas fungal problems result in a green healthy lawn beginning to brown – either in patches or in general. So if your grass begins to brown even though it’s rained recently or you’ve watered it, think fungus. It can be treated with an effective systemic product called Bayleton, which protects it from the inside or by spraying with a fungicide such as chlorothalonil.



The way I’ve decided to work with, rather than against nature, is to allow the Bermuda to take over, even though I consider it a weed. It has two primary issues – it turns brown in winter (but brown is a nice color) and it is very invasive, which can be controlled with a little Roundup. I use much less of a safer chemical this way than trying to have the fescue lawn, so it will be easier on me, my wallet and the environment. The nice green areas are the heat and humidity loving Bermuda, which will pretty well deal with the other weeds and can be mowed long or short, as is done on golf courses.


Now if you ever call me to your home to troubleshoot this lawn problem, I’ll first ask if you’ve had a visit from your grandchildren. And if you say yes, I’ll tell you your lawn is likely suffering from pitch-a-tent-alitis and you may just have to over seed this fall.


Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Brisket Hash And Planned Baked Eggs

We still had some boiled potatoes in the fridge and a little left over brisket from BBQ day and I had planned to try combining two dishes – hash and herbed baked eggs. However, at 8:45.I remembered I had to leave at 9:40 to go do some garden consulting.

So I diced up the remaining brisket – could have used a little more – some of the boiled potatoes and some onion. Last night for dinner, we had reheated some brisket is the smoking juices I’d collected and while we poured out the juice, I saved the unwashed skillet for this morning. I added some olive oil and the potatoes and onion and when they were about half done I tossed in the brisket.


My plan was to have made wells in the hash for the eggs, sprinkle on some fresh herbs and cook under the broiler, but alas, I just cooked them sunny side up without the herbs and made one of my more normal meals – but it was still really good.



I believe this meal would work very well on a camping trip to the high country, at a cabin in the Ozarks or just in the backyard on an Egg, Coleman stove, or other cooking device. If I'd thought about it sooner, I would have cooked mine outside (I'll bet I can come up with a future post about this).

The gardeners I’ve been working with are having a great success under difficult conditions, for their first effort. They have given 200# of squash/ zukes and two bushels of green beans to the local Good Samaritan Center and they’ll start getting tomatoes and peppers in quantity in a week. I’m very pleased with what they’ve achieved.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Independence Day Cookout

Happy Birthday America – Happy Independence Day Everyone.

Since we have to take Alex to her week-long camp this afternoon, we decided to have our little celebration cookout on Saturday. Alex had been wanting to roast marshmallows, for smores, over an open fire, so we decided to do it yesterday – at least it wasn't it the 90’s.

So we invited a couple of folks to join us for dinner and had an old fashion weenie roast over an open fire with chili, mustard, and onion (and slaw for the Southeners – remember I’m from northern WV), sided with deviled eggs three ways, corn chips and guacamole, and potato chips and dip.

I’ve been saving bloggers deviled eggs recipes and decided to make a recipe of each of the three very different ones I wanted to try – Old Bay deviled eggs from Nobel Pig, deviled eggs with curry and cilantro from One Perfect Bite, and smoked salmon deviled eggs from A Spoonful Of Thyme. So I boiled up a couple of dozen eggs and commenced to make the stuffings. I followed each recipe as written, except I had to use dried dill weed – check them out on each blog.

As long as I can remember, “I can’t even boil an egg” has been an indictment of ones inability to cook – not as bad as can’t boil water, but it wasn’t until I began watching the food channel that I discovered there is actually a best way to boil and egg , who’d a thunk it.

I was looking forward to trying them all. I haven’t had much exposure to curry and this was a good reason to give it a try. I like Old Bay and thought this was a unique use of it. And finally, I’m a big fan of smoked salmon and couldn’t pass this one up. I got them all done about 4pm and into the fridge for a couple of hours of flavor marrying. And the best part is I don’t ever remember making a deviled egg before – although I could have.

Here’s a pic of each of them

The Old Bay


The Curry


The Salmon


I enjoyed them all, even though they were very different - thanks for the recipes.

Down at the lake, we have a rustic little area with a picnic table and fire ring/grill that we use for activities like this, although usually in the spring or fall vs. mid summer. I don’t have any kindling, but have found that charcoal works very well for starting fires – I even use it in the house fireplace. So a chimney of hot coals topped with a couple of smaller pieces of split oak and off we went. I started it around four so we’d have a good bed of embers by cooking time. We’re ready to cook.


The finished food wasn't anything new, so I didn't take any shots, but it's hard to beat a dog cooked over an open fire and they were sure good.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Breakfast Ala Chez

I know I said I was BBQ’d out but this is different. Inspired by some of the concoctions built by friend Chez over at Fat Johnny’s Front Porch, I decided to put a little of the pulled pork to good use. As she usually does, Bev had boiled up some extra small red potatoes the other day and made up some home fries Friday morning along with some onion and sweet pepper – I forgot to ask for diced jalapeno. I just warmed up some pork, fried an egg over very easy and built this dish.






I don’t recall having leftover pork in this way before but I guarantee I will do it again – and we still have more of everything in the fridge.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Independence Day

Just think how important it is for us that 234 years ago, a group of very brave people said we’re not willing to put up with this anymore and we are declaring our independence from Great Britain. They were willing to fight and die for their beliefs and their freedom. I think too many people view this merely as another holiday called the 4th – let’s have a cook out for the 4th or what are you doing on the 4th are frequently heard. I’ve recently quit calling it the 4th and using Independence Day to make sure I remember the significance of the day – even though I recently read that’s it may not be the right day - link (who cares). While I often get frustrated with our government and our politics, I merely have to look around Almost Heaven South or reflect a few minutes about the Middle East, Somalia, Myanmar, North Korea and many other places where people suffer under dictatorships or anacrhy, or live in abject poverty, to make me very thankful to those brave souls of 1776.

So enjoy your Independence Day weekend and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

BBQ Is Finally Done

Thanks to Bev’s help by pulling the pork, we finally got the barbecuing all finished up around 5pm - finished the cooking about 2pm. While slicing a brisket for a friend, I ate a piece of it for lunch and it was real tasty. Here’s a shot of it.


This is the pork-pulling tub with two of the three butts ready to pull.


Here’s a pic of my dinner plate :-) – fresh green beans and leftover Bojangles.


By dinnertime, I was beat and BBQed out – like I said yesterday, it’s like working in a candy store and not wanting to eat any. I’ll be ready for some when Rhett gets here from Korea and he’s already put in his order. Maybe now, we'll feel like cooking something else.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry