texasmesquite

Confessions of a Foodie: Girl meets grill (with apologies to Bobby Flay)

By Tami A. Hart
Sunday, May 3, 2009 1:28 PM PDT
Source: Argus Observer


To me, Food Network celebrity chef Bobby Flay is the master of the grill ��” the king of the charcoal briquette. That man can do things with a gas grill I probably couldn’t even accomplish using the stove in my kitchen. I am in awe of his grilling skills.

In the Hart back yard, however, the grill is the master of me ��” I am the queen of the overcooked burger.

My gleaming, stainless steel, three-burner grill mocks me when I approach it timidly with my meager offering of meat or chicken.

“Ha, silly girl,” I hear my grill say, inside my head, usually with a distinctly French accent, “You think you can cook on me? Ha!”

Fortunately, nobody in my family knows my grill talks to me, or I’d probably be writing this from a nice little padded room.

I don’t know what it is about grilling or barbecuing that always gives me such difficulty. I don’t even have to mess with charcoal and lighter fluid (an accident waiting to happen in and of itself) since I have a gas grill with adjustable burners, just like my kitchen stove.

Grilling is simple. Heat up the grill, put on the meat, cook it and you’re done. Somewhere in there, however, I seem to lose my way.

Either my meat ends up charbroiled on the outside but raw in the middle (and don’t even get me started on chicken) or completely burned and resembling shoe leather, both in taste and appearance.

I’ve read all the grilling cookbooks I can get my hands on ��” Bobby Flay’s “Boy Meets Grill” being one of my favorites ��” and they all make it look so easy and almost foolproof.
It probably is for most people. Perhaps I’m just missing the necessary grilling DNA, although that can’t really be the case because my son Jason is a great griller (maybe it’s a recessive gene). He can grill just about anything, and it comes out great every time.

I remember when he came home from California for his sister Amanda’s high school graduation three years ago. We had a small party after graduation, and he took charge of the grill and fixed grilled-to-order individual pizzas for everyone.

I was in awe. A couple of weeks later, I tried to duplicate his grilled pizzas, and all I ended up with was uncooked pizza dough that stuck with cement-like tenacity to the grill rack. It was a disaster I don’t care to repeat.

So, I’ve decided this summer I’m going to work seriously on my grilling skills. I’m going to try to cook at least four meals a week on the grill, and hopefully that old saying “practice makes perfect” will work for me. I’m just going to try not to listen to my grill as it laughs at me.

Tami Hart is the catering and events sales manager for the Holiday Inn