Working at the 72nd Senior PGA Championship at Valhalla

From last Wednesday on through Sunday, May 29th, I was a marshall on the 14th hole at Valhalla for the Senior PGA Championship here in Louisville.

I was "stationed" either on the tee box, the crosswalk, or the green and got to see the golf from some pretty nice vantage points.  Even got to chat with a few of the pro golfers and a bunch of the fans during the week.

From the tee this hole appears this way:

We started with week with rain and temperatures in the 50's and by Sunday it was clear, dry and in the 90's.  I was reminded of this fact on Sunday when the eventual winner, Tom Watson, arrived at the 14th tee and asked his caddy for the Gatorade bottle in the golf bag.  Tom swigged the half that was left and started looking for the trash can to throw it away.  Standing just 5 feet behind him, I stepped up and offered to dispose of the empty.  That lead to a chit chat for a few minutes as he waited to tee off.

Tom is personable and friendly.  I thought he'd be about my height, but he's around 5'9" and built about like I am.  Well, I have the "biscuit belly" and he doesn't.  We talked about the radical change in temperatures through the week.  We also talked about his position in the tournament and he thought then he had a chance to win it.  And if he could have sunk the 5 footer he had on 18, he'd have won without a playoff.  He made par on 14 and off he went.

Volunteering at a PGA event is worthwhile.  I did so at the Ryder Cup in 2008 and look forward to the chance to volunteer for the next PGA in 2014.

Got Blueberries?

On a trip to Costco today I noticed some really good-looking California blueberries:

So I bought them - they came in a 2 pound container for under $7.  Kind of thought that was a deal. 

So I get home with all these blueberries and realize that's alot of blueberries.  I had no plan (I'm sure that surprised you) and thought, "Oh, we have some frozen pie crusts in the fridge!"  Open that boy up and there's only one crust in the box.  "What?"

A little internet research and I have adapted a one-crust (sorry, there they call it an "open-faced blueberry pie" - well la de da) blueberry pie recipe to my own liking.  La de da again!

This recipe calls for:

One (not 2) 9" frozen pie crust
1 egg white
4 1/2 cups blueberries
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons of water (separate)
2 tablespoons cornstarch
zest of one large lemon
juice of the same large lemon

And it goes like this:

Preheat an oven to 425 degrees.  Thaw and roll out the crust into a 9" pie pan.  Cover the crust with foil and weight it (I used raw rice. some people like to use uncooked beans, and some even have "pie weights" - oh, please).  Bake for 20 minutes and remove from the oven.  Uncover, prick the surface with a knife all over (umm, say 2 dozen jabs) and return to the oven for 5 minutes or until golden brown.  Remove and cool for 20 minutes or until you can touch the crust without pain.  Brush with egg white and continue to cool.

In the meantime while all this cooling and other stuff is going on - bring 1/2 cup of water to a boil, add one cup of cleaned (and drained) blueberries until the berries burst.  Dissolve cornstarch in the 2 tablespoons of water and add to the blueberry/water mixture along with the sugar.  Dissolve thoroughly.

Add the rest of the blueberries and combine with a wooden spoon until fully coated.  Allow to rest while your crust is doing the same.

Pour the berry mixture into the crust and set aside for around 2 hours, or so.  Serve with a dollop of whipped cream.

Call me later after you recover.

Pulled Pork BBQ

So what do you do if there's only two of you in the house and you'd like to smoke a pork roast? 

You buy a 6 to 8 pound Boston Butt pork roast.  You can do this at home with a good knife, or ask your butcher to do it:  Carve the roast into two roughly equal portions.  There is a bone on one side of the roast and a obvious separation of the roast which makes for a good place to carve it in two.

I use one end immediately and freeze the other end for later.

Today I'm using the once-frozen section and it looks like this thawed:

I seasoned it with a pork rub overnight once it was thawed (about three days in the fridge).

Start your grill - on one side only - and find an old pan that will hold around 2 cups of water ("old" because you won't be able to use it for any other purpose once you're done with the smoking part - I have an old pan we used while camping that is now re-purposed for this task alone).  You are going to be cooking "in-directly" with the pan of water underneath the pork and the other side with heat and some wood chips.

Place the pork roast over the pan on your grill and sprinkle some hickory chips over the hot coals or bricket part of your grill.  The chips will provide smoke which you want for about two hours.  BTW, you want to soak the chips for an hour in water so they don't just flame out and burn up without producing smoke.  Cook the roast (grill cover closed) for two hours this way - adding more chips as they stop  producing smoke.

Turn the roast (always fat-side-up) after the first hour.  Once the two hours are up the roast has absorbed all the smoke flavor it will and now you are looking for complete cooking.  Internal temperature of around 170 F is done.

This process looks like this:

Once you get the pork done take it off the grill and let it rest for 30 minutes:

 "Pull" the pork using a couple of forks and just sheard it apart into thin sections.  Add your favorite BBQ sauce at this point and serve on buns or on the plate.  We're having ours with my Kentucky BBQ sauce, cold potato salad with hard boiled eggs and celery, plus corn-on-the-cob -- don't you wish you were visiting tonight?  Got some Kentucky bourbon to go with it if you drop in!

Butterflied Chicken on the Grill

Sometimes, many times often, I find myself in a rut with what to grill.

One sure cure seems to be to try something entirely new for me - or at least a dish that I have not done in years.  This past weekend I grilled a whole red snapper and last night did a whole chicken.

I'll post pictures at a later date, but the chicken recipe has potential worth sharing.  Mostly because all of have whole chickens available to you -- and not so much the whole red snapper.  Right?

Start with a good-looking whole chicken that has not been fed a diet of steroids and looks all puffy and overly fat.  I bought a Perdue bird nicely packages with the innards stuffed inside.

Wash and place the bird breast-side down and with kitchen shears slice up the back from the tail to the neck cavity.  Go up one side of the back from the taill and then repeat on the other side until you have removed a strip about an inch in width right up through the middle of the bird.  That will allow you to spread the chicken out flat.  Once you have done that, look inside and you will see the rib bones.  Snip them out and further press the chicken out on your cutting board.  Nice and flat.

Drizzle some veggie oil, rub it in all over the bird and season all surfaces with yoour chice of grilling herbs (at a minimum salt and pepper).  Entomb the critter with plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.

Meantime, we'll prep the glaze and mopping sauce.  And what a glaze it is!

Ingredients for this include:

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 T honey
2 T maple syrup
3 T light brown sugar
2 jiggers your favorite Kentucky bourbon
2 T BBQ sauce
1/2 t red pepper flakes

Combine well and set aside with a brush for mopping on the grill.

Start your charcoal on one side of the grill and get a old metal pan or aluminium deep dish (no larger than about 8 inches long and 5 inches wide) you can toss away and fill it with water (about 2-3 inches).

All this will allow you to cook the chicken indirectly for 2 1/2 to 3 hours.  I added some hickory wood chips after the first hour of cooking. 

Place the bird on the grill breast up.  Roast covered for an hour, drizzling with your bourbon-laced glaze about every 20 minutes.  Obviously, you'll be sampling the unused bourbon while this process is in the works.  Roast for 1 1/2 hours and flip.  Continue the process for the rest of the alloted time.  Internal temperature needs to be 185 degrees to be done.  During the final cooking time place the bird breast-side up directly over the coals.  If the leg or wing comes free while moving her around that's a good sign your chicken is about done.

I'll take and post pictures next time around.  Sandy claims "This is the best thing you've EVER done on the grill."