Let's Talk BBQ Chicken, Can we?

Okay, Memorial Day has passed and Summer is upon us. With it comes beaches, sun, SCUBA, surf, sand, family picnics, baseball, biking, hiking, and everything else outdoors that we luv to do when the weather is beautiful. And what did I leave off the list? Yes, Bar-B-Cue! Good 'ole BBQ.

For those of you, and you know who you are, that can't start a good, 'ole fashioned, BBQ fire to save your life, they invented the gas BBQ so everyone can enjoy cooking outdoors. From fish, to steaks, to ribs and yes, good 'ole BBQ chicken. Like this...

And yes, you're going to have to endure a little story and background before we get to the recipe. I mean, come on, it's free and you get to read a great story, learn a bit of background on it, and look at some onolicious pictures to boot! ('cept for the stealer mongoose, of course)

Ah, yes, BBQ chicken, is the staple to any good picnic or BBQ event. And probably the easiest to cook, provided you can start a fire :) All you need is some chicken parts, a bottle of good BBQ sauce, and you're in, right? Yeah, not so much and not so fast there, my 'lil speedy, stealer mongoose!

Yup, that little rascal took off with a Zippy's fried chicken bone on a recent Maui picnic we stopped for at a waterfall on a day hike. Anyway, back to our BBQ'd chicken. I've always searched for the best bottle of BBQ sauce over the years from the quintessential, mass produced staple to the favorites, like Sweet Baby Ray's, or Tony Roma's. We've even branched out and tried the local brand or the unknown person's who was able to produce some and get it on the local market shelves. 

It wasn't until watching one of my favorite Chefs, Tyler Florence, that I realized, "What the heck am I buying sauce in a bottle for?" I mean, really, you can easily make a great sauce with fresh ingredients, to your own liking and it will be amazingly better than that stuff you have in the back of the refrigerator that's half empty and you need the pliers to get the lid off. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? And then you realize you don't have enough, so you 'hele' (That's local kine speaks for hustle or go) on down to the local store to find they don't have the same kind that you already have so you get a different one and mix 'em up brah! Am I right? Yeah, and now you have more leftover sauce from your BBQ day and you put what you have left into one of the empty bottles, after you made sure the lid was washed and cleaned, and back into the far reaches of the fridge it goes to be used when? Next year? Ha! I know you. Okay, enough of that! Don't do that anymore, okay?

So, recently my lovely cooking and life partner, Dawn, dove into making some homemade BBQ sauce for chicken that we were to make on Memorial Day weekend. My job was the homemade coleslaw from scratch, which you can see ended up on the side. Oh, my scratch coleslaw with carrots and fresh pear is yummy, but it's not the star of this show. We also carved up a fresh seedless watermelon and opened a can of Bushes Grillin' Beans, which I've mentioned in an earlier recipe that I posted. They are great beans, I must say, and you can see here, that we added a little Redondo's sausage, a Hawaiian staple, like Spam, to spice them up a little.

She started from scratch and put together this BBQ sauce that is, believe me, out of this world, fantastic! It is sweet, yet spicy, and has a great little kick in the end. She put this together on her own and I can honestly say it is by far, the BEST BBQ sauce I have ever had. It's one for the books, Baby! And here it is for you to try for yourself: 

BAR-B-CUE CHICKEN AND SAUCE

Let chicken pieces soak at least several hours in mixture of buttermilk with a splash of Tapatio hot sauce (our favorite), black pepper, salt, and lemon juice. 

After soaking, let chicken rest and dry on a rack before BBQing.  Use skin on or off, bone in or boned, whatever's your favorite. This sauce will make it transcend the usual and become memorable.

Halfway through grilling, slather prepared, scrumptious BBQ Sauce all over the chicken

The Sauce:

Over low heat in saucepan mix:
1 cup ketchup
2 TBS Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tsp Tapatio or other hot sauce
2 cloves crushed garlic
1 bunch of fresh thyme - leaves off stem

Stir dry ingredients together before adding to sauce:
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 TBS paprika
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp chili powder

Let all ingredients incorporate into a rich flavorful sauce. It's sticky finger lickin good.

Now, how does that look? Onolicious, eh, brah? Go ahead, feel free to drool at any time, and please remember to wipe the screen to. :)

So, on this Memorial Day, we had a nice Bar-B-Cue with Dawn's sauce and, my beans (not so hard to make, yeah), coleslaw, and fresh cut, seedless watermelon. Pretty dang Memorial Day weekend kind of BBQ, huh? Also, from our garden, we pulled some beets, red onions, and tomatoes.

We would have harvested the mozzarella, but they weren't ready. :) I boiled the beats in water for about 30 minutes and let them cool in the refrigerator. Then we sliced them and added the red onion and tomatoes. We finished it off with a nice balsamic vinegar dressing and it was….awesome! Take a look. 

So, tomorrow is the last day of May and it's also Aloha Friday.  A nice beginning of June weekend is upon us, so why not start it off easy with some onolicious Bar-B-Cue chicken? How does it go? Reach down between your legs n' ease the seat back, put on some Friday afternoon driving music, and stop off at your local market and pick-up some supplies for an awesome beginning to the Summer BBQ season.

Ladies n' Gentlemen, start your Bar-B-Cues! Have a great weekend, and let me know what you think of Dawn's BBQ sauce. TGI 'Aloha' F, Baby!

Mahalo for cooking with Captain Bobby Mitchel

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Ship? Rock?…Shiprock?

Yes, Shiprock. What is it and where is it? Seriously, I've been flying for 28 years now and it was only recently that I finally put two and two together and found, researched, and photographed the illusive Shiprock. Not like it's as illusive as the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot, but to actually fly near it on a clear enough day with a good sun angle does take a little luck, if you know what I mean. And having grown up in Hawaii, I never really had the opportunity to see a lot of the US Mainland, so a majority of what I do see from above is new to me and it's beautiful.

Once I started flying commercially, I often heard of Shiprock. I'd hear, "Oh, there's Shiprock" and I'd respond with, "Oh, okay," when I really had no idea what I was looking at but just went along with it to make the Captain feel good. That's what First Officers do, you know. :) Come on now, leaving the beautiful islands of Hawaii for college and traveling the world for over 20 years, Daylight Savings Time (DST) was new to me; it still messes with me, even today.

So, here it is, Shiprock, New Mexico! WooHoo! It is kind of cool looking and really out there in the middle of nowhere.

I always thought, and was actually told a few times (probably by one of those Captains), that it was the mountain in the movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Yeah, not so much. That would be Devils Tower in Wyoming. Now, back to Shiprock.

Shiprock is Navajo for "Winged Rock" or Rock with Wings" and is located in the far Northwest corner of New Mexico, right near the Four Corners area. It rises about 1,583 feet to a peak elevation of 7,177 feet. It's a famous place for New Mexico tourism and is a favorite of photographers. While you can view many photos on the internet of Shiprock, you don't see many like the one I took above. Someday, though, I'll have to get out there and see it up close, but I have a lot more on the bucket list to go through first.

Well, that's Shiprock. I hope you like the photo and if you want to learn more, check it out on the internet at: Shiprock. And yes, I do point it out to my passengers when we're lucky enough to pass near it. I'm sure they see it, unlike those four intersecting lines on the Earth's surface that make the Four Corners area that I tell them about and have them rigorously searching for as we fly by the area. Oh, they're there, you just have to look really hard and concentrate. Hey, at least I'm not pointing out Bigfoot or UFOs, right?

Mahalo for flying with Captain Bobby Mitchel



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Kona Kai Honors Memorial Day

Whether friends, family, or countrymen and women ~~ Let's not forget those who made the ultimate sacrifice to defend the freedoms of our great nation. Thank you and God bless.

Mahalo for honoring with Captain Bobby Mitchel

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World Turtle Day!

So, today, May 23rd, is World Turtle Day. Yup, it's an actual day of observance since 2000 by the American Tortoise Rescue group, to bring attention to, and bring knowledge of and respect for turtles and tortoises. They want to promote human action to help turtles survive and thrive.

So, with that, Happy Turtle Day and remember to please be kind and respect our friends in the ocean, like the Honu, or Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle, above.

Mahalo for Diving with Captain Bobby Mitchel

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Bobby's Mixed Plate Hits 3,000!

A big Aloha and thank you to all who visited and return to share in the journey of Bobby's Mixed Plate. My Blog has now been viewed from around the world, as faraway as Australia, Japan, Egypt, the United Kingdom, and, of course, Hawaii. I'm so happy to be able to share something that touches someone's heart, make you stop and think, intrigues, or just gives a reason to smile. From underwater photos, photos from above, and Haikus of inspiration, I've tried to provide a mix of the many beautiful things I hold near and dear in my life. And of course, sharing the plethora of new recipes Dawn and I create, experiment with, or find in the hopes of spreading onoliciousness (another new one!) from the world is also a goal of this Blog.

Last evening, Bobby's Mixed Plate jumped over the '3,000 views' mark with the posting of photos and my Haiku from the Annular Solar Eclipse we witnessed yesterday, 20 May 2012. Thank you for joining me on this journey.

In the coming year, we have at least three dive trips planned back home on Maui, Kauai, and the Big Island of Hawaii, and you can always count on many more views from my office over the world.

And, finally, no Captain would not stop and take moment to thank my editor, sounding board, filter, cooking partner, bestest buddy, dive buddy, life inspiration, and lovely wife, Dawn. Also, no Captain can do it alone and thanks to my First Officer, Kona Kai Waikoloa for her unconditional puppy love and taste tests.

Cheers to a small, yet honorable, milestone and I look forward to the many postings ahead for my friends, old and new, from around the world. I look forward to the launching of Bobby Mitchel Photography's website, continued progress on the book, and hopefully a light to the finality of the cookbook. And remember, on Bobby's Mixed Plate you can join my passenger list, sign-up to follow with e-mail updates, follow posts on Pinterest, or just create a shortcut on your web browser to board and take a trip as often as you like; no assigned seating! ;)

Oh, and try fo' not forget to share Bobby's Mixed Plate wit your friends, eh, brah!

Mahalo for Luvin' Life with Captain Bobby Mitchel

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Annular Solar Eclipse Shadow Art, 20 May 2012

Eighteen years in the making and we witnessed the Annular Solar Eclipse today and what a spectacular event it was as Mother Nature again showed her glory for us. Not only were we treated to a late afternoon full solar eclipse, we also watched as shadows spread through the trees and across the backyard, onto various objects and structures we have throughout the yard.

Here is a beautiful display of the shadows as the sun's rays wrapping around the eclipsing moon shined through one of our trees and spread a beautiful pattern across the pillar of our patio.

Sometimes you just have to say, "Wow!"

Mahalo for Shadow Watching with Captain Bobby Mitchel


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Annular Solar Eclipse, 20 May 2012

Mahalo for Sky Gazing with Captain Bobby Mitchel



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Ginger Soy Steamed Butterfish

He's a Mahi guy and she's an Opah girl. So,...Butterfish? "What the heck is butterfish?" This is exactly what I said when I first heard about it on Christmas Day, 2006, the day I surprised and proposed to my wife, Dawn, on the beach, at sunset on the Waikoloa Beach Marriott Resort & Spa shoreline, just Northeast of Kona, Hawaii

Stay with me now for a bit, because you're soon going to get to the recipe to make this beautiful and tasty dish in just a few minutes. Gotta A.D.D. first... :)

Looks pretty onolicious, eh, brah? Hang tight!

Okay, short story; you can read about the whole, amazing event in my book. After the beach proposal Dawn and I ended up at Roy's Waikoloa Bar & Grill where we had dinner and met Manager, and now friend, Arnie. What a small world because Arnie went to Kamehameha, Dawn to Iolani, and me to Punahou. Yeah, we know which one's best :) And, get this, Arnie's cousin is a friend and Punahou classmate of mine and his Auntie is a family friend as she and my Mom worked together in the Punahou School Admissions Office. WOW! I mean, brah, this is one small world.

So, we meet, we talk a bit, and Arnie joins us at the table and asks about our wedding plans. We tell him it will be on King's Knoll, right across the street at the Marriott and in August 2007. And, yes, David O. was our photographer. What a great guy and fantastic photographer! Yup, we planned our entire wedding in a manner of a few short hours with a few, well, refreshments, and a lot of phone calls. "Reception?," Arnie asks. I respond with, "Not sure yet." He says, "Why not right here?" as he points down at us all sitting at the table together. I come back with, "Roy doesn't do wedding receptions at the restaurant." I was, am still a great fan of Roy's as Chef Roy Yamaguchi worked with my Dad back when he opened his first Roy's Restaurant in Hawaii Kai way back in 1988. My Dad worked in Commercial Property Management and Roy needed a place to open his first restaurant. Arnie next comes back with, "Well, he does now 'cause you're going to have it right here!" OMG, as the saying goes…This is going to be great.

So, we looked over the menu and discussed options right there, that night. The Misoyaki Butterfish appetizer came up and I had never heard of it before. I'm more of a Mahi guy while Dawn is an Opah girl. So Arnie suggested we try the butterfish and, OMG (yup,...again), it was freaking amazing! I had never tasted such a great fish and this recipe was wonderful. It just melted in my mouth and the flavors mixed so well together. My palate was have multiple org....well, you get it. ;)

Eight months later, Arnie shut down half the restaurant that evening and our wedding reception at Roy's Waikoloa Bar & Grill was nothing but spectacular! Everyone commented on what a 'different' reception it was and what a phenomenal meal they had that evening. Yes, the Misoyaki Butterfish Appetizer was definitely on the menu that evening. Also, thanks to Arnie, each table got a large Chocolate Soufflé to share while Dawn and I got a personal one (below) to have together. Let me just say, when you go to Roy's, get the Chocolate Soufflé. Understand? Get it!

So, back to butterfish. We hadn't heard of it for outside of Roy's until my great friend, Kent, sent me a Facebook message last month in Apr 2012, asking if I'd like some butterfish. Wow, I haven't heard that name in awhile. Butterfish, not Kent. :) Kent owns and operates Poi Boy Fishing in Anchorage, Alaska. He and I go way back to when we flew fighters together in England (a long time ago on a continent far, far away). So, after inquiring about the butterfish from Kent though a few e-mail exchanges, I learned that it's basically all the same. I mean, Black Cod is Butterfish, which is also know as Ling Cod. So, yeah, we're in. You better believe we're in! I think my mouth even watered a bit as I remembered Roy's butterfish and put two and two together. Seriously, I don't think I would ever order Black Cod on a restaurant menu if I saw it. Oh, yeah, I'd order butterfish, but cod? You mean, fish and chips type cod? Ah, yeah, not so much; not the same.

Heck, we're writing this cookbook too and we both remember Roy's onolicious Misoyaki Butterfish. We're always anxious for new recipes to make and design so this would be a great opportunity to work with butterfish ourselves. So, I say yes to Kent and a couple of day's later we get this ice packed box delivered via FedEx overnight and I open it to gaze upon 8 beautifully filleted and vacuum sealed sides of butterfish, fresh from the waters of Alaska. Seriously, look at this!

Nicely done, my friend. And please, check out Kent's, Poi Boy Fishing web page where you can order and receive beautiful filets just like those above. Nice pitch, huh?

Next up...a recipe. Well, neither Dawn nor I have Roy's Misoyaki Butterfish recipe, but Dawn had just returned from Kaneohe, Hawaii where she was visiting her newborn twin nieces. While there she was served a Ginger Soy Steamed fish that her sister-in-law, Viki, made for dinner one evening. She got her verbal recipe from a chef at the Hilton Waikoloa in Hawaii after an amazing anniversary meal. Dawn raved about how great it was, sending pictures on the night she had it.

Later that month, after coming home from a company trip and soon after Dawn's return from the islands, I arrived to find that she had made the Ginger Soy Steamed fish recipe for me with a piece of Mahi we had in the freezer. Remember, he's a Mahi guy? Well, needless to say, it was truly amazing and the oohing and aahing Dawn did via text that evening in Hawaii was spot on. Here it is accompanied with some forbidden rice.

Ginger Soy Steamed Mahi Mahi

So, let's make it sometime with Kent's butterfish, I thought. And what a great time to do it as Dawn's Dad and Step-Mom were soon to visit and they both love fish. So, we took out a couple fillets, cut them in half, and thawed them out for dinner. Collectively, we put the dinner together and the fish was again, the star of the meal.

Wow, thank's for hanging in there for me!  Here's the recipe:

Ginger Soy Steamed Butterfish

Fish:

4 - 4-6 ounce fillets

1 Tablespoon Minced Fresh Ginger Root

1/2 Tablespoon Salad Oil

Salt and Pepper to taste

In a blender or food processor, add oil and ginger and puree until smooth. Pour over fish

and mix to cover. Let stand for 1 hour.

Sauce:

1/2 Cup Soy Sauce

1/2 Cup Sugar

1 Tablespoon Minced Fresh Ginger Root

1 Tablespoon Minced Garlic

2 teaspoons Sesame Oil

Red Chili Flakes to taste

In a separate container, mix 1/4 Cup Cornstarch with 1/4 Cup Water

Combine sauce ingredients and cook over medium heat until it begins to thicken, 10-15

minutes. Slowly add cornstarch mixture until desired thickness is reached.  You will not use all of the mixture.  Keep warm.

Garnish:

Cilantro

Julienned Carrots

Julienned Scallions (green part only)

1/4 Cup Peanut Oil

2 Tablespoons Toasted Sesame Seeds

To Prepare the dish:

Season ginger infused fish with salt and pepper. Transfer to a basket steamer and

steam for 6 minutes or until flesh just starts to flake when pierced with a fork.

When fish is done, transfer to individual plates and drizzle sauce over fish. Top with

cilantro, green onions and carrots.

In a small pan, heat peanut oil until smoking. Drizzle smoking peanut oil over cilantro, green onions,

and carrots.  Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds and serve immediately.

Served here with forbidden rice and grilled artichoke with garlic aioli. The grilled artichoke and garlic aioli are in a totally separate recipe.

And here's the plating:

Ginger Soy Steamed Butterfish

Well, there you have it: one short story about our engagement night and a great new recipe to try for yourself. Seriously, it's very easy to make and takes no time at all. It's even faster if you have the sauce already prepared or frozen.  Dawn made a double batch of the sauce so we had it ready to go and the steaming takes only 6 minutes, so as amazing as the recipe is, you can have it on the table in no time.  Yes, I was a Mahi guy and Dawn an Opah girl, so this recipe would also work well on just about any sweet, white, flaky fish. Trust me, you will be pleasantly surprised and your palate will luv it. And remember, we still have some butterfish sealed away in the freezer, so don't be surprised if you see it on the table if you come and visit us.  (Thanks again Kent!)

Oh, and here's the picture I took moments after that proposal on Christmas Day, 2006. I had her hooked at that point, so I got to take some pictures while she made phone calls. Oh, the hopeless romantic...

Mahalo for Cooking with Captain Bobby Mitchel

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