Your Chance to Grill Bobby Flay. Or, At Least, Grill With Bobby Flay

Admit it, you’d like to school Bobby Flay on national TV, showing him how to truly grill. Food Network is looking for people to appear on the latest Flay enterprise, “Grill It with Bobby Flay.” (Seriously, how many shows can one guy star in on the Food Network?)

According to the channel, applicants must send a 3-minute VHS tape or DVD of themselves cooking something. There are no winners or losers on the show, so don’t expect some big prize. But hey, if you’re a media whore like me, just being on TV is enough. Here’s the address:

ATT: GRILL IT! 110 Leroy Street, New York City , NY 10014

Send those tapes in by March 15; you’ve gotta be 18 or older.

Batty for Gingerbread

When the mailman delivers a surprise package from JustJenn, it is indeed a happy day. Even if he also dropped off the water and power bill. Above, JustJenn’s gingerbread bats. Check out the process here.

Franklin Avenue Kitchen: Risotto with Wild Mushrooms and Scallops

For Valentine’s Day, I traditionally hit the Food Network website and whip up a Giada recipe. This year, I went with Tyler Florence’s Risotto with Wild Mushrooms and Scallops (found here).

Tyler rates the recipe as easy and done in 30 minutes. I’d bump it up to intermediate, and warn you that it will take more than half and hour. Not only does it take a while to prepare all the ingredients, but the rice in the risotto takes a while to cook.

The recipe calls for 1 1/2 pounds sea scallops; I picked up two bags of frozen scallops at Trader Joe’s for $5.99 each (this isn’t a cheap dish!) I also bought portobello, shiitake and regular mushrooms at TJs… but the herbs — thyme sprigs, flat-leaf parsley and bay leaves — required a separate trip to Gelson’s.

Tyler says the dish will feed 4 servings; we found it to be more like 6 or 8. So much was there in the cooking stage that we had to eventually move it to a bigger pot (above).

In the end, though, all the time and grief was worth it.