In the UK, to compensate for the usual dreary Summers and to kid ourselves into some sort of misguided belief, we would always hope and sometimes believe that we were going to have an Indian Summer. People would gossip about it on the streets, "I definitely heard it on the news", some would say and we would all long for that late Summer sunshine, when the temperatures would soar and produce a hot September and October. I can't remember it ever happening in Britain, but it seems to be happening to some extent this year in BC. The temperatures forecast for this week are the hottest all year and in a delicious twist of irony, it just so happens to be the week the kids go back to school.
So, what was intended to be one of the last barbecues of the season may not be after all. (Neil and I barbecued again the night after, in fact). The combination of labour day long weekend and 27oC temperatures meant a big dinner at one of our usual haunts, those of the Braai variety. There are lots of recipes on here, hailing from places such as Mexico, Italy, Canada and Thailand and a whole bunch of photographs. I will explain each dish after the relevant photographs and don't worry if it's all a little overwhelming, I'll break them up and post them into the recipe pages later.
Recipe : Mozzarella salad
Inspired by a Jamie Oliver recipe, this salad is full of bursting flavour from roasted peppers and tomatoes and dressed with a herbal and zingy pesto and lemon dressing
1/2 ball Mozzarella, grated or cut into fine slivers
5 bell peppers of varying colours and 2 chili peppers
10 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 tbsp oil from the top of a jar of pesto and 1 tbsp pesto
Juice of one lemon
1/2 tsp salt
Freshly ground black pepper
A handful of mixed herbs (I used basil, fennel and mint), finely chopped
Seed the peppers and cut into quarters. Lay them along with the chilies onto a baking tray and grill (broil) until the skins are blackened.
Place them into zip loc bags or cover with cling wrap and let them steam for 10 minutes to allow the skins to slide off easily. When they are cool enough, peel them and slice into thin strips. Seed the chilies if you want a milder salad and slice them thinly also.
Place the peppers and chilies in a bowl and add all other ingredients. Mix together well and cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.
Recipe : Sweet potato and avocado salad
This recipe saved the life of a lone sweet potato, destined to be thrown away until I decided it was fine and needed using. Earthy flavours from the beet are balanced with the sweetness of the potato and the freshness of the avocado.
1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into chunks
1 beet, peeled and cut into chunks
1/2 white onion, cut into chunks
2 cloves garlic, left whole
1 tbsp oil
1 avocado, peeled and cut into chunks
juice of half a lemon
splash or two of white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp salt or more to taste
Freshly ground black pepper
Place the beet, sweet potato, onion and garlic onto a baking dish and drizzle with the oil. Season well and bake for about 45 minutes to one hour at 375oF until the beet and potato are soft and the onion slightly caramelized. Remove from the oven and squeeze the garlic from it's skins. Stir into the other vegetables.
Let cool and then add the avocado and dress with the lemon juice, vinegar, salt and pepper, stirring well but carefully to avoid breaking the potato too much. Serve at room temperature or chilled.
Recipe : Chicken under a brick (Again, but this time really under a brick).
1 chicken
salt, pepper and paprika
Glaze
1 tbsp Korean Gochujang sauce
1 tbsp sweet chili sauce
1 tsp hot sauce
1 tbsp mayonnaise
First, you need to spatchcock the chicken. This means cutting it down the back and opening up like a book.
Lay the chicken breast side down on a steady board with a tea towel underneath to prevent slipping.
Using a pair of kitchen scissors or a sharp knife, cut the chicken all the way down the backbone until you can open the chicken and lie it flat. I removed the breast bone also by feeling and cutting around the bone leaving the flesh intact, but it's not necessary to do this.
Season the chicken very well with salt, pepper and paprika and set aside until ready to cook.
To make the glaze, simply mix all the ingredients together in a bowl until thoroughly combined. Cover and refrigerate until needed. The cooking process will be shown later.
Recipe : Chicken stuffed with prawns and fried onions
This is a recipe Neil and I watched blearily eyed one morning on breakfast TV. It seemed a tasty combination even at that ungodly hour. I pieced together what I could remember and what I thought would taste good. The prawns are mixed with fish sauce, lime juice and crisp onions, which gives the dish a distinct Vietnamese slant, being salty, crunchy and sour, but also helps to keep the chicken breast moist as it cooks. The mix needs no sugar as the prawns provide the sweetness required.
2 chicken breasts off the bone with skin
1/4 cup raw prawns
1/2 hot chili pepper, seeded and sliced finely
1 tbsp finely chopped fresh basil
2 tsp dried fried onions
1 tsp fish sauce
juice of half a lime
Chop the prawns fairly coarsely and mix with the other stuffing ingredients. Using your fingers, gently loosen the skin of the breast to create a pocket between the flesh and skin. Stuff the prawn mixture into the pocket and tightly wrap the chicken in foil.
To cook, place the foil wrapped chicken onto low direct heat of a barbecue and cook for around 20 - 25 minutes until cooked through. The stuffing will have 'melded' together and you can now brown the skin directly on the barbecue. Allow to rest before cutting into slices and serving.
Many times on this blog I have spoken about the profusion of fennel that grows outside my friends' house. Here is proof absolute that this beautiful herb does indeed grow wild in large, fragrant patches.
No recipe for this, just store bought pork, ready seasoned and grilled until brown and crispy with soft, succulent flesh.
My kind of appetizer.
The chicken under a brick was laid breast side down onto indirect heat at first.....
The completely normal house bricks were scrubbed then wrapped in foil and.....
....laid directly onto the chicken, pushing the flesh down onto the bars creating charred grilling marks and crispy skin.
Unfortunately some of the skin was torn away through the use of too fierce a flame, but the flesh itself takes on a crispy, golden hue which intensifies the savoury, umami tastes and gives you a very tasty bird.
The glaze contained sugar which can burn as soon as you look away to reach for your drink, so a little scraping was required. If you look carefully at the chicken you can see that he is one winged, something usually stated on the wrapping: 'This chicken may be missing a limb'. Not this time, so his deformity was something of a shock and a disappointment, wings being the crispiest, tastiest morsels to gnaw on.
Recipe : Home made tortilla chips
These were far superior to any shop bought variety, having taken on a golden, toasty texture. Roshni sprinkled them with sea salt only, but you can adjust the seasonings to anything you like or have available.
2 tortillas
1 tsp oil
1 tsp sea salt
Roast the tortillas in a medium oven (about 375oF) wrapped in foil for 10 minutes or so.
Brush with oil, sprinkle with the salt and cut into triangles. Fry in a dry frying pan rubbed with a scant amount of butter until crispy and toasted.
Recipe : Potato salad
As I sat taking a mouthful of this salad, I declared I could taste mustard, lemon juice and salt. "Anything else?" said my friend. I suddenly felt like the biggest food nerd ever and asked if I was turning into a food blog bore. He assured me he was just interested in the palate and the way taste can be learnt after watching Hell's kitchen lately, but I think he may have been humouring me. I shut up after that. This recipe, therefore, is guess work. I love potato salads that have more of a light dressing like this one, I'm not a big fan of the mashed up variety cloaked in a heavy, cloying mayonnaise.
6 small potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
1 tbsp grainy mustard
juice of half a lemon
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried parsley flakes
Boil the potatoes until soft and drain. Mix the mustard, lemon juice, salt and parsley flakes together and pour over the potatoes while still warm. Mix well and serve at room temperature. (Don't chill).
Corn. It's interesting how ideas change. Corn on the cob would always be boiled in salted water and slathered with butter when I was younger and my mum or dad were cooking. Now, after savouring the intense sweetness that occurs when cooking straight on hot coals to caramelize, I couldn't imagine cooking it any other way. Roshni simply boiled hers and we munched through it with no adornment whatsoever. It was a revelation to taste that pure corn taste again, not too sweet and crunchy.
Roasted garlic. Simply wrapped in foil and barbecued over indirect heat for 40 minutes. The pungency mellows and sweetens and of course, softens and I ate it squeezed straight out of it's skin into my mouth. Sometimes I spread it on a piece of bread or mix it into a sauce. Nobody walked away while I was talking to them, so I ate another.
Recipe : Vegetables with piri piri sauce
1 cup colourful mixed veg such as red onion, bell peppers, zucchini and carrots.
1 tbsp oil
2 tbsp Nando's extra hot piri piri sauce (or any other variety)
Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium heat and add the vegetables. Saute, stirring very frequently until softened but still retaining some bite. Add the sauce and mix well and serve. This was quite a hot and spicy dish, but you can adjust the amount of sauce to your own tastes.
The chicken, shredded. In the end, most of the skin blistered and burnt as mentioned earlier, although a few choice pieces remained. The flesh inside was relatively juicy, but no more so than if the chicken had been roasted. The glaze added a little sweetness that everyone commented on but I think the two previous attempts (here and here), were more successful as the thighs used can be flattened more successfully. I have also seen a chef on TV use a smaller chicken and a frying pan for this which resulted in mahogany glazed skin and moist flesh. I think my curiosity is satiated for now.
Adriana is from Mexico and often creates incredibly simple but amazing dishes to share. At a boxing day party she arrived armed with this soup. We all commented on how much we enjoyed the bacon flavour that day to which her husband said "that wasn't bacon, they were pig's belly buttons". I still don't know if he was joking. This salmon was definitely salmon, however and had an incredible toasty, briny, slightly bitter and savoury topping. I quizzed her about it several times, unable to work out what ingredients she had used until I could finally remember what she said and here it is..
Recipe : Salmon with sea weed and onion topping
1 side of salmon
1 tbsp oil
2 tbsp dried fried onion flakes
1 tbsp seafood seasoning, (not sure which brand but it contained orange zest as one of the ingredients which they said was important).
1 tbsp dried dulse
1 clove garlic, chopped small
Rub the salmon all over with the oil and mix the topping ingredients together well.
Spread the topping all over the salmon and drizzle with a little more oil. Grill (broil) until cooked through and the topping is crispy.
The stuffed chicken after being removed from the wrap.
Browned slightly on the coals and....
...sliced very amateurishly by me, spilling the precious stuffing I so carefully tried to protect.
As I mentioned earlier, Neil and I barbecued again the next night. Nothing too exciting to report. A perfect strip loin, some corn, a few peppers and this, Halloumi cheese, grilled straight on the barbecue until charred and crispy and served with some lightly toasted tortillas and some sweet chili sauce. Barbecue season isn't over yet.
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