First Barbecue of 2008

The sun has been shining the last week or so and what with the weather sages telling us that yesterday would be the last good day of sunshine for about a week, the rallying call went out to the regular bunch of guys who enjoy unwinding with an after-work drink, an activity affectionately known as a 'midweek skirmish'.

This week's skirmish would be relocated to Southsea Common for the first barbecue of 2008. Armed with disposable barbecues, beers and coolbag full of food we embarked upon the field of battle - Southsea Common. Amongst other goodies purchased from Buckwell's of Southsea, I had 'jerked' some chicken - not entirely sure how authentic it was - my good lady's Mum does some nice seasoned West Indian chicken, but as she's from Trinidad it's not exactly the same as Jamaican jerk so mine may have been a curious mixture of the two. As always more inspired by a rummage through the store cupboard than any particular method, I kinda threw a lot of things into a blender and blitzed them up. Here's the ingredient list for my jerk seasoning.

4 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp of jerk seasoning
2 dried birdseye chillis
1 dried kashmiri chili
1 dried chilli (from my pot of home dried chillis)
1 tsp of hot chilli powder
good pinch of thyme leaves
1/2 cinnamon stick
juice and rind of 2 lemons
1/2 onion
2 sticks of celery (including the leaves)
sunflower oil
sea salt

I stabbed the chicken drumsticks a few times with a knife, poured the whole lot over and let them marinade overnight.

The finished article was very impressive and went down very well with the 'midweek riflers'. The spice was quite hot, more of a slow builder with a lovely tingle on the lips and a nice citrus zip - good job I didn't throw in the chopped scotch bonnet that I was contemplating.

Plans are afoot to get a proper barbecue and stow it with a rifler who lives near the common - so weather permitting more adventurous barbecue action should be occurring later in the year. Looking forward to doing my chilli king prawn kebabs again at some point.

Picture to follow.