Cooking With Fire

Chicken Shawarma

• 12 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• ¼ cup white wine vinegar
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 8 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoons salt or to taste
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon ginger powder
• ½ teaspoon allspice
• ¼ teaspoon ground coriander
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg powder
• Salt and pepper to taste

Garlic Sauce

• ¼ cup plain yoghurt
• ¼ cup mayonnaise
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp dried mint

Lebanese Rice

• ½ cup vermicelli, broken into small pieces (or orzo)
• 1 ½ cup white long grain rice
• ½ onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 750 ml stock, strained
• Salt

Fixin’s

• Pitta bread
• Cucumber
• Tomato
• Red onion
• Lettuce
• Pickled green chillies

Cooking

I cooked the chicken on a kamado grill with a heat deflector over one half of the fire. This allowed for indirect heat roasting, and also direct heat grilling on the other half. You can achieve something similar on a regular barbecue by piling all your coals up on one side of the grill so you have a direct, fierce heat section, and an indirect section of the grill.

If you don’t have a barbecue at all, you could roast the chicken in an oven then finish under the grill / broiler.

1. Make up the marinade, add the chicken, and leave it to do its magic overnight.
2. Tightly pack the marinaded chicken thighs onto a skewer.
3. Roast until the internal temperature is ~ 65c / 150f.
4. While the chicken is roasting, make the garlic sauce, and chop and de-seed the cucumber and tomatoes, slice the red onion and lettuce. Optionally season the salad vegetables (I used a restrained drizzle of olive oil, a squirt of lemon juice, salt and pepper).
5. Wash the rice.
6. Add some oil to a pan and fry the vermicelli until deep, golden brown.
7. Remove the vermicelli and reserve.
8. Gently fry the onion and garlic until soft, then add the vermicelli, the rice, and the stock.
9. Bring to a simmer, cover, and leave for 10 minutes.
10. Check the liquid – it should all have been absorbed. Put a sheet of kitchen towel over the pan, replace the lid on top, take off the heat. Keep the rice warm in an oven at 100’c.
11. Once the chicken has reached about 65c / 150f move it to direct heat and turn regularly to get some nice colour on the outside.
12. Pull the chicken thighs off the skewer and spread out over your grill for a couple of minutes a side – this will just make sure there’s no wet marinade left and will give a little more texture to the chicken.
13. Put the chicken thighs on a plate, tent with foil, and rest for 10 minutes.
14. While the chicken is resting make a shallow cut in one side of each of your pitta breads and toast them on the grill for a minute or two each side. This should help create the pocket.
15. Chop the chicken into strips.

16. Put some of the salad veggies in a pitta bread, add some chicken, dollop over some of the garlic sauce (and optionally some chilli sauce) and scoff.

Lovely fresh sea bream from the fish monger at the local market. Gutted and cleaned. Cavity stuffed with garlic, parsley, and lemon. Sides scored three times. Seasoned with salt and pepper.

Grilled over charcoal in my old Argos Home Drum Charcoal BBQ.

Served with salsa verde and crushed new potatoes (new potatoes, steamed, then crushed and roasted low with a little olive oil - they’re kind of a midway between mash and roast potatoes). And a cheeky rosé Sancerre

Done!

OTT (or 'Over The Top') chilli done on a Kamado Joe.

Onions, green peppers, jalapeños, tomatoes, pinto beans, adobo paste and stock were added to a dutch oven and set to simmer over a low heat.

I took a seasoned mix of beef and pork mince and formed it into a ~~BRAIN~~ meaty lump then set it on a grate over the chilli. As the lump smoked, any juices dripped down into the pot below.

After a couple of hours smoking, the meat was cooked through and the chilli had reduced nicely.

I broke up the meaty lump and stirred it into the chilli, then gave it another hour, still over a low heat, let the flavours combine and develop.

Boerewors and chicken sosaties cooked over Kameeldoring (Camel Thorn) wood on a Kamado Joe.

This was taken about the point where I realised my fire was way hotter on one side than the other (which is why one of the kebabs looks ready to go and the one closest to the sausage looks almost raw. Perils of cooking over wood, I guess, but worth it and I balanced it all out in the end. Will do better next time!

I brought the Kamado Joe up to a temperature of about 125C with one grate as low as possible over the coals and the other as high as possible with a heat deflector under it.

The steak was taken from the fridge over an hour before cooking time and then very simply, but liberally, seasoned with Diamond Crystal kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

The initial cook time was on the top grate over the heat deflector for about 90 minutes as it gradually came up to an internal temperature of just over 50C.

I let the steak rest under a foil tent while I opened up the top and bottom vents on the Kamado Joe to let it rip up to a searing heat, maybe 10 minutes or so and a dome temp of about 300C. Then I gave the steak just a couple of minutes on each side (including the edge).

The final temperature was just about bang on 55C.

Served with chips, grilled mushrooms, and dijon mustard.

Fantastic.