Garden Chefery.

We organised our first barbecue of the year last weekend, a practice run a day before ensured all would run smoothly.  Not wishing to buy a trolley load of stuff from Iceland (I can't be the only one who sees those adverts and feels immediately nauseous?) we instead hit the local butchers, bakers and fishmongers: money saved and quality more so guaranteed.

I think we planned to have one a week last summer but in the end, we ended up having ½ of one.

What usually happens is that you get a run of good weather during the week so you mark a BBQ spot in your diary for the weekend.  Of course cometh Saturday/Sunday the heavens open up...I think we can safely say God was an Aussie.

This time around everything fell into places nicely: the weather was spot on; we and guests get on (it helps when all parties have kids); fridge was rotund with wine and ale and food.

The 'barbie' was soon firing up but the we realised we didn't have enough coals/briquettes and with guests over within the next 15 minutes there was only one thing we could do....why – ask the guests to stop off at a garage and pick you some up!  So that's the 'gone wrong part 1' out of the way.

Next, given a few beers (and I was driving the BBQ from B&Q) you tend to gab whilst wuth your eyes are off the ball, or in the this case off the lamb steaks and sausages.  I certainly looked like I knew what I was doing – occasionally turning the meats, poking it, shifting it around etc but without really concentrating on the sizzling morsels.  When the ladies voiced expressions over where the bloody 'ell the food was, I realised that Cusquena had  somewhat taken over my faculties and had sufficiently neglected the cooking food to warrant burial.  

I tried to rescue the crispy slabs of charcoal (their burnt demeanour long giving up on the chance of guessing which animal they originated from) with some nice bread and salad (I wasn't in charge of that 'section' thankfully).  

For the boys drinking and gabbing I'm not so sure there was much concern in the air.  To the ladies just gabbing, hunger pangs not all satiated by the embers of sausages past isn't conducive to being in their good books.

The chicken I had put on in the meanwhile wasn't at all bad however.  A dash of lemon, seasoning and extra virgin olive oil created such smoke at one stage the back garden resembled an old Black Sabbath video.

Perhaps next time I'll drink less before being seconded to the cooking duties, although this has never been a problem when cooking indoors.  I like tapping into that primal space lodged in between iPodery and scratching  untethered parts of the anatomy.