Midweek BBQ

Menu

Chez Panisse Chicken Wings 

Onions BBQ’d in their skins with crème fraîche and fresh mint

BBQ’d vegetable salad

An impromptu and fun midweek meal that used up some vegetables which were getting on a bit. I also tried a first recipe from the Alice Waters Chez Panisse Menu Book which arrived in the post today. We ended up getting very jolly drinking rosé outside, which there hasn’t been too much opportunity to do this summer on account of the weather, and entertaining all sorts of glorious fantasies about how we might live.

Chicken wings

Marinaded in lemon juice, with a few cloves of crushed raw garlic, crushed peppercorns and olive oil. Seasoned with salt just before cooking on the BBQ.

Onions:

Bbq small red onions or shallots whole in their skins, turning often. When they are charred and the insides are soft and fizzing  a little, remove. Serve with  a small bunch of fresh mint and a big tablespoon of crème fraîche seasoned with salt and pepper.

Salad of BBQ’d vegetables (inspired by Rachel Roddy’s Palermo salad)

1 scorched and peeled red pepper; 1 aubergine bbq’d whole until soft, then peeled and chopped; massively overgrown courgette (with seeds and skin removed), grilled in slices; potatoes boiled in their skins then peeled and diced

I tossed all of these with a few tablespoons of chopped fresh parsley, 1 clove finely chopped garlic, juice 1/2 lemon, 4 tablespoons of olive oil and plenty of salt and pepper.