A barbeque at our place aka.Roast lamb in the fire for four hours

Jen was freaking. FREAKING! What do you mean chase the coals? What the fuck is ‘chase the coals’? It’s not going to be ready is it? You haven’t even checked it have you Graeme?… and more.

This is how I was greeted when I got home from work yesterday.

No ‘hi darling, how was your day’, no scotch on ice and a cigar, no… well, you get the picture.

I guess to make things totally fair I should prefix this story. Yesterday Jen put lamb in the coals all by herself, for the first time ever. Now, it may seem like I am being a bit sarcastic or synical here but the truth is, I am not. I know what a daunting task roasting in the coals can be. No temperature gauge, just your intuition and your senses, yep, you gotta trust your head for this one. So if your head is a little fucked up and un-trustworthy and random looking, maybe don’t attempt this one just yet.

My friend Morgan asked me what the general rule of thumb was when cooking in the coals. Cut your thumb off, get rid of it, chuck it in the coals. I never want to see it again.

So many variables come with cooking outside, the sun or rain will change temps real quick, as will wind. The amount of coals you have. What sort of wood are you burning? Hard wood? Soft wood? What type of meat is it? What cut? How big is your fire? How many koalas are on the fire? (their thick fur will dampen the fire a little). How much have you drunk?

So I guess right now you are thinking ‘what the fuck is this guy on about?’, and I would say that’s a fair question. Am I even trying to encourage you to give this a go? Or do I want to be the fire king forever?

I would have to say there is one vote for ‘no’ and two votes for ‘yes’ right there.

But anyway this is how we rolled on the day;

Jen bought the lamb. She bought two whole shoulders because we had 12ish adults to feed and trust me, you can never really have enough lamb if it comes from an open fire. A truly new meaning to the late night lamb sandwich at the very least (I’m wishing we did three right now). And a few snags aswell, to be cooked a little later by Dom on the ‘little sausage fire’.

I bought some booze.

To cook you need to season the shit out of the lamb with heaps of salt and freshly cracked pepper, chuck in a handful or two of fresh herbs if you have some near by (and you bloody well should have by now… at the very least), and wrap with a liberal amount of alfoil.

I can’t really explain what happens next unless you come over for yourself and look and smell and touch and feel the heat, but let me just say… it was effing awesome. Delicious. Magnificent.

Well done Jenny, well done.