Grilled chicken ‘n’ slaw and a heap of side stories…

The first real warm weather arrived this week by courier.

With the first real warm weather comes the real responsibility of having to adhere to the non-inferno house clause of the 1974 housewives treaty. Or, in layman’s terms, I can’t spend all day with the oven and stovetops glaring their redness (and in a stovetop or ovens case, that means heat) at me with such persuasive intent… Because that makes the house hot. With this in mind, and using the information offered to me by the natural temperature gauge in my body (or did I leave an actual thermometer up there again?) that was telling me it is effing hot, I decided I would not roast the chicken inside, but outside over the coals of a thousand rock star apprentice chefs that just didn’t quite work out.

But first, a dip in my jelly wrestling pit to cool off.

The chicken was roasted with anchovy and rosemary, purely because I can’t put the jar of anchovies down at the moment, which creates obvious anxiety at the urinal I don’t mind telling you. We battered and deep-fried a pile of anchovies the other day at work, we ate them with aioli and they were effing delicious. All that was needed was a fridge full of beer… And a slackening of the occupational health and safety laws. Point being, anchovies are really good. Try some good ones if you can afford it; imported white anchovies or pickled anchovies for something a little different (not little AND different. That would be some kind of freakish little carnie, all stinky and dressed in a 60 year old ring masters outfit. Freaky little carnie). You should keep some in the fridge next to your capers…

This is a mandolin.

This is someone playing a mandolin at a concert I went to on the weekend. We were amazed that she made such wonderful music. We danced a jig and a sailor’s yardarm and then it was off to bed.

This is a mandoline.

A mandoline is great to make short work of shredding cabbage and slicing things nice and thin. It has also been known in its time to scalp the fingertip of the over confident user, and take it back to the tribal dwelling to decorate the new cave. Some of the above story may not actually be fact.

I shall call this healthy slaw. It has all the good shit that I could steal from local gardens buy from the farmers market. And it feels like mid spring sort of styles. It’s dressed by Calvin Klein… I mean dressed with a mix of apple cider vinegar and soya mayonnaise. Delicious. Homemade or Japanese mayonnaise would do the job too. Just not praise creamy and rich. Save that for your white trash kids’ school sandwiches with lettuce on mighty white. And yes, I am a mayonnaise nazi.

Served with my home made hot sauce that I can’t remember how I made but am stoked that I made enough of it to survive the holocaust. And a pickle just to show ’em who’s the boss. And that’s Obi garnishing with some parsley he had chopped…

And maybe when you say grace, have an extra little moment for the creator of chicken and ‘slaw.

In a totally unrelated but related and related story, my bro Queenie made chicken burgers with ‘slaw for dinner last night. Pure coincidence.

Amazing.

Great. Nice. OK. Off you go then.