It has been some time since I actively participated in a “barbeque session”.
The last time I did that was a year ago although in between, I have been to my cousin’s house with a beer on one hand and well-done barbequed chicken on the other for dinners. Usually my younger cousins will take care of the barbequing activities (ya, they like to play with fire) whilst the older ones like me help out from time to time (not barbequing but eating of course).
My friend from the office called some of us the other day for a house warming function at his new house. He has just moved in couple weeks ago and decided to have a small gathering at his house to commemorate the event. The gatherings suppose to start at about 4.00 pm although some of them informed him that they will be there at about 5.00 pm.
As usual, I decided to go there early and then leave early. Besides I had something to do at that evening. We (me, my wife and my son) arrived at my friend’s house at 4.15 pm. I noticed that he was preparing the fire for the barbeque. We went in and chit-chatted with rest of the people. My son went straight for the heap of toys that laying on the floor.
My friend is Malay, so I can forget about having a cold beer to kill time. The other colleagues have not arrived and there was nothing exciting on the TV. I soon was getting bored. I went out and saw my friend with his brand new barbeque set and he was having hard time to start the fire. So, to kill time – I decided to help out.
Pulling out all my past “barbequing” experiences (ahem!), we managed to get the fire going and placed the first chunk of chicken on the steel top. We had some problems initially – the chunks of chicken was too big and we did not have sesame oil to cover the chicken whilst we were barbequing it. Due to the size, we had to cook it longer causing burned portion of chicken on the top.
The smaller chunks were evenly cooked and it was quickly finished by the hungry guest as soon as it was taken out from the fire. It was hot afternoon and it was hotter standing beside the fire. We were sweating a lot but unfortunately there was no cold beer to cool me down. I had to contend for a lowly “jus oren ais” drink that has been prepared for the gathering (easily took 10++ cups due to the heat) but it felt good when drowning the iced drink whilst barbequing.
My friend also ordered plenty of satay for the gathering – so the barbeque set acted as a place to heat up the satay whilst we were busy barbequing on one corner. On the bigger chunks of chicken, as we suspected, it was not properly cooked in the inside (although it was badly burned on the outside). One quick solution was to make several cuts on the meat so that the heat could penetrate faster. Of course, the other thing that we did was to cut the big chunks into smaller pieces and cook them again.
I had fun barbequing the chicken. Its looks like I have to add a “barbeque session” for my own house warming function. I just might add it in – after all, there are plenty of barbeque chefs from my family.
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