Rog T's food blog - Bone!

 I had a wonderful evening on Saturday night. A good friend of mine asked me around for a barbeque. This is probably my favourite way of eating on a Saturday night. We have a long standing in joke about Nigerian Guinness and Jerk Chicken. We have often  joked that if ever The Bridge Tavern in Mill Hill closes, we'll reopen it as a Nigerian Guinness and Jerk chicken bar. I shared my Jerk Chicken sauce recipe with him and it was excellent. In the course of the evening I got talking to one of his friends. We were discussing food. I expressed an opinion that if you don't know how to cook, you never really know if something tastes good. When I cook I am a serial expermineter. Like my friend, I am always keen to try new recipes. I was explaing to the guy I was chatting to that for me, a real eureka moment was chatting to a friend, who happens to be and elderly academic of Palestinian heritage. He told me that when he first arrived in the UK, the food always tasted very bland to him. He'd go to top restaurants, get the finest cuts of meat, but there was no flavour. Then he went around to his Palestinian mates for a barbeque and found the food was far more delicious than the top London fancy restaurants.

He realised that this was because they always cooked the food on the bone. The English have an aversion to bones in food. We'd happily eat something bland and tasteless, if it had no bones. This is why we are so keen on chicken nuggets. Te coating makes up for the flavour we remove by taking the bones out. The same is true for fish. This is a major cause of consternation in my house, as my wife hates fish with bones. If I cook fish, I have to fillet it for her. Invariably miss a bone and she berates me. Much to my wife's irritation, I also do not share her obsession with knives and forks, a very English foible. I am happy to pick up a chop and knaw the meat off it. She thinks this makes me an ignorant savage and suggests that I am  akin to Fred Flintstone. I am somehow not upset by such comparisions. Of all the figures in modern TV and Film, I think Fred Flintstone is one of the happiest and there is much to admire about him.

One key feature of proper Palestinian cooking is that they use a firepit (known as a Zarb oven) to cook in. As I understand it, you dig a hole, line it with rocks, then fill it with charcoal and lit. The vegetables, juices and meat are all put in and the food cooks slowly. I need to try this. I quite like the concept of cooking a whole chicken in a firepit, it is one sort of cooking that London doesn't seem to be blessed with a huge selection of restaurants who do this. In principle, I love the idea of simply putting the food in a hole, going off for the day and coming back and it's cooked to perfection and delcious, but clearly there is more to it than that. Anyway, this is my big plan for the summer. To do this and get it right. 

I will report back!