On Saturday night we had our first barbecue. This was a big moment for me. The barbecue is an essential part of Australian life. Over here it is almost a religion. It has it's own customs and rituals and is taken very seriously. Every man must know how to barbecue. It is an art that has been passed down over thousands and thousands of years, ever since the early aboriginals first threw a possum on the fire for dinner. The secret lore is passed down father to son in an unbroken line of heritage. There is Fire and there are Important Tools that one must know how to wield. Important tools like Tongs or The Wooden Spoon, or the mysterious Stubby Holder.
I've had plenty of barbecues at the houses of friends and family but this was to be the very first barbecue that I would be in charge of. It was to be my initiation, my baptism by fire.
And to cut a long story short I made a bit of an arse of it. Not knowing anything about the mystical art of barbecue except what I had learnt in the UK (as we know UK BBQ is very different involving cagoules and cheap disposable barbecues which make Aussies shake their heads in disbelief, and driving rain and wind, you know the situation - everyone else is inside the nice warm house while Dad is out battling with the elements and some sausages from Aldi) and with no tribal elder available to guide me on the path I set about burning myself and the food.
The secret to successful barbecue, I now realize, is good planning. For my first effort I just set about it all wrong. We got the barbecue assembled fine and even connected up the gas bottle without any problems, but when I put the lava rocks in (basically hot coals to distribute the heat to the food), half of them ran under the grill so I tried to dig them out with my bare hands forgetting I'd just had the gas on a minute ago. You can imagine the screams of pain, but I would not let that stop me! It became a game of Operation involving fiery red hot metal and my delicate fingers. Obviously putting an oven glove on would have been the answer. After this set back I got straight on with cooking the meat and chucked the chicken kebabs on to the grill. It looked like they were cooking well but when I tried to turn them I realized they were completely stuck to the hot metal because I'd failed to oil either the meat or the grill. So half the chicken ripped off and what wasn't stuck fell onto the Lava rocks to become incinerated chicken nuggets that are now a permanent part of the barbecue. Oil was quickly applied to the remaining meat and then things went much better. However we'd set ourselves the task of creating a Thai style chicken and mango salad, so while I wasn't doing the meat I had to help Julia with chopping all the veg and making the dressing. This involved a lot of running back and forth, in and out the house, and tripping over things in a Basil Faulty kind of way. It was a very hot evening to I was sweating like mad. Then by the time the meat was cooked and the outdoor table was finally prepared and looking all pretty and we were just getting ready to sit down to a perfect dinner al fresco (I was dripping with sweat and swearing my head off by this stage) wasps appeared!
Evil nasty drunk and disorderly wasps looking for a fight and a taste of the mango and the sweet chilli sauce.
Wasps everywhere, all across the world, are the natural born enemy of the barbecue man (or woman). How do you deal with them? Trying to whack one with a flip flop just makes it more angry! As does rolled up newspaper or wooden spoons or barbecue tongs - all useless.
We gave up and retreated inside to lick our wounds and eat our dinner. I now know why barbecue man is always seen with a beer in his hand - to deal with the stress.
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| The sunglasses are to hide the tears |
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| the fruit of our endeavour |
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| before the wasps |
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