Hi, Hive! Spending weekends at the computer is boring, so my friends and I try to go out of town every Saturday. Sometimes just for a swim in the lake, sometimes for a walk in the woods, but more often it's sitting around the fire, bbq, and lazing on the banks of local flooded quarries.
The last few days it's been awfully hot and the thermometer reads 30-33'C so first we waited until the sky was overcast and went to one of our favorite spots.
Since I like to cook and most of the time I spend my time outdoors by the barbecue, I decided to surprise my friends a bit and added a couple of interesting items to our menu.
The first was a char-grilled bell bell pepper. It's pretty quick and easy to prepare - we throw the peppers on the hot coals, let them "burn", then peel the skin and enjoy the soft and hot vegetable :)
Then I got busy with the pork sausages, which I smeared with Thai lemongrass and galangal sauce a couple of minutes before they were ready. A little spicy, but very tasty, and most importantly - Asian spices go well with greasy food and give a magical flavor on the coals.
Since we have a big company, we had to cook a lot, and one of our friends marinated chicken wings beforehand. The heat just eased up a little after the sausages, so all I had to do was to spread the wings on a grill, brush them with soy sauce and yuzu, and wait for the delicious crispiness to appear :)
As a fan of extreme cooking - I seasoned my wings with Trinidad Scorpion pepper sauce and was very pleased. Searing, flavorful and damn tasty.
It was a shame to waste the heat, so I made some last-minute sandwiches for my friends. I grated some Parmesan, crumbled some herbs, covered the bread with beaten egg, added some chorizo sausage to nourish it, and quickly fried it on the grill. Unfortunately I forgot to bring oil and foil, so the sandwiches were a bit stuck to the grill and it took a lot of hard work to get them off without destroying them :)
The time passed quickly while we were enjoying the food and drinks, so we were going home at sunset, and the road through the local wind farm looked just gorgeous.
After such a busy and good day in a cheerful company we went home and immediately went to bed, and we can call this day a great start to August.