The Barbecue! Bible
It’s Ann here. Andy is over in OurLIttleCorner writing about why chickens cross roads.
Hope everyone out there…fathers, especially…had a nice Father’s Day. Did you grill something to celebrate? I dug out our old cookbook, The Barbecue! Bible by Steven Raichlen. It sits on our bookshelf beside our other favorite grilling books – The Thrill of the Grill and License to Grill, both by Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby. What’s kind of sad is that we rarely look at cookbooks anymore. Almost everything new that we cook is now googled.
An interesting aside: Raichlen’s dedication in the cookbook reads “Every family needs a patriarch. Ours was my grandfather…” The perfect comment for a “Bible” and for Father’s Day – even though that might be “un-gendered” today.
Our The Barbecue! Bible is torn and tattered with multiple pages bookmarked. It’s clear that we weren’t googling as many things back in 1998 when it came out. One page that was marked was for “Bademiya’s Justly Famous Chile-Coriander Chicken,” and that’s what I decided to make for Andy’s Father’s Day. Raichlen wrote that Bademiya was (is?) a food stall in Bombay (now Mumbai), behind the Taj.
My desire to do a tikka-type grilled chicken resulted from a recent dinner at Yeti, a favorite Indian/Himalayan restaurant of ours that is right here in little Glen Ellen (population about 998). I ordered their Yeti Chicken – “tikka marinated in a Himalayan spice served in a somname mint sauce.” D-lish! I believe the Nepalese name for this dish is Chicken Sekuwa. Maybe even better than the chicken was the mint sauce served with it.
Ultimately, I ended up doing a riff on Raichlen’s recipe and several chicken sekuwa recipes I found online. My mint sauce, aka Pudina Chutney, is also a mix of online finds.
But before posting the recipe, I have to share a song from 1954. It’s an odd and meaningful coincidence that both Andy and I remember our mothers tearing up when they would hear Eddie Fisher sing this. Both of our mothers had very special relationships with their dear fathers, our grandfathers. Every family needs a parent or grandparent who is dear.
Fathers in Glen Ellen are lucky to have several really nice restaurants to choose from when Father’s Day rolls around. The Fig Cafe, the Glen Ellen Star, the Garden Court Cafe, and Yeti are all favorites. Or you can always grill at home! 🙂
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