fenchurch | Comfort food and new experiences

rackham has been working late a lot recently (and will probably continue to do so for a little while longer), leaving me to fend for myself come dinner-time. It hasn't really been so bad, since it's nowhere near the sort of hours he was working when he was still at WordPerfect (ten and a half years ago... wow!), and he's able to actually take, you know, vacations and stuff.

Anyway, the other day I'd dug some ground sirloin patties out of the freezer and decided to brave the gas grill... it's not that I dislike grilling or anything, it's just that Rackham really enjoys doing it, so I've always wound up just letting him take care of the barbecuing side of the ~~Force~~ menu (because, really, having two people trying to run a grill? Not practical). Embarrassingly, I had to call him to find out how to start up the grill in the first place (in my defense, we just replaced our old well-worn and familiar gas grill earlier this year), but then I was able to put my years of observation and my hours of obsessive Alton Brown worship to use! In the last week I've had hamburgers twice (including yummy grilled onions). And yeah, I've been feeling just a bit proud of myself for grilling them up, solo, without anything going *foom*.

And now for the latest accomplishment... today, for the first time in my life, I actually grilled up a chicken (cut in parts, of course) using my family's Guamanian Chicken recipe! Yum!!! I always make the marinade and chop up the chicken (since someone *cough*cough* has never quite gotten the hang of it), but I've never actually grilled it, myself. I feel rather stupidly proud of myself over this.

Even better, I'd whipped up some of my family's potato salad earlier today to go with it. Yum! Total comfort food!

And now for a rather hopeless description of the Guamanian Chicken recipe. It really is, too... since no one has ever bothered to go so far as to measure anything. And yet my aunt, my mom, my dad, my grandfather and I all make it *exactly* the same (this is also true of the potato salad and the family's fruit salad).

Basic ingredients:
Kikkoman (or Yamasa) soy sauce -- until it looks right.
white vinegar -- until it smells right
2-5 lemons -- depends on amount of other ingredients. Juice of lemons, rinds of half of the lemons.
1-3 limes -- see above. Juice of limes, rinds of half of the limes.
1/2 to 1 large onion -- chopped in half and sliced.
1/3 - 1/2 a palmful of dried boonie peppers (aka Chili Piquins) -- crushed in your hands and dumped in. (CAUTION: Wash your hands VERY thoroughly after this stage)

Add a bit of water to sort of top it off... add more water if you want to marinate overnight, less if you're just going for a few hours. The chicken pieces should be somewhat brown when they're done marinating... I also like to construct the marinade a day or two in advance to give it time for the flavors to combine.

So, yeah, a bit hopeless to follow unless you've done it before, but it's the taste of family and the taste of my childhood and just plain yummy.