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As I live in America, and therefore it was a national holiday (which we don't have enough of, look at those countries with all those Bank Holidays), I, of course, rather than take my day to myself, invited people over for food.
A lot of my life is centered around food, in my house I'm the only one who cooks. It also happens that I'm a fairly superlative cook. I'm not just saying that to brag, its pretty widely believed to be true. Sometimes, you just have a talent and thats that.
There's not really any arrogance necessary because you didn't actually have much to do with it other than develop it or deny it.
I tend to think of barbecuing as a really good way to prove your skills. Cooking over an unregulated heat source you have to adjust your timing, attentiveness and be really flexible. You must also have good prep work and theories. One of my theories is marinade the shit out of things. I like to push the envelope on marination. Because I love Jerry and Sylvia Anderson I think of it as Super-marionation. I try to keep the meat in sauce as long as I can before the guests, were they to ask how long it sat in there, would refuse the food from knowing.
My current favourites are my recipes for teriyaki flank steak, and my version of Tandoori chicken. The Tandoori is really an imitation which involves lots of onions, yoghurt (I make my own), Garam Masala, Hing, Sea-salt, and paprika for colour. I would use cochineal but its a little harder to find. Uncle Bunny suggested a little saffron, he may just have something there.
I also specialise in what I call poverty cooking, which is to take any ingredients at hand and make them into something good. So I cleaned out the fridge for side dishes.
I was only going to have one or two people over, but there was a lot of food and I just knew the usual supects would be sitting at home without having things to do and that can be annoying and/or depressing when you think everyone else is doing something fun. So I invited a crew.
The food was awesome, and not just mine. Uncle Bunny brought a fabulous Bread Salad Fatoush and an amazing fruit shortcake for which he made ginger scones as the shortcake. Uncle Bunny has the magic pastry touch that I don't have. My huge failing as a cook is that I cannot make pie crust, biscuits and scones. I'm contemplating taking a class in pastry offered by one of my favourite customers at the market where I work part-time. I must ferret out the secret of the flaky.
There was an impressive thunderstorm and a nice time was had by all. Since in the last few years I've pretty much abandoned the backyard for the porch, we were able to kick back and enjoy the weather without getting scorched or soaked.
I imagine to myself that the people that go by in their cars, watching me wield my BBQ mop with such adroitness, are really wishing they could come too.
They're too shy or conditioned to ask I suppose, I'd think it potentially could be an interesting way to meet some new folk.
Maybe they have a great BBQ chef in their own life already. I hope so.