The first recipe from the BBQ and Grill cookbook which I actually cooked myself, at home, on my own quasi-BBQ (of the cast iron plug-in variety), was in honour of my fairly new friend Nathalie, who was returning home to Europe for Christmas.
I met Nat through my brother Simon and sister-in-law Erina, who live in Sydney. Simon phoned me towards the middle of the year, knowing that I was soon to go off for four weeks' holiday in Africa. He told me about this young German/English friend of theirs called Nat, who was taking a year out to work and travel around Australia, and would shortly be heading to Melbourne and looking for somewhere to stay. He told me she was really interesting - bilingual, very bright, well read and cultured, and well travelled also. "I just know you'll really like her!" he said.
Based on this recommendation, I offered Nat the use of my apartment to house-sit for the month I was going to be away. We met up when she arrived in Melbourne, and she thanked me for the offer, given that I'd never met her before. "That's fine", I said, "any friend of Simon's is a friend of mine. How long have you known Simon and Erina, by the way?"
"It must be nearly a month now, I think," she replied.
"Oh! So how did you meet them?"
"I think it was at the pub," was the answer...
Anyway, Nat turned out to be every bit as nice and interesting as Simon had indicated, and we did a few things together in Melbourne before and after my overseas trip. I took her to her first AFL match at the G, which resulted in her deciding not to support my team (Tigers, as in "we finished 9th again, the Richmond Tigers finished 9th again", etc), but to become a Collingwood supporter instead (boo, hiss!) She also sang "99 Luft Balloons" in German at my karaoke-themed birthday party, to wild acclaim.
So after Nat had travelled across to SA, up through the centre to Darwin, spent a few months there, and driven down the East Coast with a friend, she returned to Melbourne for a final couple of weeks, and came around to have a little farewell dinner with Cody and I. The menu was lime chicken thighs with corn and green onions (page 56), and risoni and zucchini salad with lemon and parsley (page 70). I'd never made risoni salad before and it was really very nice, but possibly having a lemon dish with a lime dish may have been a citrus overkill. Another little mistake: the chicken marinade was very good and tasty, but I decided to cook thighs joined to drumsticks (are they called Chicken Marylands?), which the chicken man skinned for me, as Cody really likes drumsticks. But my grill wasn't really hot and powerful enought to deal with such big pieces of meat - or perhaps I simply didn't cook them for long enough - because they were a bit rare around the bones. So I recommend just sticking with the thighs. The corn was great, and the grilled green onions were a revelation - I'm not a great lover of big lumps of onion, and I didn't think they'd be very good to eat, but they had a completely different flavour - mild and smoky, and tasted really good.
So all in all, while not a triumph, it wasn't a bad meal. Cody took the photo below of Nat with her dinner - clearly the plate of food was too big to allow the whole of Nathalie's head to fit into the picture!
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