Intuition tells me that roasting bits of meat on twigs is probably one of the oldest cooking methods in existence. My wife Jenny, who is probably one of the best cooks in the entire world including Outer Space, occasionally makes kebabs on fresh rosemary branches – the effect is delicious! But for all of us aspiring chefs, let me suggest you give this very fine marinade a go. And since the main purpose of a marinade is to tenderise, this works very well with an old barnyard fowl that has come to the end of its productive life. Then again, the flavours can do magical things to supermarket broilers as well.
To make marinated ginger kebabs, you will need:
• 1kg chicken breasts
• 10 cloves of garlic (not a misprint)
• 30mm fresh root ginger
• 4 big spring onions
• 8 blades of chives
• 120ml Cape extra-virgin olive oil
• 60ml light soya sauce
• 30ml rice vinegar
• Wooden skewers
• New large Ziplock bag
• Freshly ground black pepper
This is best done over two days BUT IF you’re seriously hungry, a couple of hours will do the trick. Prepare the chicken by skinning and deboning the breasts, then cutting them into bite-sized sections. Ideally, these should be as similar in size as possible to ensure even cooking. Crush the garlic cloves with the flat of a heavy knife – this allows for easy peeling – then chop finely. Peel and thinly slice the fresh garlic root. Select a few slices of ginger and also chop these finely. Top and tail the spring onions then select the bottom 100mm of each plant. Cut these into vertical slices from white to green. In a bowl, mix the extra-virgin olive oil, the sliced spring onions, the slices of ginger and most of the chopped garlic.
Reserve one teaspoon of the chopped garlic in the same bowl as the chopped ginger – you’ll need these potent flavours later for the ginger sauce.
Add the bite-sized chicken sections and stir well. Now for the hi-tech bit. Carefully decant the entire contents of the bowl – chicken, oil, the lot – into a large, new Ziploc bag. Seal it and put in the fridge for two to 16 hours. Turn the bag from time to time to redistribute the marinade.
In phase two, thread the chicken pieces onto the skewers. In a bowl, combine the reserved remnants of the chopped ginger and garlic, plus the light soy sauce, the chives and the rice vinegar. Low sodium soy sauce is available in certain supermarkets. You can use white wine vinegar if rice vinegar is hard to find. All of this becomes the ginger sauce.
Grill the kebabs for a couple of minutes per side or until done to your liking, but do note that rare chicken is a potential health hazard. Sprinkle the kebabs with freshly ground black pepper and a little salt.
Now serve this marvellous combo of flavours with freshly made cold potato salad, moistening each kebab with the ginger sauce just before eating. – David Basckin |fw
