Blackened And Beautiful

I'm not a huge fan of blackened food - usually, it just tastes too spicy and too charred. On the first pretty Sunday of this spring, however, I blackened the heck out of a spatchcocked chicken and we both loved it. The chicken was a nice young one from Marin Sun Farms - they really do raise the nicest chickens!

I used a great big knife, a gift from my Hawaii brother - more like a machete than a kitchen implement - to whack the chicken almost in half, opening it out to the mesquite charcoal. Painted with a little crazy homemade sauce, it was ready for the fire.

I probably should have placed it indirectly over the coals but I didn't, hence the blackness. Surprise! Surprise! it didn't taste charred; it tasted smoky and tender and delicious, right down to the crispy little pointy part that in my family we have always called the "pope's nose." Forgive our levity - we were raised Catholic so we made fun of our own.

I'll talk tomorrow about the sauce - it merits its own post and tomorrow looks like perfect barbecue weather at last.