Clucking

Now, don't get me wrong - I love chicken - but sometimes I think if I have another roasted chicken, I'll start clucking. Growing feathers. Laying eggs. Eating bugs.

Clearly, I needed a change of pace from my usual oven-roasted bird. Luckily, we've been blessed with great barbecuing weather recently and, when I was cleaning out the garage, I noticed that we still have a few cedar planks left from the huge bundle we bought years ago.

Planked chicken. Perfect! It needed nothing more than a light bath in olive oil and a couple of planks underneath over gray coals with red centers. Fifty minutes later, I lifted it off the now-charred plank, plunked it on a cutting board and called My Beloved to dinner.

If you've never tried planking, this is your year! Go here for some basic instructions. It's truly a great way to cook any number of delicious meats on the grill. Whatever you plank will have a distinctly smoky flavor and retain its moisture. A bonus - no oven to clean - just toss the planks and dust off your hands. And no need to worry about pecking order.

Broken Record

I sound like a broken record (for those of you who remember records, that is) - plank, plank, plank!* Seems like we plank just about anything and we always love the results.

This lovely chicken was cooked for about 45 minutes on a cedar shingle above the charcoal in our plain old Weber grill.

The thin end of the shingle starts to smolder during the cooking, producing a lightly smoky flavor and preserving the juiciness of whatever fowl or fish we plank. Summer is the perfect time for planking - it's easy, doesn't heat the kitchen and it produces the best flavor bang for your buck that you can imagine. The meat, even the white meat, stays wonderfully moist with this method, as well.

It bears repeating - plank, plank, plank!

*Please be sure to buy untreated cedar shingles at a lumber store. Sometimes, they will give you a few as a sample, if you ask nicely, before you buy a whole bundle. The bundle will serve you and all your neighbors for the foreseeable future but you can purchase the whole bundle for what you'd pay for about four of the fancypants cedar planks at a cooking store and these are easier - you just throw them away when the planking is finished.

The First Swallow of Spring

Here in California, we are spoiled. Not only is our soil fertile and our ocean plentiful (with the exception of certain overfished species) but we get to barbecue early here. Memorial Day is a month away and already we did our first planking of the year while other parts of the country are still awaiting green leaves and, in some cases, even the melting of snow.

We discovered planking about five years ago at an art and wine festival we attended on a whim. While waiting in line for a hot dog, I noticed there was no line waiting for the guy who was preparing planked salmon, so I suggested to My Beloved that we give it a try. Rarely have I tasted anything so simple yet divine. I begged for the "recipe" from the chef and he very kindly obliged me.

I've written about planking before and you can read that here, if you'd like. I can recommend it highly - it keeps the fish (or scallops, poultry) deliciously moist and tender while imparting a lightly smoky flavor to the meat. The plank shields the meat from the fierce heat of the coals and yet dinner is ready in fifteen minutes or less.

I'm not sure if the swallows have returned to Capistrano yet, but we are already swallowing our favorite summer dinner.

Balloons and Confetti

I'm on a planking roll these days - planked a chicken a few days back and did some nice coho salmon last week for a lunch party with the Cousins. I always seem to make too much food when we are having company, hence the salmon salad today.

It's not really a recipe, rather a study in color. Crisp green Romaine lettuce base, cold striped coho middle and a sprinkle of colorful onion confetti red and green, a curl or two of baby yellow sweet pepper, a few cheerful balloons of cherry tomatoes and a drizzle of brown balsamic vinaigrette. Fresh, bright, perfect for a fall lunch. What shall we celebrate?

Early Bird

You wouldn't know it now as the weather took a quick turn to the autumn yesterday, but here in NOCA, as my Navy brother calls it, we were having summery weather although it's nearly Hallowe'en. I'm not complaining, mind you - I was enjoying the warmth and sunshine!

On the other hand, roast chicken seems like something I'd rather not do when the afternoon temperature hovers around 85 or even 90 with scant breeze - too hot for the oven. So, I decided to plank a whole chicken early in the morning before the heat built and serve it cold for dinner.

After washing the bird, I stuffed it with a halved lemon, trussed it so it wouldn't hang out over the plank and positioned it on my widest untreated cedar shingle with the dark meat toward the thin end of the plank so it would get more heat than the white meat. I put in lots of charcoal, as the bird needs to cook for almost an hour at about 300 degrees (our Weber grill has a built-in thermometer). When the coals were well started, I dropped the plank onto the grill and closed the cover.

Look how beautifully it turned out! It was moist with perfectly done dark and white meat, a deeply smoky flavor right down to the bone and a just a sneak of lemon curling through the smoke. This early bird is a great solution to hot weather meals.

Heat Wave

We had a heat wave - in fact, two heat waves, so far - here in Northern California. September and October are our warmest months and this year we've already had more than our share of hot days.

We have learned to open all doors and windows at night, then to close up the house early in the morning to keep that cool air inside but, even so, by dinner time, it's too hot to turn on an oven or a burner.

However, the idea of raw pork was shudder-producing, so we decided to barbecue our dinner to beat the heat. The bone-in chops went right on the grill, but away from the direct heat of the fire, giving them a smoky-but-not-burny flavor. The corn, ditto. Delicious, both of them. But the hit of the evening was the peaches.

I "planked" the peaches, cooking them over the direct heat of the fire but shielded by a cedar shingle*, the thin end of which smoldered and smoked, lending its flavor to the sizzling peach halves on top. They were a killer accompaniment to the pork, made sweeter by the concentrating heat of the fire but still with that peach kick that keeps them from being cloying.

Good meal for a heat wave.

*If you want to try this, be sure to ask your local lumberman for untreated cedar shingles - you don't want fire retardant in your food.

Laid Back Chicken

One of these soft nearly-summer evenings, My Beloved and I were more in the mood for kicking back on the sofa with a glass of iced tea than for cooking, so we took the lazy man's (and woman's!) route to a delicious dinner, planking.

We loved planked food, both fish and poultry. It couldn't be easier and the results are reliably smoky, moist and scrumptious.

You can purchase thick planks from the chi-chi poo-poo cooking stores, four for about 20 bucks and, in theory, they are re-usable. We prefer the lumber store method where you can purchase virtually a lifetime supply of thin, untreated cedar shingles for about $30. They are not re-usable, but I think of that as one of their virtues - no washing, no fussing, just pitch 'em after they have delivered up their smoky essence to your delectation! If you decide to use the lumber store method, however, make doubly sure they are untreated cedar as you don't want fire retardant in your food.

I had a nice free-range, organic chicken in the fridge so all I did was wash the plank and the chicken in cold water, arrange said chicken on said plank, lay the plank on the grill over the white ash coals in our Weber grill, put on the cover and go chill on the sofa for an hour.

I guess we could have basted it or checked on it but we didn't - we just spent that hour chatting and relaxing. At the end of the hour, we took the chicken off the fire and let it "rest" for about 10 minutes before slicing while I steamed some greenie beanies to go alongside. The result was deeply smoky and juicy, even the white meat, and the skin was delightfully crisp and crackly. The perfect dinner for a lazy nearly-summer evening.