Grilling Out

One of the favorite pastimes here in Kisumu is to have dinner parties. Or just invite other folks over for dinner. It’s pretty easy, you just tell your cook how many people are coming and ta da! Instant dinner party, your job is to pour the wine! Oh, but not so for the Laserson-Rubin’s. we have to have our first guest over for dinner on a weekend night when our cook is off (and out of town so we couldn’t even ask her to work some extra hours) and we also decided to barbeque…on a grill we have never used or have any idea how to use. [see photo] You get where I’m going with this? Anyway, so of course I think I can always ‘figure it out’, so an hour before guests are to arrive I ‘try’ to start a fire. First off, let me say that when I went searching for charcoal and lighter fluid I had no problem finding charcoal but everyone I asked about lighter fluid for igniting the coals looked at me like I was from Mars (which I suppose to them I am from Mars) someone finally told me to just use burning newspaper. I sort of remember this from my pre-gas-grill days as a possible solution but hadn’t thought of it myself. So there I was piling a bunch of coals on top of a mountain of newspaper; lot’s of flames but for the next half hour not one piece of coal was glowing. Time was running out and so was my newspaper supply. Luckily Kayla had everything else under control i.e. screaming hungry kids and cooking mashed potato and asparagus (yes, I didn’t believe it either when I saw asparagus in the grocery; it’s a treat to find it here) in the kitchen.

On the verge of giving up and firing up the oven to bake the chicken I tried one last thing and asked the guard in the compound if he had any ideas on how to start this dang grill. Turns out he did and it worked. You pile a lot of coals in and (here’s the key) you put the newspaper in the chamber BELOW the coals. I know, I know, you are all saying ‘duh Alan’ well excuse me everybody, guess I’ve been around first-world amenities a little too long. I felt like a knucklehead but at least by the time my newspaper stash was consumed the coals were red hot. And getting hotter, this was a really hot cooking grill! And no way of adjusting the flame or height on the gill, oh well. I did my best but the chicken was nicely burnt to a black crisp. If you did a little scrapping though, it tasted great!