Shared Recipe: Pollo a la brasa (Peruvian Grilled Chicken)

Today's shared recipe is Pollo a la brasa, or Peruvian style grilled chicken. Now, my father is from Peru, and he grills some tasty chicken. It took a while for us to coax him into cooking more, and it's still a bit of a rare treat to get him to do so, but when he cooks his home specialties, it's rare to have leftovers.

Pollo a La Brasa, pictured from food.com

This style of cooking, he explains, is common in Peru. Rotisserie chicken in this style is served fast food style there. Interestingly enough here in my local city a few places serving this kind of rotisserie chicken have popped up over the years and become quite popular. 

The key is marinading the chicken overnight, cutting it into pieces so it's easier to pack together into the marinade. Marinading it overnight allows for all the meat to absorb the flavor, and even the chicken breasts tend to be amongst the most flavorful parts of the meat at that point. Then you either grill or bake the chicken (I recommend charcoal grilling myself) until done. It is absolutely some of the most flavorful chicken you will have. I guarantee. 

 My family uses a store bought marinade called "Inca's Food", found at a local Hispanic market. However, this recipe provides a home made marinade alternative I intend to try for myself. I also, when I have made a homemade tandoor oven, intend to try skewering the meat and cooking it tandoor style to see how it turns out.

When I do (this recipe that is), I will provide a followup post with a review and any changes I would suggest making to the initial recipe. Until then, follow the links at the beginning of the post for the recipe. Give hits where hits are due.

As for beer recommendations, this is a meat rich in spices and flavor, but is not in and of itself spicy. therefore my first recommendations would be a rich, malty beer that doesn't push the pallet too hard, something in the category of a rich amber, a red or imperial red, or a mild porter. Lagunitas Imperial red and New Belgiums Red Hoptober are both great seasonal reds rich in malt character, but with both being seasonal are not guaranteed to be found when you're looking for them. So for all year New Belgium Fat Tire or especially an Oscar Blues G'knight Imperial Red ale. A Sierra Nevada Porter would also be a good choice, having a smokier flavor but still mild and smoother than a stout.

#recipes #peru #chicken #beerrecommendation #cooking

Shared Recipe: Tandoori Chicken

Regularly on this blog I want to share recipes with people. Usually I want to really share recipes I've tried and created myself, but I also want to share recipes I find too because, well, I enjoy cooking and love the food that gets made in the end.

I figure I'll sure the titles and tags "Recipe Time" for my own recipes and demonstrations of the recipe and "Shared Recipe" whenever I just want to share one. So for today are going to be two takes on the Indian recipe "Tandoori Chicken".

First is an oven baked take on it. Let's be honest, most of us don't have a tandoori, and getting one is impractical. An actual one at least. So this is an alternative. I figure when I make this I'll put it on a foreman grill get get that nice charring at the end he describes. Most likely this will be how I will try it.

I also wanted to show a video of how to make a tandoor oven as featured on Alton Brown's "Good Eats", but well copyrights and all appears to keep it off of Youtube. So instead is a link on making one of your own. Something I'd love to do one day. The main difference here would be instead of baking it you'd just skewer the chicken legs and place them in the tandoor to cook.

And with these recipes and food review I like to include a beer recommendation. Wine would be nice as well but I'll be first to admit I'm not aficionado with wine.

So for beer, alot of Indian foods and other similarly spiced foods do well with hoppier beers, and this is one of them. I'd recommend at minimum a nice pale beer such as Sierra Nevada Pale Ale or New Belgium's Shift Pale Lager. IPAs and Belgian IPAs also do well (IPA of course standing for India Pale Ale. That history well tied to the East Indian Trading Company), so I'd recommend Heavy Seas Loose Cannon IPA, Dogfish Head 90 minute Imperial IPA, or New Belgium's Belgo Belgian IPA.

#cooking #recipes #food #indian #tandoor #beerrecommendation

EDIT 10/20/12: Changed the link for the tandoor oven to show all instructions to give you an idea of what to do.