Prawns, sardines and chicken on the barbeque

Halfway through September, and summer finally arrived. I  wished I hadn't left the barbeque exposed to the elements for a year, it would have saved my nails from splitting cleaning it with wire wool.

To start, large shell on prawns, marinaded in crushed garlic and lemon juice. Delish.

Next, sardine fillets that the fishmonger somehow convinced me to buy. These were marinaded in olive oil, dill and lemon juice.These only took a few minutes each side  to cook on the barbie.

To go with this, a potato salad, based on several of Nigel Slater's recipes.  

Potato salad ingredients

• 1/3 cucumber
• 6 cornichon
• baby new potatoes - about 300g
• 1/2 bunch dill
• 1/2 bunch chives
• 2 tablespoons half fat creme fraiche
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard  
• I tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• I teaspoon cider vinegar 

How to make potato salad

You need to prepare the cucumber by halving then quartering it and then cutting out the slimy jelly seedy bit in the middle or else it will make your potato salad go soggy. Its not really the best bit of the cucumber in any case. 

Mix together all the ingredients apart from the potatoes in a large shallow dish.

Then you just need to cook the new potatoes by putting them in a pan, pouring over some boiling water and adding a good pinch of salt. Turn down to a simmer then cook till tender - probably about 20 mins depending on the size and variety of the potatoes.

Once the potatoes are tender when tested with a skewer, drain and then toss in the dressing straight away while still hot. This allows the flavours to be absorbed and prevents your potatoes from drying out.

By the way, don't ever add boiling water to floury potatoes (they type you would use for mash or roasties) as they will fall apart in the water.

As you can see, we also had a cheeky little corn on the cob with our sardines and potato salad.

Finally, chicken kebabs. 

Chicken breasts were cut into largeish pieces and marinaded in olive oil, thyme leaves, lemon juice and garlic for a couple of hours. 

I then threaded them onto wooden skewers, soaked for a few minutes in boiling water so the chicken doesn't stick to them, interspersed with pieces of red onion, yellow peppers and cherry tomatoes.

This threading of different vegetables and the meat turned out to be a mistake: the tomatoes were cooked within minutes and started to drip off the skewers. After a little reassembly job the chicken and peppers cooked at the same time, with the onions taking a little longer. This didn't matter, as it gave the chicken a few minutes to rest while the onions finished cooking.
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