Apparently there is a place in San Francisco that serves a chicken and bread salad and is famous for it. I dunno, I’ve never been to America but that’s what I found when I googled the recipe to see if anyone else had got there first.

Original or not, it’s definitely one of the most delicious salads I’ve ever made. I love how it’s not really in any way healthy. There are two important things to remember when making it, and that is to buy good chicken (free-range, doesn’t have to be organic) and really good bread. With a recipe this simple, the ingredients need to shine, cliché or not. Burnished, crackling chicken skin is glazed with lemon and honey and seasoned a little bit too much. Bread from St. John is robust and when torn into pieces, drizzled with the chicken drippings and lightly toasted, turns into chewy half-croutons; crisp in some places, moist with meaty juices in others. Cue that noise that Homer Simpson would make if he were daydreaming about a heap of doughnuts, skewered with fried chicken wings, stacked on a giant table made from icy Duff.

Watercress is just the right leaf for the salad I think, not too bolshy. Curly endive also works. For the dressing, it’s mild mustard, a touch more honey to sweeten and then let yourself go with the lemon. That rush of acidity really makes it work.

There are various bits and pieces you could add I suppose but personally, the furthest I’ll go is a few barely-existent slithers of spring onion. It’s all about the flavour of that bird.

Oh, and there’s a matching wine. Yeah, you heard me. Ben asked me to come up with a dish to match a Raimat Vina 27 Chardonnay. I was worried it wouldn’t have enough acidity to cut the richness of chicken skin but it stepped up well. Apple and citrus were predominant flavours and I’m pleased I didn’t go with the obvious choice of fish. Having to plan a dish before you’ve tasted a wine is a challenge, particularly for a novice like me. It’s all about reigning yourself in I suppose and not over-complicating flavours. Start out modest and work your way up, and then when you get a bit good, you can pare it all back down again because at the end of the day, the simplest pleasures are often the best.

Roast Chicken and Bread Salad

1 x 2kg  free range chicken
200g really good, dense bread (I used St. John’s white loaf which has the texture of sourdough but without the sourness)
A couple of handfuls of watercress
1 large lemon and possibly another
1 generous tablespoon honey
A few cloves of garlic, unpeeled
1/2 spring onion, sliced very thinly

For the dressing

Juice of half a large lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil (not extra virgin)
1 teaspoon mild mustard
1 teaspoon honey
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 220C/Gas 6

Put your bird in a roasting tin and scatter the garlic cloves around it. Peel the zest from half the lemon then scatter this around the bird too and squeeze the juice into a bowl. Warm the honey gently to make it runny then mix this with the lemon juice and brush the mixture all over the bird. Season it heavily, all over and then roast for 30 minutes. Turn the heat down to 160C/gas 3 and roast for another 20-30 minutes. The bird is cooked when the juices run clear when you insert a skewer sideways into the thickest part of the leg.

Remove the bird from the tray and allow to cool. Remove the majority of the crust from the bread and tear it into bite sized pieces. Put the pieces in a bowl and spoon over about 3 tablespoons of the chicken drippings. use your hands to give it a good mix about then pop them into the oven for a few minutes until lightly toasted, but not too crisp – you still want a good bit of chew.

To make the dressing, mix the lemon juice, olive oil, mustard and honey together and season with salt and pepper. Give it a good whisking to emulsify the mixture.

Arrange the watercress on a plate, then arrange some of the bread pieces and chicken on top. Make sure to get plenty of crisp skin. Scatter over a few spring onion pieces if you fancy then drizzle with the dressing and serve. I’m jealous.

I came across this dish when I was looking for new ways to eat pickled garlic, which is something I’ve been doing a lot. What a condiment. Spiky yet sweet, it’s an unusual and addictive flavour. My friend Sally Butcher who owns the Iranian shop and deli, Persepolis tells me that in the Middle East, “they eat it with everything.” This makes sense to me.

On my internet travels I came across an apparently famous Chinese dish called the mutton or yangrou paomo; it’s from Xi’an, the result of cuisines converging via the Silk Road. Small pieces of unleavened ‘Muslim flat bread’ are an Arabian influence; the diner tears the bread into peanut-sized pieces and returns the bowl to the cook who tops it with mutton slices, spiced broth and often, glass noodles.* The dough pieces swell to form springy nuggets as they soak up the liquid. Common accompaniments are chilli paste, coriander leaves and most importantly, the pickled garlic. I was having me some of that.

The bread was a bit of a ball-ache. An e-mail exchange with Sunflower revealed that it’s usually a “heavy, griddled bun similar to an English muffin” but attempts to find a recipe failed. I considered substituting a muffin but it seemed the wrong way to approach a challenge. In the end I used the ingredients found scrawled on a piece of paper, apparently the results of a frantic searching session; I have no recollection. Cooked in a dry pan, it was dense enough to form the desired sticky dumplings rather than gummy mush.

Mostly you just need to chuck everything in a pot, but it will take a good three hours to cook, so one for the weekend. Other recipes cook broth and meat separately but I didn’t have time for that so I asked the butcher to cut up a leg of mutton and simmered the meat and bones together. Mighty black cardamom pods swelled like giant raisins on the broth, releasing their smoky, underground flavour. A lean over the pot made my nostrils buzz with chilli and star anise.

I’m pretty sure that this dish only partly resembles the real thing. I needed more broth in the bowl that’s for sure and usually the meat would be added separately before the hot stock is poured over. At least, that’s what I managed to glean from some rather dodgy translation. I do know however, that the dish is the most famous contribution of Xi’an to Chinese cuisine and apparently, served nearly everywhere in the city and also as part of the state banquet. I think it’s fair to say they are proud of it. If I’ve made it wrong or done it a disservice then I apologise but in my defence, it tasted great.

Mutton Paomo (Yangrou Paomo)

1kg of mutton (mostly chunks of meat and a few large pieces of bone)
2 onions, roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 x 2 inch piece of ginger, finely grated
1 mild red chilli, slit lengthways or chopped (I slit mine as I wanted to add chilli paste as a garnish)
200g glass noodles*
2.5 teaspoons of salt
8 peppercorns
2 star anise
A few pieces of cassia bark
3 black cardamom pods, crushed with the side of a knife
2 tablespoons cooking wine

Pickled garlic (available from Persepolis and Khan’s if you live in Peckham), plus chilli paste and coriander leaves to garnish

Trim your meat of any large pieces of fat. Put your meat, bones and everything else apart from the noodles and garnish into a large stock pot. If you want to get fancy, you could bundle your spices into a piece of muslin to make them easier to remove later on. Cover with water (mine took about 3 litres) and bring to the boil. Turn down to a simmer and allow to cook, uncovered for about 3 hours. After this time, remove the bones, whole spices and any remaining pieces of visible fat. I now allowed the broth to cool and skimmed the excess fat from the top. There is already enough fat in the broth to give a good flavour.

Cook the noodles according to packet instructions.

To serve, re-heat and spoon over peanut sized pieces of the bread (recipe below). Add a serving of noodles to the bowl and garnish as desired with the chilli, coriander and pickled garlic.

For the bread

300g plain (all purpose) flour
1 teaspoon salt
200ml boiling water
1 tablespoon lard, softened (by softened I mean leave it out until completely soft)

Mix all the ingredients together until you have a smooth dough. Let it rest for a little while before rolling it out into 8 pieces, about 4-5 inches in diameter. Wipe a heavy skillet or tava with oil and cook each bread for 5 minutes or so on each side until lightly golden. To serve, tear into small pieces and spoon the broth and condiments on top.

* As you can see, I only had wheat noodles.

I snubbed breakfast and arrived absolutely ravenous and half an hour an hour early for the Jerk Cook Out. I wanted to get the measure of the place, formulate a plan of attack and talk to some of the cooks. As the meat hit the grill and the smoke started twisting above the trees though, I got impatient and began repeatedly texting and calling my friends until one of them turned up; some pleasantries were exchanged (“how are you?” “yes yes fine whatever so let’s go to this place first then this then this…”) and we were off.

Tasty Jerk have won the competition two years running. I asked them if they fancied their chances but the answer came that they were just in it for kicks; if you win twice in a row then you have to take a year off. We got stuck right into some of their jerk pork belly. The fat was like eating the pork scratchings of my dreams. I like a touch more cloves in the mix but the allspice was prominent enough and I wonder if they put berries in the coals to infuse the smoke. As styles go it was more dry rub than sticky glaze but there was skill in the cooking and confidence in the spice.

There are different styles of jerk; there’s the all-in-one marinade and then the dry rub and glaze. I want to experiment with the latter. Some places seemed to be serving the meat with a sweeter sauce on the side. Last year’s runners up Jerk Lan took this approach, with disappointing results. Their sign urged us to ASK FOR SPECIAL SAUCE and so of course we did, which was a shame because it ruined the meat. I was thinking hot pepper paste with a kick to rival a donkey but instead we got saccharine gloop which seemed to be a mixture of the worst sweet and sour sauce of my life, sugar syrup and water. We could only judge the meat by licking the crusted remnants of chicken skin from the corners of our mouths, which, incidentally, were good and garlicky.

Over a swift pint of Meantime Pale Ale at The Florence it was time to re-group and digest before riding back on the second wind. My friend enjoyed our third portion better, although I can’t say I thought much of it. The real surprise came in the form of a spit roasted lamb, again from Tasty Jerk. Shards of crunchy skin and fat with a proper heat elevated to an out of body experience by the accompanying chilli sauce.

The lurid artificial hue of a drink is directly proportional to its level of efficacy in quenching the fire in your mouth. Everyone should know this. A couple of Slush Puppies the colour of 1980′s neon legwarmers brought us back from the endorphin super highway. Thought you’d turned your back on the SP at ten years of age? Think again.

The problem with an event getting bigger of course, is that quality becomes diluted. Our pork and lamb were great, although I did know of them and make a beeline. A later impulsive purchase of curry goat was watery and timidly spiced but there were so many places to choose from, it was hard to know where to start over-indulging. When considering this conundrum, it seemed that my only chink of light would come in the form of my judging the competition, so that I could visit each and every stall. I would systematically work the field, savouring each nugget of pork, fish and chicken like it was my last before slipping peacefully into a jerk coma.

And then I’d wake up.

The annual Jerk Cook Out Festival takes place in Brockwell Park (formerly Horniman Museum) in August. Dates vary so keep an eye out. This year’s event ran from 12-6pm.

If you like jerk check out my jerk recipe and my top tips for great jerk.

[Edit: I have since been back to Suya Express after David's comment below and I am sorry to say that it wasn't very good. I think I got lucky that day and the quality is highly variable. This is such a shame as it was so good the first time and I hope they get their act together. I'll update this when I try it again in a few months time].

I have discovered the suya. Just down the road on Peckham High Street is a place selling skewer after sizzling skewer of this African street food. The suya originated in Nigeria and is basically like an African kebab; thin strips of meat are rubbed with ground peanuts and spices and then grilled. A traditional accompaniment is sliced tomato and onion.

I’ve been eyeing up Obalende Suya Express ever since I moved to Peckham. It’s a scruffy little place, the waiting area consisting of a few battered chairs that look like they came from an old boys’ club in Blackpool about 20 years ago; the paint peels from the walls and there’s a strip of those plastic backlit signs above the counter a la classic ‘bab shop. Behind it though, is the grill, and this is where the magic happens. I tried hard to remember the last time I’d eaten such smoke infused meat. It didn’t happen.

My beef suya strips were tender in the middle and then almost jerky-like at the edges, with treasures of crisp fat. Even the jollof rice was good and I’ve never really been a fan; it was almost dry yet not claggy, held together with an orange, hot peppered paste which hummed in our mouths. The really big surprise though, was the fried plantain. I’ve always struggled with its sweetness and often mushy texture but Obalende had cooked theirs with a touch of acidity and boy, does it make all the difference.

We scuttled off to a nearby park bench (classy as ever) and forked as much as possible onto each white plastic tine. Suya is officially my new takeaway of choice. Okay maybe not ultimately more than jerk but there are similarities; the chilli, ginger and garlic are there but it’s the ground peanuts that take this off in a different direction. Once you’ve chosen your meat from the selection of beef, goat, gizzards, chicken, lamb, fish or er, ‘crocodile/shark’, they sprinkle some of the extra meat rub on top. It’s like a soft-hot smoke bomb going off in your mouth.

The portions are enormous; we paid £5.75 each (Chris had goat) and neither of us finished. If I had one criticism I suppose I could say that it looked a bit of a mess, but then this is street food. It’s all about the flavour and a wise eye and greedy appetite will see its beauty. Their website claims that “many publications” have dubbed them the ‘African MacDonald’s’ but I think this gives the wrong impression. It’s fast food, yes but 100% genuine and it’s got guts. It’s classic Peckham, let’s face it.

Obalende Suya Express
43 Peckham High Street
Peckham
London SE15
Tel: 020 7703 7033
info@suyaexpress.com
http://suyaexpress.com

If there’s one thing I wasn’t short on for The Big Lunch, it was yoghurt. Rachel’s Organic filled my fridge, my neighbours fridge and the makeshift fridge in my hallway, consisting of ice and gel packs on a complicated freezer rotation system. It was all very rock and roll.

I’m sure it won’t surprise anyone to learn that I jerked some chicken, but the other half looked like an opportunity to rip through a couple of pots of the white stuff; meat cooked in yoghurt is always so succulent and forms a coating which varies between a silken lip-licking paste and patches of spiced crust.

The ingredients can be twiddled but I think the essential players are turmeric, chilli powder and garam masala. A hefty blob of minced garlic and ginger is non-negotiable. I also added some nigella (onion) seeds and chopped mint, in the absence of coriander. They went down an absolute storm.

Tikka chicken

25 chicken drumsticks

1 x 500g tub of Greek yoghurt
1 x 2 inch piece of ginger
6 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 teaspoon hot chilli powder
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon onion seeds (optional)
1 small handful coriander or mint leaves

Chop the garlic and ginger then put it in a pestle and mortar with 1 teaspoon salt and grind to a paste. Mix this paste with the yoghurt and all the other marinade ingredients.

Make two slashes across the thickest part of each drumstick then coat them with the marinade, mixing really well and rubbing it into the meat. Leave in the fridge overnight or for as long as possible, at least a few hours.

When ready to cook, remove them from the fridge half an hour before you want to cook them and preheat the oven to 180C. They will take about 25 minutes. The skin should be golden and slightly charred in places and the juices should run clear when you skewer the meat at its thickest point.