Saving yakitori

This is a tale about a cheap metal grill, how its silver paint got glued to the skewered meat and how my daughter salvaged the yakitori and yakiton.

But, first… I know. The newsletter was MIA for two weeks. Or is it three? I can check but what’s the use? I still missed my schedule. Not without reason though. And I’m not saying that to make excuses. I’m just updating you about things I’ve mentioned in previous newsletters.

That plan about moving? There have been developments. We are now entertaining the possibility of fully remodeling our house (spaces really need to be re-defined) and growing old there. It’s more affordable than buying a new one. I don’t love the neighborhood but we might end up somewhere worse. That’s reality when you’re working on a budget. The house we’re renting now will have to double as storage space while our real house is undergoing remodeling.

So, the past few weeks, we asked professionals (my cousins, actually, a civil engineer and an interior designer) to look at the house, we told them what we need and, well, we need to know how much a remodel will cost. A week later, they sent someone to measure everything — heights, widths, perimeters, room sizes, window and door dimensions…

Amid all that, there was a typhoon. Local name Kristine. International name Trami. It was devastating. We weren’t in its direct path but the winds were strong enough to cause the malunggay (moringa) tree’s trunk to break in half.

When the threat of heavy rains and howling winds was finally over, we ventured outdoors. My younger daughter Alex had been raring to grill but we didn’t have a grill in the rented house. We didn’t have a proper one in our real house either. Not in ages. We had been using a shallow clay plant bowl and a metal rack from some broken long-ago grill. Alex said grills are cheap in the local market. Her father bought one.

The grill

Three hundred and fifty pesos (PHP350). At today’s currency exchange rate, that’s a few cents shy of six American dollars (US$6). Cheap. Very cheap. But it’s made of metal, there’s a generously sized compartment for the charcoal and there’s a sturdy metal rack that could be flipped up and down.

Alex skewered chicken and pork — yakitori and yakiton, respectively (and, yes, the links will bring you to the recipe pages) — and grilled them.

Inside the house, I was laying out the dining table.

Is that… paint?

The yakitori and yakiton were arranged on a plate and brought in. We were starting to eat when Alex paused and peered at the food. There were silver stains on the meat. It took a minute or so for her to figure it out. Apparently, the metal grill — both the body and the rack — had been sprayed or brushed with silver paint that melted in the heat.

As you may have guessed, we were scraping and cutting off the silvery things off the chicken and pork right on our plates. So much surface of the meat pieces was discarded. Sad, really, because that’s the best part. It’s the surface that’s brushed with tare during grilling. It’s the surface that captures the smoky flavor and aroma. And we had to throw it all away.

We lost our excitement over finally being able to eat home grilled food again. We ate, we felt full (were we, really, or was it just how we dealt with being unable to unsee the silver spots on the meat?) and we stored so much leftover chicken and pork minus the bamboo skewers.

The next day, Alex, transformed the scraped and cut yakitori and yakiton into a rice bowl meal.

It’s like poke bowl but with meat instead of raw seafood. The chopped grilled chicken and pork were piled on top of rice and served with mango, waterlemon, lettuce and cucumber. Sauce was drizzled over everything and, as a final touch, aonori and toasted sesame seeds were sprinkled in.

Delicious meal. She’s getting to be an expert at mitigating food disasters.

Recipes referenced in this issue