BBQ
Easily my longest-running hobby, but I really don't have all that much to say that I don't think has been said many times before, so this section is quite sparse. A project in the works is cold-smoking, and I plan to make some homemade hard-pressed cheeses (cheddar-style, like my 'quesadilla cheese') to smoke over apple wood (or other interesting flavors) I'll have to decide whether that project will go here, or in the cheesemaking section...
Jerk Chicken
I feel my jerk chicken is worth mentioning, only because there is relatively less information about it readily-available. Despite London's large Caribbean population, and large number of Caribbean restaurants, I have been very disappointed with almost every jerk chicken I've had in London (with the exception of a Caribbean-Peruvian fusion restaurant, where the 'jerk' sauce was yellow, and delicious). Traditional recipes for the marinade are fairly widely posted, but the small trick which I think makes this worth posting is the use of bay leaves - not in the marinade, but in the flames. Throwing a few fresh bay leaves in with the coals, and making a bed of bay leaves on which to lay the chicken mimics the flavor of the traditional, but over-harvested and difficult-to-acquire, pimento wood. It helps if your friend has a large bay tree in their garden.
