Tabletop cooking!

The climate here at the far end(I'm being nice today) of the Chiba peninsula is such that we can cookout 9 months of the year. Bundling up against the fierce wind is sometime required, but February cookouts are not out of the question.

Yesterday we came across a little stove that reduces our reliance on charcoal to cook "yakitori", the popular mini-kebabs that almost all foreigners learn to love. I had my first skewer (don't go there) within hours of arriving at Narita in 1987 and have never stopped loving them. You can see the Iwatani Robata gas oven above on our picnic table. It is very easy to set up and get cooking. Of course the difficult part of yakitori is what happens behind the scenes. Cutting the chicken and other delights into "skewerable" sizes is a labor of love, but each person can build their own "kushi" at the table. If you use bamboo skewers you should soak them in water for a long time to reduce the possibility of them burning. This little oven comes with rests for the skewers which fold down out of the way if you just want to grill meat and vegetables .

I suggest using longer metal skewers with the heatproof handles. It may require a little more clean up, but you could then cook safely without the skewers catching fire. As you can see from the picture to the right the stove will flare up from time to time. For this reason yakitori chefs are required to hover over their masterpieces, turning them constantly.

As I mentioned before, wind is a factor in outdoor cooking and as you can see from the next photo down, care must be taken when using the grill as the wind will send flare ups flying.

If you visit my honest to goodness nothing but food and drink blog, you can see some of the other culinary crimes we have committed outside. My favorite being apple pie baked in a Dutch oven perched on a small charcoal brazier.

http://gourmetjapan.tumblr.com/ .