69 sleeps

I am a food snob. I cook well and I eat well. I come from a family of cooks - both my parents and all of my brothers cook well. Growing up, we would take gastronomical tours around the world. Vietnamese one month, Indian the next. You get the idea.

I don't like junk food and I find fast-food offensive. When I go to restaurants, I like to order something I have never had before and, if I like the dish, try to recreate it at home. One such dish that I have tried, loved and recreated to perfection is Portuguese beef espetada. I had it for the first time about eight years ago. I have prepared it for plenty of dinner parties, always to resounding success.

The recipe is simple:

Take 1 kg of fillet (must be fillet) and chop it into large-ish cubes. Marinate in espetada marinade for four hours at room temperature. Marinade is about 15 finely chopped fresh red chillies, 2 heads of garlic, rough rock salt to taste and enough extra virgin olive oil to lightly cover the meat. After four hours, prepare skewers as follows: meat, onion, red pepper, meat, onion, red pepper etc. To cook, prepare the BBQ for steak cooking (super hot). Sear the skewers. The meat and the vegetables should have a slightly blackened look to them. Cook meat to taste (although I suggest the meat should be rare). About 30 seconds before you take the meat off, put four to six fresh bay leaves on the coals. Turn skewers rapidly as smoke from the bay leaves rise.

Done. Simple. Delicious.

Well, I went to a restaurant the other day and ordered espetada. It came as follows:
a) not on a skewer
b) with no onion or red pepper
c) cooked medium to well (I asked for rare), and (this is the horror)
d) covered in BBQ sauce.

WTF is that? BBQ sauce on espetada?! I recoiled in horror, gasped audibly and demanded a replacement dish. You do not put BBQ sauce on espetada.