flame grilled chicken dipped in honey chili and rolled in potato chip crumbs

chicken and egg – by lee glass

Buy half a dozen chicken legs in the local supermarket, buy a small jar of honey some chili flakes and a couple of lemons, buy a large bag of potato chips. Salted.

Leave town and travel the darkening highway until you reach the coast. South is best. Park amongst the mosquitoes and casuarinas, take your food and cooking gear down to the beach. That sandy hollow by the split rock.

Stop a moment there and listen to fall of water, the breaking sea at night. Imagine speed and torque. Hiss and gurgle.

Hurry the morning.

Build a small fireplace amongst the rocks above the tidemark, burn the driftwood to incandescence and set the chicken onto the wire grill you’ve made out of coat hangers, or the fencing wire that you found handy on the way in.

Mix a couple of big tablespoons of honey with a little lemon juice in a tin can and sprinkle a good handful of chili flakes over the result. A goodly handful. Stick the can on the fire, loosen it all up.

Turn the chicken legs, let them sputter and cook all over. Take the bag of potato chips * and belt it around until you have crumbed them all up, then pour them onto a plate.
 The old tin plate, your other one.

When the chicken is done dip each piece into the honey and chili mixture and give it another two minutes over the fire – get the honey glaze up.

Breathe it in, sweet and sour.

Then take them off the fire and roll each leg into the crumbed chips.

Sit back. Look up.

So many stars tonight.

Eat.

– and be thankful, and always pray for surf.

Malacoota Inlet. November 1959.

* crisps for the un-Australian