Spanish Chicken, Lemon and Thyme

Spanish chicken recipes, delicious for the barbeque, cooked over hot coals chicken is up there with the best of the other usual suspects, skewered over a kebab, cooked in steaks, marinated, flame grilled and all those other recipes you might tend to experiment over the barbeque with. Like all meat marinades they need to pack a punch otherwise the flavour can be lost during cooking. Strong marinades using lemon, hot mustard and bossy herbs such as thyme hold their ground over the grill

Introduce a sharp knife, red peppers, serrano ham, butter, garlic, tomatoes and an army of cocktail sticks and you have the makings of a barbequed stuffed chicken breast which will separate the 'that was nice' to the 'that was damn tasty!' all with very little effort.

It always intrigues us that here in rural Spain expats actually go out of their way to find a supermarket which is an hours drive away and by pass the local village down the road which has its local butchers, fish shops, and green grocers all of which offer fresh produce - just seems odd! Each to their own I suppose but for us you can forget Mercadona, Lidl etc as our man 'JUAN JO' picks his own veg from his plot which we pass on the way to work every day, it has to be said you don't get fresher than than that and tomatoes are to die for... ugly as sin but sweet and aromatic like you can't even describe.

Anyway, back to barbequed chicken... Bit of  a French influence with this one as we used a generous few tablespoons of Dijon mustard given to us by a visiting friend from the Dordogne. Think its hot, its not!, mustard is a great one for the barbeque  - especially over chicken. Here's the recipe:

You will need:

1 whole chicken, separated into thighs, drummers, wings and breasts
250ml hot Dijon mustard
4 cloves garlic
Juice of 2 lemons
Bunch of thyme

How to cook:

1. Peel and crush the garlic and place in a terracotta cazuela, big enough to hold all of the chicken in one layer
2. Add the mustard, lemon juice and thyme, pulling off the leaves but putting the sticks in too.  Mix well
3. Season the chicken lightly with salt and add to the marinade, mix well to ensure all the meat is covered and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours, turning occasionally.
4. Remove the chicken  from the marinade, keeping the remainder handy for basting and cook on the BBQ for around 20-25 minutes until the chicken is done.  Every time you turn the chicken over, spoon some more marinade over the meat.

Serve with salad and minted boiled potatoes