Lemongrass quail grilled over coconut husks

quail

On the second cool evening in a row here in Michigan, I grilled up half a dozen quail over coals and half a coconut husk.

After plucking off the few straggling feathers some Vietnamese poultry farm worker managed to let slide, I split each quail down the back, then loosened the breast skin with my finger, Peking-duck style. Then, I marinated them for over an hour in a mixture of sweet soy sauce (Indonesian kecap manis), regular soy sauce (Hawaiian Aloha shoyu), a generous amount of fish sauce (Vietnamese n??c m?m), a bit of sriracha (Vietnamese chili/garlic sauce), a couple of stalks of chopped lemon grass hearts, and a handful of garlic scapes I pulverized a bit with a mortar.  (Those scapes are tough and unless you want to risk another blender making scape pesto, you gotta think of creative ways to use them when you buy twice what you wanted at the market.  But I digress.)  You know those dry, brown coconuts they sell in U.S. grocery stores?  Well, in Southeast Asia they have a name for that: firewood.  So that’s what I did with it, smashed it up on the concrete and put it on the coals.  Gave it a great flavor.  Served up with some bak choy in oyster/garlic sauce and white rice, and enjoyed on the back terrace with some pinot grigio. And of course a slow kretek after the fact.