Chicken

Cooking outdoors without the high-tech benefits of thermostats and heavy gauge saucepans requires greater vigilance and knowledge than anything demanded from indoor cooking, but there's an easy way to tilt the odds in your favor -- indirect grilling. 

How many times have I made roast chicken over the years? Thousands.

A big tamal (or tamalón) wrapped in banana leaves and baked in the oven is practical because it saves cooks the trouble of wrapping dozens of individual tamales. It is also a thing of beauty—a spectacular way to showcase the elegance of an ancestral food cooked in the embrace of banana leaves and unveiled at the table.

One of the reasons I like to cook mostly healthy food is so I can justify the occasional dish like this one.

I eat pho -- chicken or beef -- almost every morning at the restaurant.