Gridiron Grilling

Pardon my language. There was no shadow. Nor was there anyone else in sight. The Giants had assigned us this spot, which was not easy to find, given the vast emptiness of the asphalt desert surrounding the 80,242-seat arena. Standing alone in such a flat void, you can truly feel that God must be watching. I hoped no one else was.

Our goal was virtuous: develop a tailgate menu for readers who had always wanted to have a tailgate party but had been afraid to try. And don't think we hadn't done our best to prepare. We had a Coleman Outdoor Grill and Stove, which took four college graduates an hour to assemble — although we never did get the feet on because no one had brought a screwdriver. We also had a small red Aussie, a Weber-style grill with an oblong lidded top.

I had forgotten to bring the cylindrical charcoal starter that sits on flaming newspaper and fires up briquettes in a trice. And there was no petrochemical starter. So we made do and burned The Wall Street Journal, which one of us hadn't yet read by 11 a.m. (ahem). It worked fine but left ash, in which the editorial page could still be faintly descried.

The plan was to prepare a tailgate classic called beer-can chicken in the Aussie. My personal shopper, like me not in tune with tailgate custom, had purchased an organic Murray's chicken and an Australian beer to match the charcoal grill. Worse still, that beer, a Foster's, comes in an oversize can. This created an awkward physical dilemma.

For those too sheltered to know, you make beer-can chicken by drinking or otherwise disposing of half a can of beer. Then you impale a chicken so that it's astride the can. You then set this hippogriff on the grill in its upright position. Down goes the lid, and the chicken braises slowly for an hour and 15 minutes or so. Beer and drippings mix in the can and steam upward to keep the bird moist. Underneath, coals deprived of air by the hood smolder away, but they have been moved to one side to provide the indirect heat required for true barbecue.

Damn if the chicken didn't fit on the can!

Undeterred, your plucky chef enlarged the opening with a small tear. This assemblage stood up proud and tall. Too tall, in fact, for our wee Aussie. We removed the grill, pushed the coals into a circle and set the chicken atop her Foster's in the center of the hearth. The hood closed (phew), and we turned to the other courses.

The amuse bouche: frozen shrimp finished thawing in my shivering hands. Once they were shelled and deveined, we dipped them in vinegar, counted to five and ate them. This is a trick originally practiced by Filipino fishermen; they call it kinilaw. The acid of the vinegar turns the shrimp opaque and nicely edible, an instant treat that's somewhere between the complete rawness of sashimi and the more lengthy "cooking" in an acid medium of ceviche.

Myself, I would have been happy to call it a tailgate right there, but duty called. We shelled the rest of the shrimp and tossed them on the Coleman barbie (Foster's not only makes you giddy, it makes you talk Aussie). They were done in a couple minutes, smoky and quickly devoured. Next we shucked ears of corn — interrupted only by a lone station wagon in search of soccer camp — and roasted them on the Coleman. The odorless, colorless gas heated them through and browned them. One turn, a few minutes more, and they were finished. (Put cornholders on your list unless you like to watch your guests chasing after rolling ears in a lot full of inebriated NFL fans.)

Time for the fish. We had called for bluefish, the scrappy, he-man fish that flourishes in local waters, oblivious to old tires and other floating hazards. Instead, my personal shopper had come up with a whole branzino, aka European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax). This fine, white-bellied fish got wrapped in cornhusks and set on the Coleman. The husks protected it from direct flame. When the lower husks burned away, we turned the fish and waited for the rest to incinerate. After another five minutes (for a total of around 15 minutes), this fish was flaky and smoky and moist. My editor ate the cheeks when offered but politely declined the eyes.

The chicken cooked away. Out of boredom, I basted it with vinegar, twice. At last, when poked with a fork in the thick part of the thigh, its juices ran clear. Now it had to be pulled off the Foster's can. I grabbed the can (full of boiling beer-chicken soup) with barbecue tongs, impaled the chicken with a long-handled fork and pulled. POP — off flew the Foster's can, falling with a violent splash to the tarmac and scalding my ankle and foot (straight through the sneaker).

The chicken was delicious. We finished it just as the Meadowlands security guy pulled up to find out what we were doing. When he saw the grills, he didn't bat an eye. For him it was just the first tailgate of the season. Made no sense in October either.