The SBS Food Safari back catalogue yields not less than five recipes for chicken cooked over fire (Tandoori from Pakistani, Grilled chicken and banana flower salad from Thailand, Malaysian satay, Mexican (Yucatecan) bbq chicken, Portuguese charcoal chicken with piri piri).

I thought that I'd cook the Portuguese recipe for no other reason than I've been interested in Portugal's colonial influence on food around the world for a while. Everywhere that Portugal set foot left an indelible print on the local food from Macau to Brazil, often in the form of a monstrous addiction to chili. Not to mention that Southern Australia is returning to barbecue season.

Luis Fernandes' recipe follows in the path of every other flame-grilled chicken recipe: rub the chicken in something oily and flavoursome, salt, and then throw over a fire. In this case, the oil is provided by soft butter and flavours by paprika, bay leaf, garlic, lemon juice and whisky.

Until I'd seen this Portuguese marinade recipe, I didn't know that bay leaf powder existed. I'm still unsure if it does exist anywhere in Australia in commercial quantities. I’m not located in the proximity of a Portuguese food dealer but the oligopoly supermarket chains do not stock it nor does my local market. Feel free to write in and tell me that I'm wrong.

The solution otherwise is to make your own. To do this, put a handful of whole, dried bay leaves (available everywhere) into a mortar and pestle with a pinch of salt and then grind to a fine powder. Paprika was much easier to come by.

The marinade recipe is short on whisky details. Which whisky to use in the marinade? Is there Portuguese whisky? My knowledge of Portuguese booze only extends to grape products, two of which, Port and Madeira are named after Portugal. I picked the cheapest whisky that I have which also happened to be the only whisky that I have.

As for the chicken, Fernandes' treatment of it feels wrong. Whenever I barbecue a chicken, I butterfly (spatchcock) it by removing the back bone and keel bone, flattening it with the breasts in the centre. He splits it in the other direction between the breasts then makes more incisions to let the fat out, where my concern is to keep as much fat in as possible. I followed the directions in the interests of begrudging accuracy.

The first thing that you'll discover when you place the marinated chicken over your coals is that whiskey mixed with butter is explosive like lukewarm napalm. Every tasty drip that rolls off your chicken shoots a jet of flaming death straight from your grill. If you don't happen to have the handy rotating Portuguese grilling contraption featured in the episode, I'd suggest putting the chicken over indirect heat.

After grilling, there is still a hint of the warm paprika and whisky flavours, tart lemon and garlic. The chicken is still both moist and charred; my fears of improper spatchcocking came to naught.