Setting fire to the chicken on a bbq!

It was a lovely sunny day yesterday so I decided to get the BBQ out and cook some sardines that I had defrosted and de-scaled and gutted yesterday. I knew to place them on silver foil when on the BBQ otherwise the fish skin will burn and you get bits of fish stuck to the grill bars.

Once I had got the coals lit through piling up dried lavender cuttings and equally dried bits of pine tree gathered from the woods last year I got BBQ crazy and went and bought some chicken from my local butcher in the village. It didn't matter that there was only me. I wanted to cook meat and it was my fire! Out came the inner caveman or at least a Boy Scout memory or two. Ug me man! Ug my fire burning! The sardines would have to wait until last and I spatchcocked the chicken by taking out the back bone with some kitchen scissors.

Here are some pictures of the BBQ preparation. Previous to the flames there was lots of billowing grey smoke and a lot of fanning from me to get the flames going and the wood burnt down and the coals nice and hot.

Look at those embers! Just ready to cook some chicken. On with the grill rack and let's go get the chicken. I place the chicken on the bars and almost immediately the flames started and eventually, fearing my chicken to get incinerated, I remove the meat and added some silver foil before placing the chicken back on the BBQ.

The leg and thigh joints I'd bought separate from the whole chicken did get a bit burnt but were edible. The whole chicken was charred underneath on the bony bit but otherwise cooked well. I put the lid on the BBQ and left it to its own devices whilst I had a few beers.

The sardines proved a bit less food magazine perfect after cooking than I'd hoped for. Basically they fell to bits and I ended up picking the fish flesh off the bones and putting it into a bowl. Still undecided what to do with it. A few fishcakes maybe?

 

Never too late to light the BBQ. Adventures in meat and fish.

A few weeks ago I managed to get hold of a beautiful (self assembly) red barbeque at a very decent price through my employer Tesco. The boxed and un-assembled item has sat in a corner of my bedroom until yesterday morning. Feeling suitably inspired, I took all the components out of said box and carefully set aside all the alphabetically signalled nuts and bolts and washers and tentatively started to assemble the beast. The very notion of 'Self-assembly' takes me down the deep dark and scary route of assembling mainly Ikea furniture when I was married. My ex still enjoys the slightly off kilter and upside down Ikea wardrobe I put together in 2001 - A Structural Odyssey. It took a few strong mugs of tea to get me in the mood for the pages and pages of bbq assembly instructions.

As I intimated in the previous sentence - it took a wee while but, due to some unforeseen great patience of mine coupled with the relatively easy instructions it was finally ready for action some approximately ten hours later (joke). Finally assembled in under an hour - it had a photo opportunity in the garden. My elderly neighbour Betty actually cooed at my new assemblage like an 80s Plus pigeon on heat. I often wonder what my neighbours must think as I continually bring my gadgets and meals outside to be photographed for this blog! The light is so much kinder than indoors.

In actuality I took the bbq around to the lesser inhabited side of my house (my front lavender filled garden) so that any wood smoke from initially firing up the bbq wouldn't annoy anyone. Once the embers were glowing I put on some mackerel fillets. The whole mackerel fish happen to be on offer on the Tesco counters at half price as I type. On Saturday I purchased half a dozen of them whole and cleaned and filleted them at home. The trimmed fillets then  sat in my fridge in a covered casserole dish for two days. There was no particular reason for this excepting that I had intended to make to make mackerel pate from the fillets once the bbq was up and running. Not quite smoked mackerel in flavour but something similar.

I cooked the mackerel fillets on silver foil so that they didn't burn or stick to the metal griddle.

'Once the embers were glowing...'

Rather than waste the hot embers on solely cooking the mackerel I also endeavoured to cook some German Bratwurst sausages, some small bits of sirloin and some chicken legs. The Bratwurst came out the wurst in terms of being too gebrannt (burnt skins). However, the little bits of sirloin steaks and the chickens legs turned out to be much more controllable and less prone to a charcoaled effect than the pale white sausages.

The Bratwurst were added to some sauerkraut, gherkins and Dijon mustard for a truly Germanic lunch.

Tramtastic barbequed fillet of lamb.

You may be wondering what trams and a bbq fillet of lamb have in common. Well, last night,  I heard the great news that the new tram routes in Nottingham were officially live (taking passengers - not frying them) today. These new routes will give me an alternative travel system to getting to work at Tesco Extra in Beeston. The benefit to me will be getting into Nottingham after work quicker by tram and enabling me to get home via my second bus journey. It could save me a whole half hour each day in travelling time and no frustrations on the traffic route via the Queen's Medical Centre. This part of my travelling day almost always gets partially gridlocked and if there is a serious accident around Nottingham then it can take me almost two hours to get home. Considering that, as the crow flies, my home in Ruddington is only five miles from Beeston (work place) then that is a lot of time I could be dedicating to these blog posts and not sitting on stationary busses.

On the first part of my tram journey we passed the Lakeside venue at the Nottingham University and the tram was greeted by two performance artists and Shona from the theatre at Lakeside! On the way back the journey was made even more pleasant by the acoustic talents of a local singer/guitarist who jumped on at Beeston and leaped off at NG2.

#tramtastic times

So, having enjoyed travelling on the entirety of the new NET tram system routes I am finally home and have opened a bottle of chilled Prosecco and decided to bbq a butterflied fillet of lamb previously destined to be cooked traditionally in the oven. Even the dark rain clouds that threatened to rain off my bbq have gone away and as I type the lamb is smelling utterly divine as it cooks and spits on the mini bbq by my rosemary bushes.

 

"Here's to the success of the new tram lines in Nottingham!"

As I type the lamb is not yet done but here are some pictures of the process so far. Later in the day I will add some more. My original intention was to cook the fillet whole in foil covered with charcoal in an old biscuit tin given to me by my work colleague Alan. Although I started the bbq off with the depth of hot coals in the tin later on I decided to spread out the heat in order to cook the meat uniformly.

To be continued....

The continuation.....

After finishing the first part of my blog post I decided to make use of the hot coals and smoke some mackerel fillets. I may use the finished result in a kedgeree. Towards the end of the cooking the rain had got quite fierce and I finished the fish off situated on my front door mat. Luckily I have no household smoke alarm otherwise I think all hell would have been let loose! The mackerel fillets came from my freezer and defrosted quite quickly in a large bowl of cold water.

Leaving the mackerel wrapped up in foil to cook on the bbq I headed off in a mist of rain on my bike to the nearest tram to me (Wilford Industrial Estate stop) in order to take a few photographs of the trams.

On returning I sorted out the mackerel (taking the pictures above) and boiled some new British (buttered) Charlotte potatoes and fresh cabbage leaves to go with the barbequed lamb. By this time the lamb was cold but the slightly burnt taste of the lamb fillet (with mint sauce) went particularly well with the potatoes and greens.

Video of my delicious lamb steaks cooked on the bbq and eaten with Chinese stir fry and fresh mint.

The other night was very sunny and I just fancied some lamb steaks and thought instead of an oven cook, grill or fry I would cook them on my small bbq. Whilst I was enjoying cooking and filming and savouring the smells of the wood smoke (takes me back to my boy scout days) I was aware of the outside interference of squeaky kids arriving home from school through the village. I have done my best to remove the aural distractions. I hope that you enjoy the video and don't salivate too much.

Phil xx

Part two of a yummy Heston Blumental bbq trial

Well what a meaty day. The weather today hasn't been perfect for bbq's but in the English tradition of 'Carry and Keep the Briquettes Alight' I did just that.

The Heston Blumental meaty hazelwood smoked beefy back ribs (something I had never tried to cook before) were just sublime. As a certain French telly chef says "Melting, juuuust melting". Merci M. Raymond Blanc and your Gallic enthusiasms. I'm sure if you had tasted my attempt at 'Eston's meaty beef ribs' you would be absolument d'accord avec ca. Just another simple salad to go with it. Mostly tomatoes and finely sliced baby carrots with some greenery. Given that I had purchased so much the other day the ribs had to be frozen and it took about two hours to defrost them. I made an instinctive decision to discard all the accompanying creamy fat that was in the very aromatically perfumed bag containing the rack of short cut beef ribs. The instructions for cooking were to place the ribs on a baking tray and fat didn't seem to have any place in that. Oven fire? I think not!

After you have read this post check out Heston's Ultimate Barbeque to try out yourself.

It was suggested that the rack of beef ribs (enough for two I would say) was put on a middle tray in the centre of the oven at gas mark 5 or 190 degrees C for between 20-25 minutes. This I did and in the latter part of the cooking added the 'drizzle' for the last five minutes. Then I put them on the bbq for ten minutes more to brown off and sizzle. I could hardly contain myself! The smoke turned bluey grey and my mouth very moist. But back indoors I had to go.

I was in the middle of a theatre writing project as this was cooking and it smelt absolutely wonderful. A very rich, almost oxtail depth of aroma and colouring. Heston's beef back ribs are brined and flavoured with an aromatic Mesquite rub and smoked over hazelwood. The afore-mentioned 'drizzle' is a flavourful tangy bbq sauce. The meat for the beef ribs comes from a long established group of carefully selected British beef farmers and suppliers who share Waitroses' values commitment to delivering the highest animal welfare standards. These groups/farmers are also delivering high quality beef, expertly prepared and matured for tenderness from prime cattle with a consideration to protect the environment and promote sustainable farming.

Later in the day and much theatrical writing (http://philloweactor.blogspot.co.uk) I cooked off two of Heston's Ultimate beef burgers. Heston says that "My extensive experiments had shown that the ultimate burger is made with a blend of three different cuts of beef minced in such a way that the strands of the mince lie in the same direction before slicing into burgers." He recommends you cook them between ten and fourteen minutes. In cooking them myself I did notice that they were quite bloody so needed cooking well if you are not so keen on burgers that 'moo'. Like the lamb and cucumber burgers they ended up very moist and tasty.

I did mine to accompany a Waitrose stir fry mix with a Waitrose Sweet and Fragrant Thai Stir Fry Sauce. Less boring than an a cob or two with ketchup. The stir fry sauce was delicate and creamy, perfect to go with the burgers.

A great bbq opportunity from Waitrose and Heston Blumental. Part One.

I was recently contacted by Waitrose to ask if I would like to host a barbeque bake off event where you have some friends round for a bbq and they have fun being creative with Waitrose's Heston Blumental bbq products. Long story short I agreed as I thought I could fit one in on a Saturday or Sunday during my annual holiday. Then when I asked around some foodie friends they were all otherwise engaged or on holidays. Saying that the general feeling from them was it would be a fun event and they would be sad to miss it. So I got back to my contact at Waitrose and she was generous enough to let me go ahead on my own. They supplied me with some Waitrose vouchers, bbq tools and a back pack bbq.

The nearest big Waitrose store to me is about fifteen miles away in Newark so on Friday I got the train there (it is conveniently placed right next to the train station) and spend a jolly hour food shopping. As it happened they only stocked a small amount of Heston Blumental products so I got what I could and improvised around the rest. My little fridge has never had so much food crammed into it!

After you have read this post why not check out Heston's Ultimate Barbeque for great ideas to try out yourself.

My plan is to cook over three or four days and test out the Waitrose food products. No hardship there! I tend to like the French style of foods so my buying reflected that.

First off the mark was a meal I had on Friday night of Heston Blumental Lapsang Souchong tea smoked salmon. The packaging said "Nothing beats the smokiness of Lapsang Souchang tea which gives the salmon a complex yet delicate flavour. Lapsang Souchong is a subtly perfumed black tea. Because the leaves are traditionally smoked over pinewood fires it has a distinctive smoky taste which imparts a lovely flavour to the responsibly farmed Scottish salmon."

I decided that the smoked salmon would be nice with an omelette and I added some chopped dry roasted peanuts to the pieces of salmon and made a simple salad to add on top of the cooked omelette in presentation rather like a pizza. I also chopped up a few pitted black olives I happened to have in the fridge and mixed them with some fresh basil leaves. The cooking only took about five minutes and was perfect for summer's evening meal, light and delicate, smoky with a variety of textures in the food.

For my Saturday lunch I eagerly arranged a mouth watering melange of 'Unearthed' French Selection Platter consisting of French Pyrenees cured ham, Saucission Sec and Sausisson Sec with Herbes De Provence. The Sausisson Sec with Herbes Provence was a herb coated and dried pork salami and the Pyrenees Ham was air dried for ten months. It certainly didn't take me ten months to eat it. More like ten minutes. I love the dry and salty flavours of smoked meats and these were exceptional. Again  I accompanied the meats with a  simple salad. I could almost have been in France. The evening sun was bright in my kitchen as I put together the repast and I made the most of light and shadows to show off this food to its best. I hope it looks as delicious as it tasted.

Saturday evening I headed off to the local woods (actually part of large park) with a big ex Post Office bag and gathered wood for the bbq session I decided to do on Sunday. Two trips later I had more than enough wood! There is only me to enjoy the food so I planned to cook some Heston Blumental 'Ultimate' Pork Sausages and two lamb and cucumber burgers and to be a bit experimental with what I should eat these tasty things with. I actually found it exciting to be cajoled by Waitrose into being a bit diverse with my food combinations.



Think that I went a big mad with the wood collecting!


Sunday morning I easily put the bbq together and got the wood burning then added coals. It was a bit smoky but not too much. As I sat watching the flames and smoke with a glass of cider I felt quite the man of the woods. And a hungry man of the woods at that!

First out of the packet and on to the new bbq were the two Heston Blumental lamb and cucumber burgers. Heston says that this flavour combination was once very common in English cook books.  I must say I was salivating as they started to cook and hiss on the bbq. Even the bees feeding on the lavender bushes next to me seemed to be interested and 'dare bee' style flew through the blue smoke rising from the briquettes. This inspired to me add a spoonful of honey to the cooked burgers and a few dried lavender flowers I have in for when I cook lavender and lemon chicken. I had these beautifully tasty and moist burgers with tomatoes and baby basil leaves. Despite the fact that the burgers had been cooking about fifteen minutes the cucumber element still felt cool to the tongue.

Next on the bbq were Heston Blumental's pack of four ultimate pork sausages. Heston's recipe adds a touch of nutmeg, ginger and sherry for flavour. The pork belly and shoulder meat is double minced for a superior texture. The texture was the thing I noticed in the cooked sausage, very compact and the sherry comes through in the cooking. Very enjoyable.

I made the creative decision to do something a bit different with the sausage so I cut the sausage into chunks and mixed it up with small balls of mozzarella, tomatoes, jumbo prawns and Puy lentils. The sweetness of the prawns contrasted well with the nutty flavour of the lentils and the sausages. It was quite filling actually but still I wanted to keep on cooking on the bbq.

Finally I cooked some of Waitrose's Chorizo whirls with the intention of enjoying the sunshine, the outdoors cooking and the fun of the opportunity. I had planned on letting the cooked whirls cool off for something to snack on later today. In the end I gave them to a very grateful lady called Maria who sells the Big Issue outside the local Co-Op store. When I came out from doing a little bit of shopping her face was a picture. "Are they nice?" I said. As she finished her mouthful she exclaimed "Hmmm, delicious - gracias -  you so kind."

It was nice to give something back too. More Heston Blumental products to be featured here in the next few days.