Barbecue by Louise Pickford

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Louise Pickford has the advantage of living in Australia where you can barbecue every night. It's a little more difficult for us poms but if you make the effort, even a light drizzle of rain won't dampen your barbecuing ardour. It should be fun and don't forget that you are cutting out quite a bit of washing up by cooking outdoors. In her latest offering, Louise Pickford explores the versatility of the barbecue. If you've got the thing up and running, why not use it on a daily basis? Once you've got to grips with the heat, you can time everything to perfection so that food is chargrilled and not plain charred. Barbecue is full of great ideas for meat and fish but it is the side dishes that make summer eating such a pleasure and you will find these here in abundance.

While on the basics, like Louise, we recommend using a chimney starter for charcoal barbecues, which negates the use of lighting fuels and thus saves your food from tasting suspiciously chemical. It is a metal cylinder with a handle and a partition. Stuff newspaper into the base, pour coal into the upper section and then light the paper. Leave the starter for about twenty minutes when the coals will be burning brightly. You then pour this into your barbecue, add more charcoal if necessary and then start cooking. Louise recommends burning hardwood charcoal. Whole logs are burned in a kiln and then broken into lumps. There are no additives and it gives off an even burn. She does admit that gas barbecues are just as useful when cooking for two or twenty, especially when you want to quickly sear some tuna steaks. But don't forget, charcoal gives food a great flavour.

An essential prerequisite to any barbecue is a salad of which Louise has collected many good recipes. One of her favourites is tomato and grilled bread salad, which is perfect for bringing out the flavours of freshly chopped tomatoes. Toasted chunks of sourdough bread soak up the juices while black olives punctuate the dish with their gutsiness. You can toast garlic bread skewers: toss cubes of bread in a mixture of olive oil, garlic and parsley. Skewer the cubes and grill over a medium heat until toasted.

You can also wrap food up in foil. Fruit works well with this treatment. Plums, apricots, nectarines can all be placed in foil with some orange juice and spices and then cooked over a medium heat for five to six minutes. Ember roasted potatoes work perfectly on a beach barbecue. Put the potatoes in a double layer of foil and place them directly on the coals, building the coals up around the parcels. Don't cover the potatoes. Cooking takes about an hour and you will need to turn them once.

There are plenty of appetisers to keep your guests going while things are hotting up. Fig, goats' cheese and prosciutto skewers can be cooked on the barbecue before the heat builds up. Figs are split, filled with the cheese and then wrapped in ham. Skewer them and then grill for five minutes. There are also recipes for rubs and marinades. On the latter, zip lock bags are perfect for marinating meat and fish. All the flavours are locked in and you can give them a good jiggle around before putting the bag in a cool place.

Barbecue should give you the courage to get out your tongs and make the most of our remaining summer evenings. And of course, the barbecue still seems to be the preserve of the male species and Louise Pickford does say that ‘We girls can sit back and chill while the men get busy with the cookin.' We're waiting, guys.

Publication details:
144 pages. Photography by Ian Wallace. £16.99
Published by Ryland Peters & Small
ISBN 1841724211
2003


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