Barbecues & Grilling -Anthony Worrrall Thompson
BBQ season is almost with us again and all over the country, A&E departments in local hospitals are gearing up for the inevitable casualties. Part-cooked and pink chicken wings, spare ribs burnt to a crisp on the outside and tenderly raw within, salmonella burgers in baps. Let’s face it, as a nation we don’t really do BBQ very well.
And yet we persist because food, even when it’s poisoning you, tastes so much better when cooked and consumed outdoors. If the sun happens to be shining that’s a bonus. Anthony Worrall Thompson, despite standing no higher than a B&Q BBQ himself, is a chef of some stature. So when he decides to write a BBQ cookbook you can expect sophisticated al fresco dining to be on the menu and so it turns out.
All the classics are here, of course, American burgers, steaks and kebabs and ribs but also rather fancier dishes such as char grilled monkfish with chermoulah and a good number of vegetarian options including pissaladiere toast, barbecued leeks and asparagus with maltaise toast. Even some rather tasty desserts are here as well as plenty of salads.
Aside from the great range of recipes Anthony also gets serious about cooking techniques to ensure your meals are always as safe to consume as they are delicious and he is clear about just how to manage a BBQ, from initial lighting to putting it away clean. He also is a big fan of the kettle BBQ, the sort where you leave the lid on and don’t peek! It’s the best way of getting really succulent meat with a fantastic smoky flavour. Although, of course, it does prevent the man of the house poking and prodding the meats every few minutes. Something we men seem genetically compelled to do, as well as disappear when the grill needs degreasing.
So before you perform the age-old ritual of sloshing petrol over the coals, flinging a match on and removing your eyebrows take a look at Anthony’s book. You definitely won’t get burnt for your money.
Fifty recipes to stake your life on – Charles Campion
Charles Campion looms very large in the London restaurant world. Like an iceberg in trousers he waits for restaurants to founder on his witty put-downs. And yet, for some reason, he seems to be firmly restrained by his editors to the Gastro pub, curry house beat. Possibly because this massive man is so instantly recognisable, the chance of him doing an incognito review is small.
Unlike the majority of critics who couldn’t boil an egg even with
an instruction book, Campion cooks. This is the book his fans have been waiting
for. It’s a sort of memoir and as such does not boast the usual pages
of lavish photos we’ve come to expect. Instead it comes in a cool black
cover and is almost pocket-sized. There is a rather annoying running gag
whereby each chapter has a mock-Victorian synopsis ‘Wherein we discover
the largest kidney in Britain’ sort of thing, but that apart, this
book is a great read (overuse of the word 'shrapnel' apart).
First off all the recipes work because, as Campion says, nothing culinary is as annoying as a dish which stubbornly fails to look anything like the picture or indeed taste like it. As the title suggests, every recipe here has been triple tested and cooked under challenging conditions. Fifty recipes and fifty great stories make this a book you can read on the train, as long as you don’t mind laughing out loud a fair bit. Eccentric, homespun, flamboyant family, fattening, family – there are recipes and stories here for all tastes. A book written with all the wit and wisdom we have come to expect from the Big Man.
