Barbecues are primitive

[bazfaz]

It has to be their caveman origin that is their attraction. Mrs Faz and I don't usually have a BBQ just for the two of us - what's the point in getting it all fired up to cook a couple of meat patties?

However we have inherited a large structure on our terrace and it seemed sensible to test-cook it before the grandchildren-visiting season (they love BBQs). Last night we gathered kindling, firelighters, charcoal, paper, matches, bellows, 2 sizes of tongs and a stiff pastis and got down to it. (I had a thought: isn't it much, much simpler cooking at the stove inside? Answer: yes)

The BBQ has been designed with no air access under the charcoal to encourage burning. So after the paper and kindling were burned up and the charcoal put on it required a lot of work with the bellows. Smoke was everywhere. I had just shampooed my hair but I should have delayed that until after dinner. Finally the time had come to put on some food. I was encouraged to do this by the appearance of Mrs Faz, newly showered and expecting to eat.

To make the whole business worthwhile we were having lamb chops, slices of aubergine, potatoes previously microwaved and halved and finished on the BBQ - and starting with BBQed asparagus (the very last of the season).

OK. The aubergine slices took an age to get tender. The halved potatoes warmed and browned nicely. But the asparagus? They rolled off the grill directly onto the live coals. This was not what the video I had watched earlier recommended. Some smarmy Californian chef had said it too 3-5 minutes. Huh. After about 15 minutes I served up the nicely ash-flavoured asparagus. I don't know what the asparagus tasted like but I woukld say the charcoal was made from sweet chestnut, quite nice.

Holy smoke! Watch out! While eating the asparagus the lamb chops had caught fire. But the table has been cunningly laid so that Mrs Faz is now close to the BBQ. She rescues the chops. I say it is in the interests of a low-cholesterol diet to burn off the fat. I don't think this is well received.

Anyway, the aubergine and potatoes have been tucked into the oven in the kitchen to keep warm. The platter is brought out and the burnt lamb chops added. Isn't blackened redfish a delicacy down Louisiana way? So in the Lot we had blackened lamb chops.

The wine helped it all go down.

Now tonight I am getting in more practice with BBQed beef patties, courgettes and mushrooms. But it could be I am going to be saved because there is the possibility of a thunderstorm and we'll be too busy unplugging computers and telephones to think of the BBQ. I live in hopes.

[onlymark]

I have a pathological hatred of barbecues. It is a rare occurrence when the food comes off it cooked correctly. Familiarity and skill seem to be hard earned and very few people have them. Usually the timings are wrong, you either wait for hours and fill up on bread instead or you miss the small window of opportunity when the food is done right.
Whenever I'm invited to one I usually eat well beforehand and then just eat the accompanying salads.
If I want a burnt on the outside and raw in the middle piece of meat/burger/sausage, or the same with say a vegetable kebab, then I'll get my kids to cook for me (though they are getting better).

What I suggest Baz is you forgo the bbq and just build the kids a small fire, I know it is that that is the attraction with mine, and then cook what you will in the kitchen but put several half cooked spuds in tin foil and get the kids to cook them in the fire - or bananas and chocolate in foil as a desert.
That's what I now do with mine.
That's only a suggestion though. Maybe you'll have a mutiny on your hands if you don't go the whole hog.

[Deleted]

In my family, the barbecue was only used for one specfic meat (often T-bone steaks or pork ribs) and nothing else -- no mixing of other items, no grilling vegetables. Other meal items were prepared in the kitchen.

So with only one thing on which to concentrate, it went very well. On the grill for the appropriate amount of time, turned over, barbecue sauce applied if appropriate, and then brought to the table all at once, cooking finished!

I think that keeping it as simple as possible is the key to success.

Of course, if the barbecue is badly designed with improper ventilation, it's a completely different problem.

[Don Cuevas]

Baz should contract Sra. Cuevas to bbq for him. You either got it or you don't.

[fumobici]

I love grilling, it's a bit risky on unfamiliar equipment but I can usually manage.

[bazfaz]

Here I am, night 2 on the BBQ. A certain insouciance. Courgettes sliced lengthwise, mushrooms and small potatoes are cooked and keeping warm in the oven. Beef patties are cooking. No dramas tonight.

We'll eat our starter now - salmon and smoked salmon rillettes.

[lagatta]

I let my friends from places like Argentina and Chile do the grilling. Meat always properly cooked, though perhaps somewhat overcooked by French standards. Then, there is always the méchoui. Nowadays the spits are often mechanised.

I do very much like grilled aubergine and asparagus though.

[spindrift]

Oh, you look so well, Baz. I like your BBQ. It's similar to the one Maurice has and we'll be using it, no doubt, before we visit you in a couple of weeks!

[Deleted]

That chimney is a mistake. It should be removed.

[lagatta]

Why is the chimney wrong? I've seen a lot of bbqs with those - don't they draw the smoke above the cook's level?

[Deleted]

Baz already wrote that the smoke was in his face. The fire surface needs to be raised on small bricks with air holes on the platform to allow the fire to burn. A proper barbecue fire is not smoky, so the chimney is useless -- it is trapping the smoke rather than evacuating it. The only proper barbecues with a chimney also have a sort of door in front to allow baking when closed.

[bazfaz]

I think Kerouac needs to pay a visit to lick our BBQ into shape.

[fumobici]

I'm with K on this, the chimney is ridiculous if decorative and the coals need ventilation (preferably adjustable somehow) from beneath.

[bazfaz]

BBQs built like this are widespread in France (certainly the 3 departments I have lived in). I think the idea of the chimney is to cause an uprush of hot air thus providing a draught to ventilate the coals. It might work with a lot of wood burning but not with what we normally do. I am sorry we gave away our trusty BBQ when we moved house, thinking this monster would be better.

[Deleted]

It'll work if you manage to raise the fire off the bottom. Then you can add doors and turn it into a tandoori oven.

[bjd]

We have only a small, metal portable BBQ. When we use it, the entire neighbourhood knows we are having a BBQ. As Baz says, there are a lot of those concrete monsters around.

[bixaorellana]

Suggestion: Get some hardware cloth and cut it wide enough for the opening, but at least three times too long. Then fold it loosely to fit, crimping down the sides. That might elevate the coals enough to pull in air underneath them. Also, it would be easy to remove in order to brush out the chimney floor after cooking.

[bazfaz]

Bixa, I am a fool at DIY. So explain to me, please, how fixing some hardware cloth (do you happen to know what this is in French?) would elevate the coals?

[Deleted]

I don't even know the term "hardware cloth" in English, but I see what she means. Just get some sort of malleable metal grill (stronger than chicken wire) that you can bend into a sort of table shape to get the burning items off the ground.

As long as you find something that would provide proper aeration, even if you can't bend it, all you need to do is lay it over two bricks.

[Deleted]

If you can't do it, if worse comes to worst, just wait for Spindrift. Tell her that if she and Maurice cannot do it, they're not eating.

[bazfaz]

I believe they are bringing their own food.

[bixaorellana]

Baz, look at the little picture in my previous post to get an idea of proportion. It's fairly heavy wire mesh. I recommended folding three levels of it loosely because that would keep it from lying flat on the floor of the chimney.

You could also try making a sort of table as in shown here ------------>
but the weight of the coals might mash it down, although that might not matter in terms of getting air to circulate around the coals.

If you go to the hardware store and ask for chicken wire, it will probably be sold in the same section. You could also just draw a little picture of a grid and they'd understand.

[hwinpp]

Believe it or not, I don't even have one! But not because I don't like it, it's because I don't have time to buy one...

[bixaorellana]

I always think about getting one, but the logical place to have it would be on the porch near the kitchen door. That's where the gas tank is.

[Deleted]

The chimney still seems useless to me (not even an aesthetic excuse as far as I am concerned) unless you want to convert to a tandoori oven.

[bixaorellana]

How can you say that? Look how Baz is leaning on it. It's definitely helping give him that "certain insouciance".

[lola]

Mark Bittman in the NYTimes 2 days ago presented his 101 reasons to fire up the grill:

www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/dining/30mini.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

I want to try at least 78 of them.

[bazfaz]

Jul 1, 2010 3:35:38 GMT bixaorellana said:

How can you say that? Look how Baz is leaning on it. It's definitely helping give him that "certain insouciance".

I'm not leaning on it; I'm holding it up.

[bixaorellana]

;D

Good thing there were no cops around!

[mickthecactus]

Just watching barbecue cooking in California and they are cookin black chickens! Never seen that before.

And I do wish my American friends would call herbs herbs and not erbs! You aren’t French!