In which Ed has a barbecue and gets two racks of ribs...

The weekend before last I had a barbecue.  As you might have guessed, I'm really not the sort of alpha-male douche-bag who couldn't tell his arse from his elbow in a kitchen but as soon as the mercury stretches past 15° wheels out the barbecue and takes complete control because there's fire involved and that's what men (manly men) are supposed to do.  No, in fact I'm far better within the luxurious confines of a kitchen where you can have four things on the go on different heats at the same time rather than just a temperature gauge of either 'red' or 'white'.  But, you know, barbecues are awesome, right?

So, what do you get when you come to a barbecue of mine?  Plenty awesome things, of course.  Sod sausages and burgers (which are fine in their own right), but ribs is really where it's at for proper barbecue.  So I asked my butcher for two racks of baby back ribs, and prepared them thus.

Spice rub
2tbsp smoked paprika
2tsp celery salt
2tsp ground cumin
cayenne pepper
ground ginger
ground toasted Sichuan peppercorns
ground cloves
ground black pepper

Mix all the ingredients together and rub over the surface of the ribs and leave in the fridge overnight.

According to Barbecue Sauce Folklore, I should have at least one Secret Ingredient.  But I don't.  Certainly not of Planet Terror proportions, but then I didn't have hoards of the undead to content with whilst making it.  I don't have a Secret Ingredient, not least because I've already told several people what's in mine, but also because there's not really anything in it that anyone might conceivably never think to put in a barbecue sauce.  Except maybe root beer, but even then my inspiration for using it came from an episode of Man v. Food (which is probably the greatest food show on TV.)  Also I'm not selling it, so it doesn't really matter.

Sauce
1 medium onion
3 cloves garlic
6 tbsp tomato puree
5 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp worcester sauce
4 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp cider vinegar
3 tbsp root beer
2 tbsp molasses sugar
1 tbsp chipotles en adobo
2 tbsp olive oil
1 star anise
1 piece mace
2 tsp mustard powder
2 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsp celery salt
2 tsp ground black pepper

Finely chop the onion and garlic and fry in the olive oil with the mace and star anise in a pan big enough to hold all the ingredients until the onion and garlic have softened.  Add everything else and cook on a gentle heat for about fifteen minutes.  This was left overnight with the mace and star anise left in to infuse. 

Set the oven to a low temperature, about 100°C.  Put the ribs in a roasting pan and crumble a few tablespoons of molasses sugar over the top.  Pour about 100ml of water into the bottom of the pan, cover with foil and cook in the oven for between 1½ and 2 hours until the meat is cooked through, but not overdone.  The water will create steam inside the pan, while the sugar will caramelise on the surface of the meat. 

Take the ribs out of the pan and coat the top side with a liberal amount of barbecue sauce and finish off on the barbecue for about five or ten minutes, depending on how hot it is.

Now my fondness for seafood extends to barbecues as well.  As a lot of seafood really doesn't need much time at all to cook, barbecues are great.  Last summer I barbecued some prawns that were about the size of a small domestic animal which were fantastic, along with some squid, which you only really need to wave at the barbecue and it's done.  While I was planning what to do I found a recipe for prawns ideal for barbecuing in Thomasina Miers' Mexican Food Made Simple.  These were just marinaded overnight in several generous spoonfuls of chipotles en adobo whizzed up with some onion, garlic and a bit of water, then barbecued until they turned pink.

I've been wanting to cook razor clams for ages now.  In fact I only got round to eating them for the first time in Barcelona in May, firstly an unfortunate stop in a harbourside tourist trap resorted to after the initial guide book recommendation being hideously beyond standing room only (crouching on the floor room only?) and the hilariously titled Bar Fanny being ominously deserted.  They were about as rubbery as anything you'll ever eat.  At least we did discover an amazing ice cream shop a few yards away in which to continue the Search For Amazing Pistachio Ice Cream.  Secondly, and thankfully, the tapas joint Kirsty and I sort of stumbled across retrieved them fully into 'Oh, actually these are just really incredible' territory.  So when I went to the fishmongers to get prawns and saw a fat bundle of razor clams lying there, obviously I got some as well.  As far as cooking them, I just threw them on the barbecue and put the lid on and waited for the shells to open, then liberally covered them in a mixture of olive oil, lime juice, garlic, chilli and parsley.  I think by then the barbecue had started to die down a bit as they could have done with being cooked over a higher heat for a bit less, but still, they weren't quite up to the Taller de Tapas standard, but then these were about twice the size.  They still tasted sea-salty and fresh...

As well as these I did some aubergines and courgettes, thickly sliced lengthways and brushed with oil and lemon before barbecuing (before any of the meat/seafood went on), a now obligatory focaccia, and what is possibly the best/easiest thing to do with potatoes for such an occasion.  Take some large potatoes (doesn't need to be any specific type, but Maris Piper works fine as Generic Potoato of Choice.)  Slice in half lengthways, then cut each half into three or four wedges, depending on size.  Put in a roasting pan and cover liberally with olive oil, sea salt and ground black pepper.  Smash a few cloves of garlic under the blade of a heavy knife and stick in the pan, along with a few sticks of rosemary.  Roast in a pre-heated oven at 200°C for roughly an hour, or until golden.

I had also planned to do some cous cous using some preserved lemons I found lying around and toasted pine kernels and some other things, which I managed to totally forget about.  I also chargrilled and skinned some romano peppers the night before and left them in a jar with garlic infused oil, which I also totally forgot about.  Even with those in mind I had wondered whether or not that little lot was going to be enough, even though I don't have any Italian ancestry.  Obviously it was plenty, with enough left over to fry up some aubergine and courgette with some romano peppers and toss with some paccheri pasta the Monday after.

So overall it was a splendid barbecue.  Alas Esteemed Blogging Partner was being held against her will by Evil Corporate Pub Chain International, so couldn't come and make more types of bread and make it some sort of combined Pot Tossery showcase.  Large quantities of superlative beer was drunk (and all put on my Noble Green loyalty card, haha), and the neighbouring shitty street party where some two-bit pub band knock out hideous Blues Brothers covers wasn't too intrusive as they all seemingly became distracted by David Haye's tickling contest. 

Head Nor Tail

So this is another post which I begin by explaining my recent lack of activity and why I haven't posted anything for ages.  Various things have left me out of the kitchen of late, partly due to being out of the country for a while where the closest I got to culinary activity was stuffing as many sausages into a baguette as was humanly possible to stem the flow of a ridiculously awful hangover, and the aforementioned Drunken Jaunt, about which I will spare the blushes of my Esteemed Blogging Partner™.

I had been vaguely intending on writing one of those structured posts where something happens which informs and influences what I do in the kitchen.  That hasn't quite happened, but I'll fill in anyway.

The other week I caught an episode of No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain's food and travel show follow up to A Cook's Tour on the Good Food channel.  I've previously stated my admiration, and indeed envy for Mr Bourdain here; he basically gets paid to travel the world and eat, what's not to like about that?  Far from being just Alan Whicker with an appetite, his mantra for A Cook's Tour was "I'll try anything, I'll risk everything, I have nothing to lose", coupled with a 'cut the bullshit, give me the good stuff' approach and you're on to a winner in my book.  And indeed, his own.

This particular episode featured two things which are seemingly synonymous with Bourdain shows, namely the consumption of large quantities of regional liquor and the slaughtering, butchering and eating of a pig.  As a result of this I ended up looking for more episodes on Youtube, and finding the one from the same series where he visits London and Edinburgh and spends time salivating and eulogising in Fergus Henderson's restaurant St. John.  Which made me think, why do I not actually own a copy of Henderson's book Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking?  Given my food ethos (although I like to look at it as something less rigorously structured as deserving of the term), espoused on this blog on several occasions, I should have been subscribed to the Church of Henderson far sooner. 

So I went and bought a copy, the reprint which appropriately contains an introduction by Bourdain.  This is where I should be diving into accounts of wonderful dishes made from all manner of livestock organs, bits of guts and bones and heads which would be off-putting even to most meat-eaters, let alone the squeamish type of vegetarians.  But I'm not.  I haven't actually cooked anything from it yet, nor been inspired into creating anything in it's vein.  In fact from hereon in, there is no mention of meat whatsoever.  A couple of days before leaving for Belgium and Holland I picked up Thomasina Miers' Mexican Food Made Simple, a book I've not visited for a while.  It's the sort of book in which recipes will call for the use of something you've already made from another part of the book.  I love this in principle, but it doesn't sit too well with my often short-noticed what-the-fuck-am-I-going-to-cook? approach to cookery book use.

So the week just gone after consulting the suppliers section in the back I took myself off to Borough Market on a gloriously tourist-free day when seemingly everyone was there to actually buy produce rather than take photos of piles of food to show Facebook just how much they love markets, and returned with a mere fraction of what I was sorely tempted to buy.  These are the results of my endeavours.

Chipotles en adobo

200g chipotle chillies (about 65)
1 large white onion, roughly chopped
a head of garlic, cloves roughly chopped
3 tablespoons fresh oregano leaves or a few good pinches of dried oregano
1-2 tablespoons thyme leaves
2 fresh bay leaves
1 teaspoon cumin seeds, crushed
4 tablespoons olive oil
350ml good quality white wine vinegar
50ml good quality balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons tomato purée
7 tablespoons demerara or palm sugar
2 tablespoons sea salt

Wash the chipotles in cold water and drain.  Snip off the stalk end of each chilli with scissors, which will allow the water to penetrate their tough skins. 

Cover the chillies with water in a medium pan and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes until completely soft.  When the chillies are soft, rinse off any excess seeds. 

Put the onion, garlic, herbs and cumin into a blender (or a stick blender is just as easy) with 200ml water and six of the chillies.  Purée to a smooth paste. 

Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pan until it is smoking hot.  Add the chilli paste and fry for about 3 minutes, stirring continuously with a spatula to prevent it catching and burning.  Add the vinegars, tomato purée, sugar, salt and another 100ml water and cook for 5 more minutes before adding the rest of the chillies.  Cook, whilst stirring, for a further 15 minutes and at the end check to see if the purée needs more salt or sugar.  Store in clean, sterilised jam or Kilner jars.

This stuff is fantastic.  The flavour is initially sweet from the sugar, which then gives way to the taste of spice and the sourness from the vinegar.  It is a relatively potent heat, but not too hot, and it is a very well rounded heat.  It doesn't affect one particular part of the mouth as some do, rather gives it a lovely warming heat all around, which after the initial heat has dispensed leaves a really wonderful flavour.  The recipe states it makes approximately a litre, so I was glad to have bought two 750ml jars whilst filling them both up.

Afterwards I used some to make chipotle ketchup from the same book.

Chipotle ketchup

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 very large Spanish onion, or 2-3 medium-sized ones, halved and sliced
8 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
1.5kg ripe tomatoes (or tinned plum tomatoes)
1 stick of celery, chopped
125ml cider vinegar
70g demerara sugar
½ cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon celery salt
½ teaspoon mustard powder
½ teaspoon cloves
1 piece of mace
2 teaspoons coriander seeds
2 teaspoons black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1-2 tablespoons Chipotles en adobo
sea salt

Heat the olive oil in a large pan and cook the onion over a medium-low heat until the onion starts turning translucent.  Add the garlic and keep cooking until the onion starts taking the merest hint of colour. 

Add the tomatoes and their juices to the pan, crushing the tomatoes with the back of a spoon.  Stir in the rest of the ingredients, bring to the boil and then simmer for an hour, stirring occasionally.

After an hour, purée the mixture, and then continue to cook over a low heat until it reaches your desired thickness and looks like ketchup.

The ketchup can be stored in clean, sterilised bottles in the fridge for several months.

It's rather orange, rather than red, but I think this is because I used fresh tomatoes which tend to be less of a full on, deep red than tinned.  I got three 500ml bottles worth out of this recipe, and in true Pot Tossery tradition, one will be winging its way up to the midlands post-haste.  Unfortunately they don't lend themselves to stacking, otherwise the one labeled 'reserved for Kirsty' would almost certainly have been at the base of such a structure.  In the meantime, I need to get thinking about animal parts.