Hesp Out West 5 - BBQ
It didn’t last long, but we did have a few days of warm and sunny weather - which was enough to make millions of us head outdoors to cook and eat under blue skies. After a long wet winter, it seemed like a good idea. Essential even. Hopefully a proper summer will be with us soon.
So this week the phrase “Out West” translates to simply going outside for lunch or dinner.
Dining al-fresco has come a long way. A large industry has built up around the concept of outdoor cooking and today there are appliances and gizmos that can have the humble home-cook preparing outdoor meals as well as any chef.
Having said that, the basic idea remains as old as the hills. Kindling a fire and cooking over the flame is what our forebears were doing thousands of years ago - but what many of us love today is the innovative marriage that has taken place between Stone-Age and Space-Age cookery.
My only regret, as I admire the chicken revolving slowly on my Kamado Joe with its clever rotisserie attachment, is that none of this new-old technology was available 50 years ago when I started cooking. If I knew at 17 what I know now… If I’d had the remarkable array of appliances and gizmos… then I’d have been dining in much greater style for decades.
Take that rotisserie, for example. In former times only well-equipped professional kitchens had such devices - and even then they were heated by electric or gas, not the live flame of charcoal which can impart such deep flavour. Now manufacturers like Kamado Joe have developed kits which allow you to rotisserie in your own backyard. Even better, not only are you able to cook evenly over charcoal, you’re also getting the slow-cooking qualities of a clay-lined oven (which is what ‘kamado’ means in Japanese).
Some might think the idea of a rotisserie is a gimmick, designed solely to show-off delicious looking items turning golden in a restaurant window. But anyone who has ever burned anything on a barbecue will know the concept is spot-on… When only one surface is facing hot coals - as in a piece of meat lying on a grill - then that’s the bit which is in danger of burning while the opposite surface stays raw.
By slowly revolving an item you, to some extent, remove the danger of burning. I leave a chicken spinning slowly in my kamado for an hour or more without having to check - and I do this with even more confidence if I’ve taken the trouble to inject the carcass with melted butter or garlic oil so the meat doesn’t dry out. Special meat-injectors being another useful and inexpensive gizmo in the modern al-fresco cook’s armoury.
Of course, the idea of a hunk of meat revolving over a live flame is hardly new - many a rural-life museum will have antique fire-irons which show how the art of the rotisserie was in use centuries ago - although, it did require some poor blighter to sit there for hours turning the crank. Now we just press a switch.
What is new (to me, anyway) is the concept of the rotisserie basket. By clamping some kind of fireproof cage onto your spinning crank, you can rotisserie much smaller items. Simple delicious things, such as panzanella - an Italian dish consisting of toasted hunks of bread, cherry tomatoes and prawns…
Drizzle chunks of stale sourdough with a little olive oil and place in a rotisserie basket, then spin over the coals for three or four minutes. Add the cherry tomatoes for a few more minutes, before eventually bunging in the raw prawns to revolve over the fames until they’ve turned pink. You can tweak by adding cloves of garlic, or herbs or a sprinkle of species, like paprika. The point is that the tumbling action inside the turning cage will help blend the flavours together, resulting in a delicious but ludicrously simple starter.
Chicken wings, drumsticks or small hunks of some other meat rotisseried in a basket alongside new potatoes and whole shallots are a sensation. Again, add a drizzle of oil and herbs or spices to your own taste.
If you want the best shop-bought frozen oven-chips you’ve ever tasted, just spin them for ten minutes over hot coals, to which you’ve introduced a pinch of oak or applewood chippings for a bit of aromatic smoke. Then loosen your belt. I warn you, they are extremely more-ish.
Simple - and you don’t have to be a good cook or even a mediocre one to do any of this. There are plenty of inexpensive rotisserie options which will fit most barbecue appliances - but, like everything, it is a bit of a learning curve. However, the results should be delicious from day one.
THE MEAT MEN
Whether you have the most sophisticated barbecue set-up or you’re relying on a simple grill, you’ll be needing the right stuff to cook on it - and for a great many of us that means meat.
I cook many things over a live flame - from different kinds of bread to a wide variety of vegetables - but I am a meat-eater, and as such I have always been choosy about where I get my carnivorous fix from.
Meat Men - Scott Cartwright and Edward Davies
A few years ago I came across two Somerset lads who were developing what has now become one of the most exciting meat-industry businesses in the West Country. Scott Cartwright and Edward Davies - both aged 33 - are two of the youngest Master Butchers in the region and it is refreshing to discover and support two talented individuals who are making a name for themselves in an industry which, nowadays, is attracting very few youngsters.
Scott and Ed, who have both worked in the meat-industry since they were boys, have only been running their Somerset-based Meat Men business for six years, but in that time they have built a remarkable customer-base which includes more than 30 high street butchery shops as well as hundreds of restaurants and high-end chefs, not to mention countless thousands of domestic consumers like me who buy from the company’s website (https://www.meatmen.co.uk/).
I am one of the latter because the quality is second to none. So I went to meet them at their base just outside Taunton this week because I was interested to discover how it was that two such young men came to be running such a successful business in an industry which no longer attracts many youngsters.
Despite being comparatively raw in years, they have amassed a wealth of experience between them. Ed began helping out at a local meat business as a teenager and Scott started working as a general dogs-body for a well-known Somerset butcher at weekends while still at school. Not surprisingly after nearly 20 years experience apiece, both are now accredited Master Butchers.
But that’s only part of the reason behind their success - the other element is their passion. Scott’s idea of a “gap year”, for example, meant working in butchers’ shops around the world. “At 19, I wanted to learn as much as I could about the butchery trade, so I decided to go travelling. I went to New Zealand and Australia, and worked in France,” he told me, explaining that he’d picked up on all manner of alternative and interesting ways of doing things during his travels.
Then, in 2018, the friends decided to develop their own business. “We thought we’d have a crack at going out on our own. So we began with events like the Bath and West Show and Badminton Horse Trials. We were preparing food initially - steak sandwiches, burgers- things like that.
“I’d been doing this kind of thing for another company, so I knew the scene - but we were doing it differently and it really took off,” said Scott. “We were being asked to come back next year by all the shows.”
The pair put their money into a catering van (which required a last-minute dash up the motorway so they could purchase it at a bargain price) and everything was looking very promising indeed. “Then Covid came along. Everything was cancelled. So we had a bit of a choice to make. Because, although we had invested everything, we still had decent jobs.
“However, we had set ourselves up - we’d made our projections - so we thought about it and realised there can be such a thing as good luck and good timing. Covid meant no one was going to the shops - they wanted stuff online - so we set up a Facebook page and put together some barbecue packs. Within two days it had 35,000 hits, which was absolutely crazy.”
The business grew rapidly from that moment, but the lads knew the lockdowns would not last forever, so began adapting their business to also provide a wholesale offer supplying other butchers, chefs and restaurants.
“That’s where the premium quality has to come in,” explained Ed, who does a lot of the buying, much of it at Sedgemoor Market just down the road.
The Meat Men focus on Westcountry-based produce - they have started fattening much of their own beef and do so to the highest of standards, while all the pork comes from just one award-winning Devon farm (“By far the best pork I’ve ever dealt with,” says Ed). Lamb is all sourced within the region.
The pair work hard not only to maintain high standards, they also create all manner of new and interesting cuts which keep the high-end chefs happy, not to mention domestic customers. And the business is expanding - this summer the Meat Men processing hub will grow to three times the size - which means Scott and Ed will by purchasing a lot more West Country grown meat.
Which is good news for the region’s farmers, and good news for us home-cooks.
Something to slurp with the BBQ?
Did you know that Thursday (23rd May) is International Chardonnay Day? No, I didn’t either. There are so many special days in the calendar nowadays you could fill a newspaper with them and nothing else.
However, I mention this one because a PR from Tesco recently sent samples from the supermarket’s new Chardonnay range, and very good they were too. The range spans various continents and includes no/low alcohol options.
I particularly liked the D’arenberg Witches Berry - a wine fermented and matured in old French oak for seven months. Witches Berry is apparently a weed that grows in the vineyards. Italian women once put the juice of the berry in their eyes which dilated their pupils, making them appear darker and more beautiful. Since 1912 the Osborn family have tended vineyards in McLaren vale, South Australia. Today, family member Chester is making distinctive wines using traditional and sustainable methods.
Delicious, and I reckon ideal to go with some of my rotisserie delights.
