Foreword

Years ago, my husband and I visited my friend Paula and her husband, David, on the ranch they were running in Texas Hill Country. Between collecting eggs from their hens, feeding the horses, and running their dogs, she and David casually slow-roasted goat over an open fire for dinner. I don’t do this kind of thing, but I like attaching myself to friends who do.

I have always believed in surrounding myself with people I look up to. With one friend, I admire her relentless determination. With another, his Google-like brain. With Paula, I have long been in awe of her ease in the kitchen (her sly joke cracking, too). It’s as if she were born not with a silver spoon in her mouth but tongs in her hands.

When Merrill Stubbs, Food52’s cofounder, and I were dreaming up this book, Paula naturally leapt to mind. We wanted a grilling cookbook that wouldn’t be like every other chest-pounding, aggressively typefaced, you’re-a-wuss-if-you-don’t-cook-a-whole-pig cookbook on the market. These books don’t speak to us. They make us feel bad about our Webers. They make us resent grilling.

And, yet, we love grilled food! We’d like to do more grilling! We’d even do it on weeknights if you’d show us how to make it approachable!

We knew if anyone could pull this off, Paula could. She’d pour us a drink, put on some Waylon Jennings, and casually coach us to toss some halloumi on the hot grates. It would all seem like a dream—and no big deal.

And that’s just what happened. Paula got us making nachos, but with grilled corn. She showed us how to smoke tomatoes for an earthy lentil soup (see this page). We’ll soon be serving our crisped chicken wings with a pretense-free Cholula butter (see this page). And we’re already planning a dinner around the El Rancho grilled pizza (see this page), a spunky pie topped with shaved zucchini, ricotta, and mint.

There is a place in the world for cooks like us to love our grill. And we can all thank Paula—our Susan B. Anthony of the grill—for helping us find our way here.

—Amanda Hesser, cofounder of Food52