Wherever possible I make plans to light fires: by the river, in the wild, even right outside my house in my one-metre strip of garden – no space is too small. I’m not sure how the neighbours feel about it sometimes, when the smoke is billowing down the street! Sometimes these fire plans are quite extravagant – such as cooking a whole venison and river trout at the top of a deserted valley with friends and family one summer. I’ll send out invitations with just a little map; everyone will walk for miles to the delight at the end.
It feels like such an achievement, starting a fire and then keeping it going. Huddled on a little beach in Scotland in the winter, we built a fire and cooked some scallops over it. This was so much more enjoyable than if we had just stood in front of the rental kitchen oven. It’s communal, it’s exciting and it’s lovely to watch.
Give the vegetables a chance, too, when it comes to fire: on the grill or wrapped up and cooked in the embers, charred to within a centimetre of their life and folded through yoghurt, they have a lot to bring to the table!
For all of these recipes you should light your barbecue or fire about 45 minutes before you want to start cooking. It is better to have too much charcoal on the barbecue than too little – running out of heat as you throw the steak on is enough to make you cry. I use lumpwood charcoal as the larger pieces burn longer than the smaller bits. Those briquette things should be avoided at all costs. Also invest in a blowtorch, as it makes lighting the barbecue fast and argument-free.
The key to successful barbecuing is to have everything ready in advance. Do everything ahead of time: salads, sauces, sides; set the table, warm lots of bowls and plates, pour drinks and get everything on the table so as soon as the food comes off the grill you can all dig in!
Your coals should be white, grey and red-hot, and the flames should have died down before you start cooking. Shut down any vents at this stage and the fire will retain its heat and not burn out too quickly. It will be hottest in the middle, less towards the edges. Work out your order of cooking before you begin, thinking about what might need to rest, what goes cold quickly and what takes the longest and least time to cook, then form a plan. This is when you realize not cooking too many different things is a good idea. Ingredients such as vegetables and sausages can be cooked in the middle to get some char and colour, then can be moved to the edge to continue cooking more slowly while you use the hottest spot for something else, such as a big steak or whole fish.