A review favour for SEARED, that Saturday Kitchen sweetcorn salad, why you MUST cut steak across the grain, not with it, and a fish-related question from me to YOU

Good morning, Team Fire

Can I begin by begging a favour!! I hate begging but if you have a copy of SEARED (thank you!) can I ask that you consider writing me a quick review on Amazon?

It doesn’t need to be long or fancy - just a sentence or two on if it’s useful to you, if you like the recipes, if you use it and it makes you happy? I ask because a cursory glance at the Amazon BBQ book charts will reveal that its wall to wall air fryer or a myriad of other books that have (to be blunt) got absolutely fuck all to do with cooking over live fire. It’s enormously frustrating as an author to witness that absolute power the Amazon behemoth has over us. But what can you do? It’s how people buy stuff these days and as such we have no choice but to play the algorithm game. Every review helps so much, means the books get noticed, get suggested, get shunted up the charts. And that means I sell more books, which means I get other books commissioned and I can continue to work doing what I love. Each book I write takes a year or so of my time, a whole lot of blood sweat and tears and when they are buried under an air fryer avalanche it’s quite demoralising to say the least.

Please and Thank You xxx

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Onwards…

You may have caught me cooking on last weeks Saturday Kitchen (watch here!), which was barking mad and hilarious even if I was well out of my fire-zone and had a gas hob fail situation that resulted in the home economist crawling about under my feet as I cooked.

If you watched you’ll have seen the sweetcorn salad that seemed to go down so well. A recipe published in The Ultimate Wood Fired Oven Cook Book where it cooks in a hot roasting oven, but as many of you may not have a wood oven you may never have seen it. And you need to see it, make it once and you’ll be hooked. I cook it so often and have never met anyone who doesn’t love it and it’s actually bang tidy cooked any which way. Use a pan over a very hot hob in the kitchen, or set over a hot barbecue or open fire. Whatever way you are cooking you want the corn kernels to be jumping about like pop corn.

Also, can I thank you for all the lovely messages you sent me. Was very heartwarming to get your support. 

ESQUITES (MEXICAN SWEETCORN SALAD) 

It’s hard for me to describe just how much this Mexican corn salad floats my boat – sweet, salty, creamy, intensely savoury, all with a smoky chilli hit, it is absolutely my favourite thing to make when fresh heads of sweetcorn are in season. If it’s not sweetcorn season, then drained tinned is just fine - a couple of tins - or a bag of frozen corn is great too. No need to defrost, just bung it in a super hot pan. Try to find chipotle chilli flakes if you can – they add a deep smoky flavour. Many large supermarkets will have them, and if you can’t find chipotle flakes, use a little chipotle chilli sauce instead.

On cooking - SERVES 4–6 AS A SIDE DISH, FEWER IF YOU LIKE IT AS MUCH AS I DO! 

4 large heads of fresh sweetcorn, husks removed 

3 tbsp olive oil
1–2 tsp chipotle chilli flakes, to taste (or chipotle hot sauce)
100g feta cheese, crumbled 

3 heaped tbsp sour cream
1⁄2 a bunch of spring onions, finely sliced
1 clove of garlic, crushed
a small bunch of fresh coriander, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper 

Take one of the heads of corn and hold it firmly with one end down on a chopping board. Use a sharp knife to slice downwards, skimming off the kernels of corn. You need to get a feel for how deep to cut – too shallow and you will waste corn, too deep and you may end up with woody bits. Scoop up the kernels – they will no doubt have scattered far and wide – and put them into a large roasting tin. Repeat with the other heads of corn. Pour over the oil, add the chilli flakes and season with salt and pepper, tossing well to mix. 

Make the dressing by putting most of the feta into a mixing bowl (one big enough to mix the corn through once cooked), along with the sour cream, spring onions, garlic and most of the coriander. Reserve a little feta and coriander to garnish. Set the dressing aside while you roast the corn. 

Slide the roasting tray into the hot oven, pretty near the embers so the corn gets a blast of good strong heat. Leave to roast until nicely charred in places, about 20–25 minutes, sliding the tray out and tossing everything around a couple of times to make sure it’s cooking evenly. If you are cooking on a hob or BBQ, set a pan over a high heat and stir fry until the kernels are popping about and lightly charred in places.

Once the corn has cooked, tip it into the bowl of dressing, scraping any little caramelised bits in too – they will add bags of flavour. Toss well to mix, then spoon into a serving dish. Scatter over the rest of the feta and coriander. 

Serve while warm, or leave to cool to room temperature. Keeps well in the fridge for up to 3 days, but do allow it to come back to room temperature before serving, for maximum flavour. 

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You MUST cut your steak across the grain!!

I was scrolling idly though instagram a day or so ago and spotted someone else’s steak reel (no, I am not telling you who it was), where they were cooking bavette steak and slicing it on camera. And I have to tell you, they sliced it all wrong. Running the knife with the grain not across is it very bad karma in steak land. Here’s why:

Muscle - ie meat - is made up of long slim muscle cells bound together in tight bundles. I like to envisage them as a tightly held bundle of spaghetti, with each strand connected to the next by protein bonds. If you were to cut WITH the grain, so down along the bundle, what you will be left with is a single strand of spaghetti to put in your mouth. Not so bad with spaghetti but with a single strand of meat fibre, tough as old boots. It won’t matter a jot how well you cooked your steak it will still have a distinct rubbery chew that kinda spoils the whole eating thing. However, if you cut your steak ACROSS the grain, so run your knife perpendicular, at a 90 degree, angle to the fibres, what you get is a series of short little snips of meat fibres. What you are doing is mechanically shortening the meat fibres which will hugely enhance the perception of tenderness when you come to chew it. I guess you’ve started off the chewing process in effect. 

Here’s a pic from SEARED of a tri-tip - zoom in and you will see the short chopped meat fibres pretty clearly (nothing like a spaghetti strand, right?):

Meat fibres are sometimes easier to spot in raw meat so give it a cursory glance before you come to cook it. Also, the grains are more pronounced in the whole muscle steaks - like bavette/flank, onglet/hanger, tri tip, skirt and the top rump (picanha). With steaks like sirloin or ribeye, the butcher will have cut across the grain when butchering into individual steaks, so it becomes less important. Although if you have a fat sharing steak those fibres are still going to be quite long for chewing, so as you cut it to eat, try to run your knife across the grain as you cut it into mouthfuls.

Any questions on this, bung ‘em in the comments and am always happy to help!

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And FINALLY - I need to ask you a question. I have a conundrum as I head towards the finish line of the fish book I’ve been working on.

How much do you want to know about fish-butchery, ie. filleting, gutting, prep. Is it important for you to have a go at buying whole fish and prepping it yourself, or would you prefer to let the expert, the fishmonger, to do it for you so you can just get on with the cooking? I ask because yesterday I ran a fish class at Bristol Fire School and there was a certain amount of hesitation when I pulled out some mackerel to fillet. No one really wanted to have a go basically, which I was a bit surprised about.

I’m the first to hold my hand up and say I find filleting tricky, but I do enjoy the process of doing it in a geeky dissection kind of way. But what about YOU? Comments below please!! If I write less on filleting, I get to write more recipes, more filleting will be less recipes. It’s that simple.

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That’s it for now. Gotta get on with finishing this book. After a crazy intense few weeks I now have 3 days at my desk to write (a lot) and that feels like much need change of pace.

Thanks for being there.

Big love,

GT x