Bristol Fire School update, what is shit charcoal & a wood fired grilling recipe...

Greetings Team Fire, hope the world as been kind to you these last couple of weeks?

All is good in my hood but I can feel things ramping ever faster as we nudge closer to spring. The winter that felt long and endless is now pretty much done and I can’t wait for the incoming change of pace. In a couple of months I might regret my enthusiasm.

Today I spent the morning with the lovely Becky who helps me at Bristol Fire School, planning menu’s for spring, working out what we need to do to get organised for the first class next week. There is going to be such of lot of lovely food to share. If you’re booked on we can’t wait to meet you, so gimme a wave in the comments below so I know when you’re incoming! If you wanted to come but didn’t get a space, summer classes will get released right here in this newsletter space at Easter so not too long to wait.

Two places came up on a class I had to reschedule [for something exciting, can’t share yet ;-)) ] - Fish and Seafood over Fire, 30th May, click here to check that one out.

And there are a couple of Wood Fired Oven classes not quite full yet (31st March, 28th April) - check them out here if you fancy upping your wood fired game. Obvs there’s going to be a lot of excellent pizza but I really want to show the breadth of stuff that wood ovens excel at. And they excel at a lot, definitely one of my fave bits of kit. We’re making caraway and rye crackers, baked feta, meatballs, roast squash orzotto, baked orange mousse amongst other stuff.

In the wood fired spirit, there’s a little recipe at the bottom of this newsletter you might like to try.

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Fuel Matters

Last time I told you a sweet little tale about the woodlands and how making charcoal can be really great for ecology. Now for the bombshell of shittiness…

MOST charcoal out there is pretty bad

Sadly the vast majority of the charcoal we buy is picked up rather impulsively on the way home from work when we realise the weather is looking fine. Chances are that charcoal you grabbed from the garage forecourt or the supermarket will have come from the tropics, the bulk of which is produced in either South America or West Africa and made from tropical hardwood trees, some of which without a shadow of a doubt will have been illegally harvested. I was astonished to learn that the offcuts from illegally harvested wood, the trimmings left over from making an (illegal) table for example, can often end up being classed as a recyclable product and therefore given a stamp of ‘sustainability’, fooling the consumer into believing they are somehow making a wise eco-choice.

Not only are the forestry methods dubious, the way the charcoal is pretty grim for the environment either, releasing a lot of gases and dirty particulates into the air, damaging the health of the low-paid workforce and their communities as they do so. Then there’s the thousands of travel miles, before which much of it will be treated with fire suppressant chemicals to stop it self-igniting on its long journey via container ship. Once it lands on our shores it then gets a hit of fire accelerant chemicals so we can easily light it up. A double whammy of things we don’t really want to be cooking on. 

Leading me nicely, or badly, to the BIGGEST BBQ MYTH out there:

“Your charcoal must be white and ashy before you can start cooking on it”

No No NO. NOooooooo!! Total and utter balls. 

(I think I made myself clear enough?)

Naming no names but once I even had an magazine editor alter my copy to say this EXACT thing because they thought I’d just forgot to write it in the copy I filed. Sadly it went to print with my name against it without anyone checking with me. I’m not sure if I’ve ever be more angry.

This total myth was invented for chemically laden charcoal to ensure that any potentially harmful and unpleasant tasting additives are burnt off before our food goes anywhere near the heat. And yep, you really do need to do this if your charcoal is shit. But good charcoal is 95% pure carbon, a completely inert substance with no smell, no taste, no smoke. And you can light and be cooking on within 5–10 minutes, way before the ‘ashy’ phase. If you open a bag of charcoal and it smells of more than precisely zero, I would urge you not to light it.

In short, I see little point in any of us investing hard-earned cash on a beautiful produce - an aged grass-fed steak from a happy, well cared for cow for example, only to go and cook it over chemically laden, possibly illegally felled, tropical hardwood charcoal. It makes no sense to me (and I would actually prefer it if you cooked on an induction hob).

And because I know many of you will message me to ask where I get my fuel from. Whittle and Flame is the answer. They are very good friends of mine (full disclosure) but they do not sponsor me or Fire School in any way whatsoever. I pay full price for EVERY SINGLE BAG I burn. Its 100% worth it, and they work so frigging hard to make it. There are a lot of good charcoal makers out there who could do with your support. Google ‘sustainable British charcoal’. Yes good charcoal is more expensive, but I’m here to help you make it last longer, cook better, become better value for money than the cheap stuff.

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Ask Me a Question

Francesca asked me about using different species of charcoal for different cooks, to give you different flavour profiles. Thanks Francesca!

This is a complex (and slightly controversial) topic. I don’t personally believe I have ever TASTED a flavour profile in my charcoal, others disagree with me for sure. My style of food is loaded with herbs, spices, oils, flavoured butters, on top of the flavoursome fats I get from buying the best meat I can get hold of. So, given that my charcoal is 95% pure carbon (no smell, no taste etc, etc.) in a blind tasting could I tell you if it was ash or oak I cooked it on. I don’t believe so.

But, there’s always a but, different charcoals do have very different burning properties (fast, quick, long lasting etc) - I refer you back to the newsletter Q a couple of weeks ago on air vents (available in the archive for paying subscribers) - and there are very subtle smell differences once its alight. Smell is a massively important sense in cooking, the smell of stuff is all wrapped up in the narrative around the thing we are creating. So I think to a certain extent I think it’s that narrative that tells people that there charcoals give different tasting foods. Like I say, many people disagree with me on this but as I always like to encourage people - just try stuff for yourself, draw your own conclusions and report back.

I am currently finding that my favoured ash charcoal is perhaps not the best for fish cooking but I’m not ready to go public with that research just yet. I expect you’ll be the first to hear it.

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And finally…

Signing out with one of my favourite, and very easy, recipes from The Ultimate Wood Fired Oven Cookbook which rather conveniently works just as well on a regular barbecue as well. Thanks for reading, please hit the share buttons and do consider becoming a paid subscriber if you can stretch to £4 a month.

Big love,

GT x

BERBERE BEEF & GREEN PEPPER KEBABS 

Berbere is a heady spice mix from Ethiopia, fragrant with fenugreek, cardamom, chillies and all sorts of other wonderful spices. The list of spices is quite long, and you can buy ready-blended berbere powders, but it’s worth making your own if you can – it will be so much more aromatic if freshly ground. You could slide the meat off the skewers and into toasted pittas stuffed with chopped tomatoes and green salad. 

MAKES 8 KEBABS, SERVING 4–6 

3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp tomato purée
700g skirt steak, cut into 2cm cubes
2 green peppers, cut into 2cm pieces 

for the berbere spice mix 

1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tsp fenugreek seeds, 6 cardamom pods, 1–2 tsp ground chilli flakes, to taste, 1 tsp black peppercorns, 1⁄2 tsp allspice berries, 1⁄2 tsp cloves, 1 tbsp sweet paprika, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1⁄2 tsp ground nutmeg

Tip the coriander seeds into a small dry frying pan and set over a medium heat to toast for just a minute or so. As soon as you smell the aromas wafting up from the pan, transfer the seeds to a spice mill. Add the fenugreek, cardamom, chilli flakes, peppercorns, allspice and cloves and grind to a powder. Add the paprika, ginger and nutmeg and mix until combined. 

Put the spice powder into a bowl and stir in the garlic, oil and tomato purée to make a thick paste. Toss the meat with the spice paste until it is thoroughly coated – your hands may be the easiest tools for the job here, as the paste is thick. Cover with clingfilm and chill for a good few hours to marinate, ideally overnight. 

When you are ready to cook, thread the meat and peppers on to the skewers and line them up on a plate ready to take to the fire. Use a metal peel to pull a good bed of embers into the centre of the fire and rest a grill on it, leaving it for 5–10 minutes to get really hot. This will help prevent the skewers sticking. 

Lay the kebabs on the hot grill and cook for about 20 minutes, turning them over a few times until the meat is dark and crisp and the peppers are soft. If you are cooking in a barbecue, just grill directly over the fire.