ANNABEL LANGBEIN
The first barbecue of the season
It was about this time last year that I found myself lugging huge trays of heirloom pork shoulders up Cuba St in Wellington. There was a distinct whiff of panic in the air, as the pork in hand needed a barbecue and not just your average Kiwi “fire up the barbie” kind of barbecue. What we needed was a traditional American barbecue – the kind you find in the American South that will coax sweet, smoky succulence out of a big pork butt or shoulder over many, many hours of slow cooking.
The barbecue pork project was part of the Culinary Diplomacy role I undertook for the US State Department last year, hosting talented chef William Dissen while he was out here for a series of workshops on cooking and sustainability.
His famous Carolina barbecue pork was to be on the menu for 200 people the next day and needed a good 10-12 hours of slow cooking before it could be diced, tossed with a tangy dressing and then piled into a jalapeno-layered scone-like bun, with crisp bread-and-butter pickles and a vibrant horseradish and blue cheese slaw.
Near the end of the phone list of every restaurant in the city, the Matador restaurant in Cuba St confirmed they had some kind of hot-smoke barbecue that we could use if we wanted. And so there we were, hauling pork shoulders up the mall, wishing with every wish that we would find the right bit of kit to cook this beautiful pork. Suffice to say, through a combination of Kiwi ingenuity and American barbecue know-how, we managed that pork into the sweet spot of melting, smoky tenderness.
In New Zealand a barbecue isn’t something we want to wait for 12 or 14 hours to eat. For us, it’s all about making the most of summer and spending as much time as we possibly can outdoors. As soon as you smell the smoky, sweet aroma of meat and vegetables cooking over a barbecue you feel like you’re on holiday, and Labour Weekend is — unofficially, at least — the start of the barbecue season.
I’m a great fan of cooking over the embers of a fire rather than a gas barbecue. It takes an extra hour or so to get the fire to a state of deep, glowing coals, but the taste is incomparable. Prunings from fruit trees and vines make the best cooking wood, but manuka is also excellent. Just don’t use anything poisonous like bay wood or oleander.
Kick off the barbecue season with this simple menu. If you’ve suffered dry, tough pork chops in the past, try my brining technique, which keeps them juicy, flavoursome and tender. Partner them with a lively quinoa salad featuring new-season asparagus, which is making a welcome appearance in the shops right now, and for dessert try a simple icecream sandwich that you can assemble at the last minute.