AUSTIN AUTHOR: GRILLING FOR ANY NIGHT
Austin author reminds us grilling isn’t just for Saturdays (or burgers).
Paula Disbrowe’s new cookbook is ostensibly about grilling. It is, after all, called “Any Night Grilling,” based on the idea that cooking over a live fire shouldn’t be relegated to the weekend.
But when you get to know Disbrowe, one of Austin’s most celebrated cookbook authors, or read the first pages of the book, you realize it is about the love of her family and that precious dinner hour when everyone comes together, and also about how grilling is a surprisingly efficient way to make that magic, even on weeknights.
In the French Place home she shares with her husband, David Norman, who is the head baker at Easy Tiger and who has his own cookbook coming out next year, they are juggling full-time food jobs while raising two elementary-age children, Flannery and Wyatt. So waiting until 9 p.m. for dinner isn’t an option.
Grilling isn’t just a quick way to get food on the table, however.
“Hearing the pop of the fire, smelling the smoke, everybody relaxes,” Disbrowe says. “You’re outdoors, interacting with the yard. The kids are playing, and I can interact with them. It’s not a steak on Saturday. It’s dinner.”
To write the book, Disbrowe spent a year and a half feeding her family food she cooked in the backyard. She also found herself more at ease to invite friends over to share a meal. Grilling “takes me out of the house and the imperfections I see there and the expectations I put on myself about having people over and having dinner. But by saying, ‘Come on over. We’ll fire up the grill,’ it tilts everything for me.”
Once she got into the routine of firing up the charcoal in a silver chimney starter, she could turn her attention to developing recipes that didn’t require a long marinade, could cook in a short amount of time and would suit families and backyard dinner party hosts alike.
For most of us, that would mean burgers, brats and chicken breasts. For Disbrowe, that’s porchetta-style pork kebabs, rosemary flatbread, grilled mushroom bánh mì or salt-crusted snapper. Some recipes, such as the preparation she calls Truckload of Marinated Vegetables, come together easily and will provide many meals’ worth of prepared ingredients. Other dishes, such as seafood paella with freekeh and lima beans, might require more work on the front end, but the results are impressive enough to host a weekend party.
Radicchio and pears with anchovy breadcrumbs and burrata, or State Park Potatoes — foil packages filled with potatoes, shallots, goat cheese and thinly sliced speck, a smoked cured ham —also reflect Disbrowe’s sophisticated palate, but the grilled corn nachos and green chili cheeseburgers remind you that she’s a working mom with young kids at home, too.
Disbrowe has been developing recipes for more than a decade. Her first book, “Cowgirl Cuisine,” came out in 2007 and told the story of her and David leaving New York to cook on a ranch in the Hill Country. In recent years, she’s teamed up with chefs, including Donald Link and Susan Spicer, to co-write five cookbooks.
Her books with Link won the top cookbook awards in the country: the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook for “Real Cajun” in 2010 and the International Association of Culinary Professionals Award for Best American Cookbook in 2015 for their follow-up “Down South.”
Disbrowe’s next book, “Thank You for Smoking,” is about a quick method of smoking ingredients on your backyard grill and will come out next year with Ten Speed Press. Norman’s book, “Bread on the Table,” will release in fall 2019 with Random House.
This book, “Food52 Any Night Grilling: 60 Ways to Fire Up Dinner” (Ten Speed Press, $24.99), is Disbrowe’s first solo cookbook since “Cowgirl,” and it is in partnership with Food52, the community-based cooking website founded by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs that now also publishes print cookbooks, sells kitchen gear online and hosts a popular cookbook competition of its own, the Piglet.
It is the opposite of many barbecue books, which often focus on low and slow cooking. When Disbrowe makes chicken wings during a recent lunchtime grilling demo, she places the searing lump charcoal just an inch or two from the meat. With tongs in hand, she turns them quickly, sensing the exact moment the wings need a break from a particularly hot part of the grill.
“It’s like getting used to a ranch horse,” Disbrowe says of getting the timing right of when to flip and when to let them rest. “I had a ranch horse, and I felt really comfortable on that horse, but if I were to jump on another horse, it would take a while to get adjusted. You have to find your comfort level with your grill, which comes with use.”
Her favorite grill is the PK Grill, of which almost all have a “more intuitive” rectangle grate. It’s ideal for what she calls two-zone cooking. “This is the direct heat, and over here is the indirect side,” she says.
She prefers lump charcoal, not charcoal briquettes, and