Marcus Bawdon's ember-cooked baba ganoush
`BBQ for All: Year-Round Outdoor Cooking With Recipes for Meat, Vegetables, Fish, & Seafood'
Barbecue advice from a Brit? Sure, when it comes from Marcus Bawdon, an expert devoted to transforming the United Kingdom's traditionally dismal backyard barbecue — “poor-quality supermarket meats, cremated on the outside and raw on the inside,” he writes — into palatable meals.
After schooling thousands of outdoor cooks via his U.K. BBQ School in Devon, the U.K. BBQ magazine and his CountryWoodSmoke.com blog, he reports great progress: “There's a vibrant BBQ scene developing in the U.K.”
This year, Bawdon, who previously wrote “Food & Fire” and “Skewered,” is out with his third cookbook, “BBQ for All: Year-round Outdoor Cooking With Recipes for Meat, Vegetables, Fish, & Seafood” (Dog n Bone, $30). A former vegetarian for 14 years (until he craved a well-prepared steak one day), he offers a tempting lineup in the “Veg” chapter — ember-cooked baba ganoush, celery root steaks with barbecue sauce, cauliflower mustard crumble and Chimichurri Roasties among them. Pescatarians will find 19 recipes for the grill and smoker, including sea bass wrapped in leek and decadent duck fat garlic scallops. (He notes, “You can get duck fat hotter than butter without it burning, thus improving the sear and caramelization on the scallops.”)
By the way, If you're an outdoor cook with an adventurous palate, you might want to try assembling and smoking Bawdon's signature dish, the Dirty Meatenburg, a massive log of pork sausage and black pudding wrapped in strips of bacon. The recipe's not in this cookbook but you'll find it at CountryWoodSmoke.com.
INGREDIENTS
1 large eggplant 2tablespoons tahini
1 clove garlic, crushed
Freshly squeezed juice of ½ lemon 1tablespoon extra virgin olive oil 1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon Aleppo chile flakes or hot red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon freshly chopped flat-leaf parsley
Coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
DIRECTIONS
1. Set up your barbecue for direct cooking in the coals at a moderate heat (around 320degrees). Use best-quality lumpwood charcoal or hardwood/fruitwood embers. You can also use a fire pit.
2. Pierce the eggplant skin with a knife tip in a couple of places, then place it on the coals. Cook for a few minutes to char the skin, turning every so often until the skin is charred and the inside flesh soft, around 10-12minutes.
3. Place on a plate and allow to cool for 5 minutes, then cut a slice along one side of the eggplant and use a spoon to loosen the soft, stringy flesh without damaging the skin. Gently combine the tahini, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and cumin with the flesh to form a rich paste.
4. Season with a pinch of sea salt and black pepper, then sprinkle with the chile pepper flakes and flat-leaf parsley.
Serves 2