If cooking with fire is going to be the big thing in 2012, and I have no doubt it will, then Al Brown’s book Stoked is going to be the hot cookbook of the year.
Labelling the barbecue an icon of Kiwi life, the book explores a vast range of cooking outdoors techniques, from grills to smoking, spits, outdoor ovens including tandoor and pizza, and how-tos on smoking and firing up the best barbecued meat. He forages for mushrooms and does whole pigs in underground spits, he does smoked duck. The book is a veritable (smoke)house of new cooking, or old cooking styles brought back in vogue.
There are more than 100 recipes, there’s an emphasis on fast and tasty, and there are recipes for bruschetta, burgers, pizza, fritters, chargrilled seafood, beef, lamb and chicken, ribs, plus slow roasted meats. There’s game including venison, duck and goat, plus salads and classic cake tin slices. How very New Zealand.
My father’s mother, a New Zealander (like my dad), used to make the most gorgeous slices, coconut and jam things I used to adore as a child. And I remember sitting as a toddler on the beach in Auckland, before it was the developed and upmarket place it is now. We’d pick pippies from the sand with our toes, then cook them on an open fire – me wrapped in terry towelling nappies and draped in (New Zealand) wool blankets on the beach, the billowing smoke curling around me. Having my happy sandy-footed family around me, and sucking pippies from shells, is one of my enduring childhood memories. I’m going to bring back family tradition with this book and start cooking open fire again.
There’s a gorgeous video to go with the release of the book, it’s enough to inspire you to hand in your Australian passport and cross over the Tasman for a simpler life. I’d do just about anything to traipse over there right now and do a day’s foraging and food exploring with this guy. My favourite part of the video is the last scene, a gorgeous labrador flop in three parts (sitting, elegant lie-down, and … flop), resigning to the atmosphere, an open fire, and no doubt exhaustion from a day’s outdoor exploring.
The book features stunning photography by Kieran Scott, shot in NZ’s amazing scenery, including the high country above the Wakatipu Basin in Central Otago; the rugged south Wairarapa coastline; hunting and fly fishing at the 8000-acre Ngamatea Station in the Central North Island; wild porcini mushroom gathering in Canterbury; an outdoor tandoor oven with Indian friends in Wellington, and a hangi up the Whanganui River. Buy the book, Bro.
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Hi Ro – Sounds excellent! What sort do you have? Is it out the back garden? What are you going to cook first? Kate
Funny to see this. I just got my wood fired oven ‘fired’ up last night to cook dinner in!