Saturday 18th December 2021 – A few more Christmas ideas

We thought we might help with a few ideas for BBQ’d Christmas dishes.

This week will cook:

• Bubble and squeak with crispy bacon, poached egg and a hollandaise sauce.
• Salmon en croute – who doesn’t love a light fish pie. We’ll add some spinach, and mushrooms.
• Chocolate and coffee biscotti – we love biscotti on the Egg and so we thought we’d try a different flavour, probably one for Mrs MeatSMokeFire as I’m not a coffee lover.

Saturday 11th December 2021 – Christmas nibbles

We thought we might help with a few ideas for BBQ’d Christmas nibbles.

This week we cooked:

• Curried vegetable rolls, we’ve done these before but they’re an absolute winner. There’s no meat and they don’t need it.
• Caramelised onion and black pudding sausage rolls.
• Bacon and parmesan twists – you could use pancetta instead.
• Baked camembert in sourdough with garlic, rosemary and nduja.

Saturday 4th December 2021 – Wings week

Who doesn’t like chicken wings. There are so many ways of cooking them and so many recipes, so we thought we’d dedicate a week to just wings.

We’re planning:

• Cooking wings at least 4 different ways.
• Recipes including:
  • Tongue numbing, Szechuan wings – tumbled.
  • My Korean Chicken Wings, up against a shop-bought sauce – baked on the Egg.
  • Ko Phan Bang –  spicy Thai wings from the great book, Wings and Things – deep fried.
  • Franks’ n’ butter wings – deep fried in the wok.
  • Garibaldi Lift Co. T&A – my take on their not wings wings, sadly not on the menu anymore – these will be on the LetzQ Tandoor Ring.

Saturday 27th November 2021 – MiniMax week

We sold a few MiniMax this week so thought we’d do the whole cook during storm Arwen on our 3 MiniMax.

Here’s what we cooked:

• French Onion Soup – you just can’t beat it.
• Yakitori chicken skewers – using the LetzQ on the MiniMax.
• Blueberry pies – why not bake on the MiniMax.

Saturday 20th November 2021 – A taste of the mountains

Anyone else missing mountain food? It’s too long since I’ve been skiing so I thought I would cook a couple of dishes you’d normally get in a moutain restaurant.

Here’s what we cooked:

• Tartiflette, what better Savoyarde dish is there?
• Confit de canard, duck breast confit, oh my, so lovely.
• Mountain dirty carrots, carrots cooked on the coals and then finished in a skillet with thyme, rosemary, and honey.

Saturday 13th November 2021 – Let’s do Christmas

We’re going to give you some ideas for Christmas but we’re not going to do the full Christmas dinner. We’ve got my sister-in-law, Sarah, joining me to cook, after all Christmas is a family thing.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

• Dry brined, spit roast turkey – we’ll talk about how to cook it normally too.
• Smoked salmon baskets – I think we did them last year but they’re so good they’re worth doing twice. I’ll also show you how to cure and smoke your own salmon, it’s well worth it.
• Mulled rum cider – Christmas in a glass. We did this during the week and it’s stunning.
• Braised red cabbage – I love this at Christmas.
• And maybe something else with sprouts, we’ll see.

Saturday 6th November 2021 – Pintxos

Pintxos are the tapas of the Basque region of Spain. Pintxo just means a small dish and if you visit San Sebastián, you’ll find bars where the counters are covered in hundreds of different small dishes to try with a glass or two of wine.

We’re going to cook some classics:

• Croquetas de Jamón Serrano – crispy bites with a gooey centre but there is no cheese or potato in these.
• Patatas Bravas – mad differently everywhere, these are mini roast potato chunks with a tomato sauce and often some garlic aioli.
• Pinchos Morunos – pork loin skewers, marinated in flavours from the Moors.

Saturday 30th October 2021

It’s cooled down, the leaves are falling and the clocks change. Time for a nice warming stew. A while back a friend Reuben gave us a Muntjac deer he’d shot. The whole thing filled less than 1/2 a standard carrier bag. Anyway, we decided on a dinner with a stew made from the shoulder.

We also tried something a little different, cooking the stew in a dutch oven on the MiniMax, not normally possible as you can’t shut the lid. Here we used the dutch oven directly on the coals and it worked a treat.

The dishes we cooked were:

• Venison stew with herby dumplings – we made this with some muntjak given to us by our friend Reuben Clover.
• Pomme Anna – cooked traditionally in a pan but also in two cast iron rings. The rings were my favorite.
• Sweet and spicy baked beetroot – a dish we’ve been making for years, it’s just so good.

Saturday 23rd October 2021

We felt it was time to embrace Autumn and the cooler weather we’ve had for the last few days. So here are some comforting foods:

• Chicken and ham pie – this is great hot or cold. Super simple but so, so tasty.
• Bone marrow potato dauphinoise – indulgent, gooey, one of my favourites.
• French almond plum cake – in season and so good. I’m not a sponge fan, they’re too dry. This is anything but.

Saturday 16th October 2021

After a summer of live group cooking classes we’re back. It was really exciting to do the live cook this week and the feedback was once again really lovely.

This week we cooked:

• Chicken Tikka No.42 – we had to do a chick now the LetzQ Tandoor is back in stock and so many of you have bought it. I can’t wait to see all of your creations.
• Lahmacun – a Turkish pizza style street food wrap with lightly spiced lamb mince and a fresh salad.
• Individual Apple Crumbles with Rumtopf – slight boozy, but very tasty. Everyone will love these.

Saturday 11th September 2021 – Thai with Nick and Nic

We did a bit of a special live cook this week. We had Nick visit from KAB Brighton and do us three superb Thai dishes. This cook is a little different from the norm, as some of the ingredients will be harder to get hold of. Try and find a local Asian supermarket and give it a go though, the results are well worth the effort. Alternatively, come on one of our Thai cooking classes in 2022, they are released through our newsletter.

The three cooks we did were:

• Khua Kling – a Thai dry curry that can be made with lamb, chicken, pork or beef. We made it with Cull Yaw, lamb mutton from The Cornish Project which was just amazing.
• Grilled Oyster Mushrooms with Galangal chile dip – Naam Phrik Khaa – just stunning and well worth trying.
• Gai Yang – grilled chicken – basted in coconut milk this has to be tried. Simply delicious.

Saturday 6th August 2021 – ‘Not class’ day

This weekend should have been our first two cooking classes in 20 months due to COVID. Sadly one of us was pinged and so the classes had to be cancelled. So let’s do a live cook instead.

We’re cooking:

• Nduja and black pudding stuffed chicken breasts – with 5 chickens this is a great recipe.
• Crispy skinned pork chops – cooked to medium, because you can.
• Harissa cauliflower – because we have a glut!