I love cooking over fire. I love how the food takes on additional depth of flavour and it gives you the excuse to sit and gaze into the flames. While the big flavours associated with barbecue are rightfully praised, I feel there is a world of flavour subtlety that needs sharing. My book will feature chapters on lighting and managing fires for the specific goal of cooking, my principles of cooking over wood fires based upon my travels and how to adapt your favourite dishes for cooking over fire plus over 70 recipes illustrated in full colour. Where supplied as a hard copy it will be a hard cover book with glossy pages and a loose cover.
The recipes will include meat and fish dishes, a wide range of vegetarian dishes, party food from canapés to a whole shoulder of kid, everyday supper dishes (because lighting a fire is a great mood lifter when the weekend seems far away), breads and desserts. Throughout September I’ll be making the dishes for a range of events and will be sharing the photos on Instagram, the stories on Facebook and videos on my Youtube channel.
I was a Masterchef semi-finalist in 2008. After wowing Greg with my Margarita Syllabub I went travelling and have studied cookery everywhere from hotels in Malaysia to metal sheds in Cambodia to a restaurant in Turkey. I have eaten crickets (in caramel) in China and spiders (in barbecue sauce) in Cambodia and my considered opinion is that beef reared in the Cotswolds is far more delicious!
In 2014 I turned the Kota Hut in my garden into one of the world’s smallest restaurants. Gloucester Studio quickly caught the media’s attention and while the Daily Mail described it as “Master Shed” the response has been amazing and the diners flooded in. My key strength as a chef is flavour and I favour simple dishes. It was a bold move to serve baked potatoes as a restaurant dish but when those potatoes are rubbed with good salt and baked slowly in a wood fire, they take on the most incredible flavours. Slather them with homemade butter seasoned with black truffle sea salt and you have an exquisite dish.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.
Kathryn