the art of the barbeque

I love barbeques, they are the point of summer, but some people don't seem to get it.

Yes

charcoal, vegetables and meat, slow gentle cooking

No

Gas, rack of "meat", charred burnt bits

Now that things have warmed up again, it is time to finish this post, started in the warm sunny days of July. I'm puzzled by how people barbeque, it is a man thing, racks of meat, mainly sausages or packs of BBQ meat. I'll agree that meat helps the flavour of the barbeque, as the meat fat cooking on the hot coals gives the right taste. However I don't understand why it is often just meat.

Gas barbeques and self lighting charcoal, they are just lazy, particularly gas barbeques. A barbeque has a dry heat, cooking over gas gives a different flavour as it is a wet heat from the water in the smoke. Self lighting charcoal makes the food smell of chemicals in my opinion, the sugar based lighting gels work best with plain charcoal. Though it is getting harder to find untainted charcoal. Plain charcoal is not that hard to work with, see below.

My ideal barbeque includes sweet corn, aubergine, peppers, halloumi and some sausages, lamb chump steaks or some well hung steak. The halloumi needs soaking in water for 5-10 minutes then drying off. All the veg and cheese need brushing with a little oil to ensure they don't burn. The steaks are best with some marinade, done the night before, or in the morning, some oil, vinegar, red wine, pomegranate molasses, spices and pepper.

Make a pyramid of charcoal using a two inch deep layer across the base of the cooking area. Place lighting gel as you layer the coals, then light in several places and wait for 10 - 15 minutes for the coals to catch. Once the centre is lit knock the pryamid out to ensure that most of the cooking surface has caught. Now comes the hard bit, grab a beer / glass of wine and wait til they are grey and there is no more flames. It is ready to cook at this point, before this it'll just burn everything.

I usually start with peppers skin down to test the heat, if they colour up quickly then I either raise the grill or take things off and wait. Then some sausages to get some nice smells and other vegetables. I leave halloumi and finer cuts of meat to the end, as the cheese and meat are best hot. Last of all shrimps or any fish, as that will taste everything else.

They are one of the best things about summer, hopefully we'll get a few more in before the end of summer proper.