Marcus Bawdon - Skewered

SKEWERED SKEWERED RECIPES FOR FIRE FOOD ON STICKS FROM AROUND THE WORLD MARCUS BAWDON Designers Geoff Borin & Emily Breen Food Photography & Styling Marcus Bawdon Additional Photography Sam Jones Photography Senior Editor Gillian Haslam Editorial Director Julia Charles Head of Production Patricia Harrington Art Director Sally Powell Publisher Cindy Richards Indexer Hilary Bird Published in 2021 by Dog n Bone (Books. An imprint of Ryland Peters & Small Ltd

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www.rylandpeters.com 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Text Marcus Bawdon 2021. Design & commissioned photography Dog n Bone Books 2021. Line illustrations Shutterstock, textiles on endpapers authors own. ISBN: 978-1-91298-342-1 eISBN: 978-1-91298-349-0 The authors moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. US Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data has been applied for. Printed and bound in China. Notes Both metric and imperial/US cups are included. Work with one set of measurements only and do not alternate between the two within a recipe.

All spoon measurements given are level: 1 teaspoon/tsp = 5 ml; 1 tablespoon/tbsp = 15 ml. FOOD SAFETY Keep raw meat, poultry, fish and their juices away from other food. After cutting raw meats, wash cutting boards, utensils and countertops with hot, soapy water. Cutting boards, utensils and countertops can be sanitized by using a solution of 1 tbsp of unscented, liquid chlorine bleach in 4.5 litres/1 gallon of water. TAKE CARE Whenever you are cooking with live fire, remember that any nearby surfaces will get hot, sparks can fly, and hot liquid and fat may spill onto your skin. Always have a first-aid kit, as well as a fire extinguisher and fire blanket, close to where you are cooking.

Always supervise children near a barbecue or fire. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION The idea for this book came to me out of the classes I run at the UK BBQ School from my home here in sunny Devon. Ive taught so many beginners how to cook barbecue and helped them start their own journey into live-fire cooking. This meant I quickly found out what interests people the most, and grilling skewers over hot coals is something plenty of them have been keen to learn more about. Is there some residual primeval instinct in all of us that loves sitting around a fire with a chunk of meat hanging from a pointed stick? I like to think so Most of the recipes in this book involve simple ingredients and techniques for doing just that cooking food over fire on sticks and for most people embarking on their journey into live-fire cooking, skewers provide the obvious next step beyond a beginners uninspired offerings of burgers and sausages. That said, theres actually something very involved about cooking food on skewers possibly more so than any other types of barbecue cooking.

You stand over the embers with your hands close to the coals and allow the aromas from the cooking food to act as your guide to the correct time to turn the skewers and take the food off of the heat. Sadly, more often than not, there simply isnt enough heat to properly char your skewers and bring out the best in them, so my aim here is to arm you with some recipes, techniques and tips to make your skewers sizzle. This book will take you on a taste journey when you read it. Youll find plenty of familiar flavours with a twist and some new delicacies from far-flung places to try. It is also a journey for me as Im very fortunate to have travelled to many countries and have some wonderful taste memories. These were brought back to me as I cooked up with the recipes and was transported to Moroccan souks, Thai beach-food stalls and clifftop tandoor restaurants in Southern India.

My hope is that my delicious and colourful recipes will brighten up your own barbecue cooking experience. I havent strived to make these recipes authentic and they are not set in stone. Instead, Ive used my own experiences of these fantastic foods to bring you ideas that are flavour-packed and fun, but that can also be used as a starting point for your own skewered creations. Enjoy! PREPARATION & TIPS SETTING UP YOUR GRILL Skewered food requires cooking over direct heat. One of the biggest reasons for failure when grilling skewers over charcoal is not getting the right sort of heat to them: too little and the food just dries out, or too much and it flares up and burns. The key to success is to tailor both the heat source and the proximity of your food to the heat source to suit what you are grilling.

You can control both these things by adjusting the amount and type of charcoal you use, and by the type of grill you set up. Some grills have a small and intense direct heat zone, such as a Japanese Konro (teriyaki) grill, whilst others can offer a more gentle even heat, such as a lidded kettle barbecue. I picked up a couple of inexpensive grills online that proved to be perfect for many of the skewer recipes in this book. They are made of stainless steel (albeit very thin) and have a couple of grates. The grates are quite narrow at around 30 cm/12 inches but 50 cm/20 inches long, and even come with a set of skewers that bridge the gap of the width. These narrow grills are common in many parts of the world and you only need a small amount of charcoal to cook various styles of skewers very easily.

Another bonus is that you dont always need to use a grill grate and can balance the skewers directly over the coals, eliminating any chance of delicate foods, such as seafood, sticking to grill grates. The proximity (closeness) of the food on your skewers to the coals has a direct impact on how the food cooks, and gives you room for adjusting the way the food cooks. Ill cover this in more detail later on. TYPES OF FUEL Im mostly a charcoal man myself for the majority of my cooks and use the best lumpwood charcoal I can lay my hands on. A high quality lumpwood charcoal will give you a serious amount of heat if you keep the coals together, or you can spread them out for a more even, solid heat. I also like to change things up by cooking over wood and wood embers and use cherry wood and apple wood in this book.