Taylor - How To Eat Outside: Fabulous Al Fresco Food for BBQs, Bonfires, Camping and More

The very best meals take place outside.

Cooking and eating in the fresh air with friends and family not only tastes wonderful, it is also the best fun and makes for brilliant memories.

Here are more than 100 colourful, easy and unfussy recipes for year-round al fresco feasting:

• Perfect picnics
• Barbecue feasts
• Brilliant bonfires
• Campfire cookouts
• Wilderness tucker...

Full of fabulous food and inspiration with plenty of practical advice, this is the book you need whether youre out in the garden, climbing a mountain, heading to a festival or going wild in the woods.

Lets celebrate all that is most delicious in life!

This book started with a hunch, and the hunch was this: if you think of the most memorable meals of your life, then I bet many, if not most of them, have been eaten outside. A little poll of friends and family backed me up on the idea that, as a nation, we have an enduring love for al fresco. And so How to Eat Outside was born.

For me, food good, simple, un-mucked-about-with food is absolutely central to lifes pleasures and despite the inevitable struggles with the weather, there is no getting away from the fact that food simply tastes better when eaten out of doors. I wonder if part of the joy is that, because our weather can be a challenge, food eaten outside can feel a bit like a holiday and an energizing break from the routine, and yet its such an easy thing to do. Not just limited to what tasty things youre putting in your mouth, I think the pleasure stems also from the surroundings, the company you are with and perhaps even the fresh air youre taking in as you eat. It all adds up to a winning combination. With a lifelong love affair with the great outdoors, theres nothing I like better than rustling up something delicious for an al fresco adventure.

There are many amazing outside meals that will remain lodged in my memory for years to come and, I might add, they are not always those I have eaten in the hazy sun of midsummer. As a family we eat outside at every possible opportunity during spring, summer and well into the autumn. Its not unheard of in winter either, and providing we can find a little shelter on a crisp sunny day, or some warmth from a roaring fire in the garden, its often a surprisingly lovely thing to do.

Probably the best sausage sandwich of my life was gobbled greedily on a damp mossy bank next to a wild Welsh waterfall. Cooking in the shelter of a large oak tree, we just about managed to keep the stove alight in the wind and drizzle, but the resulting crispy fried bangers tasted simply phenomenal shoved into hunks of French bread. Simple food, an amazing setting and a hunger fuelled by the efforts of the walk to get there all added up to a perfect meal. Another more recent edible highlight was a long lazy lunch in the garden feasting on barbecued fish and a salad of home-grown figs, fresh herbs and creamy ricotta, the rare day of scorching summer sun tempered by plenty of chilled wine. This is the food I will continue to remember many years after I ate it.

Giving yourself, your family and your friends some amazing food memories they will treasure for years is not about feeding them show-off, trying-too-hard food. In fact, in my world it is quite the opposite. Its about taking a few fresh ingredients and treating them with a little bit of love and a big hit of flavour. For this reason, herbs and spices should be your best friends in the kitchen, whether that kitchen is inside or out, and I urge you to use them both daily and generously.

The food in this book is aimed at people, with or without kids, who like to cook and eat just a little adventurously. My children, aged 10 and 7, are not yet the most courageous of eaters, inherently suspicious of new things, but little by little I try to broaden their horizons. To my delight, my son said the other day that the drawer full of spices was his favourite drawer in the kitchen because it smelt so nice when he opened it. Since he was very small I have tried to get him to help me select which spices to use, letting him take the lids off jars to have a lingering sniff of this and that. He still may not eat all the things I offer him but I hope that slowly, slowly the tactic is working.

Getting my kids involved in the cooking process is without a doubt helping them to get interested in creating food for themselves. By turning the process of cooking into an adventure, by cooking and eating it together in the big outdoors, whether thats in your back garden or further afield, it becomes not just fuel but a celebration of simple pleasures.

How to Eat Outside is split into five chapters, each becoming a little less connected to your home surroundings as you delve further through the book. Picnics and barbecues are probably what spring to mind first when you think of al fresco eating, but what about cooking over a bonfire or an open fire in the autumn, or taking your family camping for a long weekend by the beach? And for the ultimate outdoor eating experience, you cant beat a bit of mountainside cooking to rejuvenate body and soul. I have chosen to put certain recipes into certain chapters principally because those were the occasions that I cooked them for. However, many recipes could easily straddle two or even more chapters. It is my hope that you will use my ideas as a guide for shaping your own outside feasts, whatever the occasion or location.

Theres no doubt that warmth is a bonus, and if it cant come in the form of sunshine and endless balmy evenings, then a roaring campfire comes a pretty close second. To cook well in the outdoors, a few bits of simple kit are invaluable and youll find details of the things I like to use at the start of each chapter. Not an enormous gadget fan, I try to keep equipment to a minimum, but there are definitely a few things I wouldnt dream of giving up now Ive got used to using them. For wild adventures, my Trangia storm cooker has proved invaluable as a super portable cook-anywhere stove. Otherwise, my principal tools are my fire pit and tripod with its barbecue grill, and my Dutch oven. During the writing of this book, they have seen many, many evenings of fun and seriously nice food and I hope youll be amazed by the edible delights that its possible to create over an open fire.

Whether you are looking for a few tasty things to take on a lazy-day picnic, easy food for a relaxed garden barbecue, some warming treats for a bonfire night celebration or camping trip, or something hale and hearty to sustain you on a mountain hike, How to Eat Outside is the fresh-air-lovers cookery bible, packed full of great ideas and delicious recipes for year-round al fresco feasting.