Hot smoked

We are very fortunate in having friends who have access to wild venison but don’t like it!  This means that we are sometimes recipients of generous pieces to cook.  On this occasion it was a

We seem to have had a spate of ridiculously cheap pork on offer at our local supermarket recently.  We buy most of our meat from one of a couple of very fine butchers we have locally.  Nevertheless, even when you are not looking to buy…

Dirty cooking?  Cooking the food you are about to eat directly onto the burning charcoal. It gets a whole series of names too: Dirty, Caveman, Cowboy. I have to say I have always been rather sceptical about the idea of this form of cooking.   Perhaps…

We were given a venison joint by a good friend!  The details of the beast from which it came were a little unclear – the cut was in doubt too (but probably boned leg)!  It was thought to be Red Deer but we did not…

Slow cooked belly pork is a real joy!  But is has become difficult to find good “fatty’ belly pork to allow the release of that beautiful ‘porky goodness’.  Understandably there has been a trend to produce less fatty pork for health reasons – and the…

For some years now we have visited a delightful restaurant in Tuscany called La Scottiglia in the village of Pescina on the side on Monte Amiata.  We have always been looked after exceedingly well there and it is a place we frequently recommend. They do…

The idea of Greek lamb and roast potatoes takes me back to Athens in 2004 when we were invited to a friend’s wedding there.  Michalis was working on his PhD with me in the UK and very kindly invited Jackie and I to his wedding…

We had very much enjoyed the Osso-Bucco we made on the Big Green Egg last year (see here) so when we came across some Red Deer shin cut in the same way as veal for Osso-Bucco it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.  The…

The simple answer is of course once it is cooked it is then referred to as a “Ham”.  What ever we call them this is a delicious  way of eating pork and in the UK is always associated with the Christmas period – but it…

We had planned to make a very rich casserole using some cubed shoulder of wild venison that we had picked up just before Christmas.  With all the festive excitement it had been popped in the freezer.  Once defrosted I was a little disappointed to see…

Having finally come to the conclusion what we were going to include in the Christmas Terrine it was time to put it all together!!  The one thing we have learned this year making terrines is that

We had fun making terrines on the Big Green Egg over the summer when on holiday in Tuscany.  So now it was time to put some of that experience together as we get ready for Christmas.  

This is really a footnote to the recipe “Slow cooked rabbit with boozy apricots”.   Slow cooked meat dishes with a rich sauce are often served in the same way that the Tuscans serve their rich soups,

Rabbit has been a European staple for certainly the last 3000 years and was introduced into Britain by the Romans in the first century AD under the Emperor Claudius.  Its popularity throughout Europe has remained strong but in the latter half of the last century…

My friend Nicola has been playing with last month’s pumpkin recipe a little but to great success as you can see in the pictures.  She made a couple of small modifications from the one we published a couple of weeks ago and I thought they…

The opportunity for little innovations are part of the pleasure of cooking for me!  This weekend produced a perfect example.  We were doing a slow cooked Pork and Pulled Pork Ragù (more of that later) and we also had a small cured ham to prepare…

The inspiration for this was taken directly from Tom Kerridge’s book on low calorie dining ‘Lose weight for good’ but slightly adapted for the Big Green Egg.  The recipe in Tom’s book describes

Osso bucco is a classic Italian dish which, as long as you don’t translate it into English (bones with holes), has lovely romantic overtones and memories of Italian holidays.  The dish is based on slow braised veal, but the bones, or more importantly the marrow…

I know it shouldn’t, but it always comes as a bit of a surprise to see the wealth of available seafood when travelling around mainland Europe.  I suppose a lot of this surprise is because there is so much seafood caught in the UK and…

This is a ‘super simple’ dish to do on the Big Green Egg or indeed most BBQs that have a lid you can close.  It is an ideal dish for mid week when you want to cook something fresh, ideal for eating outside in the…

This is a very short blog (and modified recipe) about our second attempt at the Tuscan Terrine (see the first version here). The recipe remains largely the same.  In an attempt to have a slightly drier mix, only the gin was used as a liquid…

Perhaps it was all too inevitable – if it works well for cannellini beans it would probably work well for borlotti beans too!  

Whilst visiting the local supermarket in Tuscany we spied a box of plumb tomatoes ostensibly for preserving. They looked lovely, and at €3.80 for 8Kg clearly too good to resist.  Inevitably, therefore, we are eating a lot of tomato based meals – and what easier…

The simplest of dishes – individual rump steaks and slow cooked cannellini beans with sage!  It is the simplest of dishes if you have already made the slow cooked cannellini beans that is!  But once cooked will stay happily in the fridge for a few…

The simplest of simple Tuscan dishes.  Slow cooked Cannellini beans infused with sage.  Two hundred and fifty grams of dried beans were soaked for about 12 hours overnight and then put into the our small cast iron Le Creuset casserole dish.  This will just fit onto…

Making terrines is something of a lost art in the UK and we are venturing into this area quite tentatively.  I have to say most of our experience has been in the indoor kitchen and not in the BGE.  As I have found a very…

Salmon is such a versatile fish. This is a very simple hot smoked dish but one that looks rather impressive and can also be served on the wooden planks on which they were smoked for a slightly different ‘twist’. Using a cedar-wood plank is a…

There is no reason to call this Bastille Day Steak other than the fact that we chose to cook it on Bastille Day with part of our French family!!  The only real link with France there than the timing is the fact that the so…

Having been out with friends to a Lebanese restaurant one of our favourite dishes there was the Shawarma Chicken.  So the quest quickly came about to try and replicate the tastes from that evening.  Typically the Shawarma  chicken is made from the thigh meat, unrolled…

Idly browsing through the internet in 2017 there were lots of “Over the Top” Chilli recipes appearing on social media.  The name itself drew me in!  ‘Over the top’ could just as well describe the obsession of Big Green Egg cooking as much as this…