Photo by Patricia Niven
I am — and let’s be frank, it’s hardly breaking news — an immoderate, not to say rapacious, collector of cookbooks, but there is one genre of food writing that I generally find easy enough to resist: I’m talking barbecue books. I don’t think I’ve taken the cover off the barbecue in my garden for years. While I love the idea of cooking with fire and smoke, in reality it makes me flustered and anxious. But Chasing Smoke is a barbecue book with a difference. For one thing, it’s by the Honeys — in other words, Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich of Honey&Co and Honey&Smoke — whose food is filled with love, joy and flavour; for another, they so very kindly append recipes with alternative instructions for cooking in the kitchen, rather than on a grill in the garden wherever possible.
As the subtitle — "Cooking over fire around the Levant" — indicates, this is a book infused with the flavours of the Middle East, and which I strongly sense will be the taste of my summer. I need their Ribeye Steak with Smoky Pepper Salad, Tahini BBQ Lamb Chops with Fresh Plums and Spiced Plum Sauce, and Prawns with Honey and Coriander in my life! But it’s the many vegetable dishes that call to me so seductively too. In particular, I have earmarked the Whole Burnt Aubergine with Charred Egg Yolk, Tahini and Chilli Sauce, Charred Kohlrabi, Radish and Sesame Salad, Ash-Baked Beetroot, Lentil and Feta Salad, the Sweet Potatoes Baked in the Embers with Almond Tahini and Smoked Almonds, Figs with Manouri Cheese and Pomegranate Dressing, and the Baked Jacket Potatoes with Charred Spring Onion Sour Cream. In fact, there’s not a recipe in the book I don’t want to cook — and there are flatbreads and desserts as well. But it is from the vegetable section that the recipe I want to share with you today comes, in the form of their Grilled Cabbage with Chilli Garlic Butter. I’m a sucker for charred cabbage (I tend to make it at home in a cast iron skillet on the stove) and just couldn’t resist this. And who knows? I might even be brave enough to light my barbecue this summer now!
Chasing Smoke: Cooking over fire around the Levant by Sarit Packer & Itamar Srulovich, published by Pavilion Books.
Photos by Patricia Niven.
