Devon has suffered a deluge and high winds which have served to curb our enthusiasm for outdoor cooking over recent times and alas and alack, the oven is off on its travels in a few days. Not being one to admit defeat I thought it only fit to bow out of the blog with a colourful contribution - food fit for summer (even if it isn't here). This is Mediterranean food, packed with flavour - and just a little contribution of tabbouleh salad from the indoor kitchen to round things off. The main course gratin served with focaccia being my vegetarian wood fired offering. And I was proud to make use of heaps of mint, parsley, rosemary, thyme and oregano from the garden (the mint is taking over...)
First up, simple lamb skewers... the grill trivet I used to cook the fish last time has proved useful and makes all barbecue food possible. Bearing in mind that the heat in the oven is very fierce, the skewers take very little time (these took around 8-10 minutes to get a good colour) it is essential to soak wooden skewers well or watch them go up in smoke, (or, as I did, play it saf
e and stick to steel ones). Remember also to make a marinade and set some of it aside to apply to the meat as it comes off the grill as the marinade that is on the meat will have succumbed by the time they are cooked. I boned and diced lamb shoulder meat as it has a lovely fat content that keeps the kebabs juicy, and marinated it for an hour in olive oil, crushed garlic, lemon juice, fresh rosemary, oregano and seasoning - together with some chunks of red pepper.
For tabbouleh salad, cook 200g of bulgar wheat with 400ml of water (follow the packet instructions), drain and allow to cool completely. Add to this diced tomato, diced cucumber, crushed and finely chopped garlic, lashings of lemon juice, and lots of finely chopped parsley and fresh mint and follow with olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. The salad should be very green with herbs so we're talking large bunches of parsley and mint.
It's great served with crisp leaves of sweet romaine which you can spoon the salad into and eat outdoors as finger food - kebab in one hand, salad in t'other...
And now for the vegetarian gratin. Taking all the ingredients of a classic ratatouille it is assembled in a gratin dish and looks the biz. I have an ancient black iron gratin which works a treat in the outdoor oven. The heat had subsided a little after the kebabs but was still probably around 220°C - and that's ideal to give the uncooked layer of tomato, courgette and Parmesan crumb a gloriously golden roasting. To Make, you will need:
Ingredients
1 large onion, peeled & finely chopped2 cloves garlic, crushed & finely chopped
1 aubergine, trimmed & cut into 2cm dice
2 red peppers, trimmed & diced into 2cm chunks
2 large courgettes cut into thin, diagonal slices
4-6 firm but ripe tomatoes, thinly sliced
1tbsp thyme leaves
olive oil
salt, pepper
50g grated Parmesan
25g fresh breadcrumbs
a handful of fresh oregano leaves
and a 28cm gratin dish
The first stage (cooking the first layer of ingredients) is better done inside on the stove, or you will be lifting a dish in and out repeatedly to stir fry the vegetables.
Method:
1 Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan and sauté the chopped onion and garlic for a few minutes to soften. Now add the diced aubergine and increase the heat to brown. Once colouring, add the diced red pepper and chilli flakes and cook a further few minutes until the vegetables are tender. Season to taste and spoon into the awaiting gratin dish. Level the vegetables with a spatula.
2 Starting at one end, patiently arrange the courgette and tomato slices in overlapping rows as per 'before' image, then drizzle with olive oil and scatter with thyme leaves. Season with salt and pepper and transfer to the wood fired oven. Bake for 15 minutes or so, until the surface vegetables are shrinking and colouring. Now toss the fresh breadcumbs with a little olive oil until glistening and remove the gratin and spread the crumbs and Parmesan liberally over the surface. Bake for a further 10-15 minutes until crisp and golden. Add the fresh oregano as you bring the gratin from the oven and serve with rosemary focaccia.
And on that delicious note I say farewell to this lovely oven. I'm without doubt that its next recipient will be as impressed as I, and will have their own memorable wood fired winners to blog about. I give big thanks to Ben and Celine for giving me the opportunity to get to know, and love, it for 2 months, and wish them every success. We, as a family, have had a good deal of pleasure from this beast and though it will be gone, it will not be forgotten.
Sandra Tate
Alas my time with my wood fired oven is finite and Celine and Ben are planning to move it along to another lucky cook in a couple of weeks time. We can only hope for good weather so that we can enjoy it to the last!
One thing I have found is that I've improvised with my own kitchen equipment to get the best out of the oven and maybe Bluestone can address these issues by offering suitable oven accessories in the future. For example, we like our pizzas to be large. So large that they are unwilling to slide off the peel to cook directly on the floor of the oven (as I would like), so a pizza pan came out first. Since then I have invested in a gorgeous Colombian terracotta pan, which will happily withstand the highest of heats that the oven can throw, and that has been invaluable for roasting and baking. It's not only versatile, it looks the biz on the table too. Last weekend I introduced a steel grill rack into the oven as we wanted to cook whole fish and needed all round heat - it's also great for my pieces of tandoori chicken and for kebabs. Why the grill? Well for starters fish are fragile and stick easily. You really don't want to have to turn them if you can help it (or you'll find they've left half of their skin and flesh behind and are fast becoming an unsightly mess). As it was, we only needed to lift the grill out and turn it once as the fish closest to the heat source turned gloriously tinged with colour much quicker than the one nearest the door.
What I cooked were whole sea bass (about 350g each - perfect individual servings) that I had gutted but left whole. To keep the fish moist during cooking, I stuffed slices of lemon and torn parsley and fresh mint into the cavity of each. I then slashed the skin diagonally 3-4 times on each side before brushing liberally with olive oil and seasoning with Maldon sea salt crystals. The fish were then arranged side by side (but not touching) onto the steel grill.
How long it will take for them to cook depends on how hot the oven is and how large the fish are - mine took about 12 minutes. I am a good, experienced cook and know by sight when something is as cooked as I would like it to be. It strikes me that because your food is for the mo
st part visible, and you can also smell it, that the wood fired oven is excellent for educating the less experienced in how to judge how well done things are.
As you can see, these babies (Jamie moment...) were crisp skinned, perfectly moist, and opaque fleshed - now sitting snuggly in Colombian terracotta and ready for the table.
In hindsight I should have also grilled the asparagus for the salad in the oven, but the focaccia was in there instead, and perfect for the occasion it was too.
Asparagus is with us for but a short period of time, our own English asparagus will be around for a few more weeks if we are lucky. I cooked some briefly in salted water, drained and cooled it, and added it to a bowl of locally grown salad leaves, rich in robust mustard flavour (as opposed to supermarket bland salad leaf selection
s). Grilled sea bass goes extremely well with a hint of fresh mint and I often make a bowl of pungently minty dressing to spoon over the fish, instead I added tender, young mint tips to the salad leaves and dressed them with a thick emulsion of Dijon mustard, white balsamic vinegar and grapeseed oil. If you want to add texture and more flavours I recommend a scattering of toasted mixed seeds (like pumpkin, sesame, sunflower and poppy seeds) to add a nutty crunch to the salad.
For the focaccia? Go back to my first blog and use the pizza dough recipe. Let it relax after first knock down and then roll out as for pizza. Press knuckles into the dough repeatedly to leave indentations then drizzle liberally with olive oil before strewing the surface with sea salt crystals and torn rosemary. Bake directly on the oven floor to golden brown and risen and tear apart at the table while it's still hot. I think you'll find that the focaccia and the fish both have that faintly smoky, sealed in taste that is so beautiful, and so very much the signature flavour, of this wonderful oven.
Sandra Tate
Three weeks later and we all remain besotted with the wood fired oven. It seems that everyone wants to play. I've always maintained that food tops the list of things that bring people together but this kind of cooking takes it to a whole new level... it's a bit like the magical draw of a log fire on a winter's evening, we all want to gather around it.
That's not to say that we've had successes all the way. Judging how much wood to burn, whether the oven is hot enough (or too hot - as it was for our tandoori chicken) is far from easy, and experience and practice are the key. At the sight of chicken blackening within 30 seconds we realised that we had the pizza heat we had wanted the night before, but we had the sense to take the chicken out, remove the glowing embers (very carefully), pour another glass of wine, and return the chicken to a less aggressive heat. And it was great, but being inconvenienced we thought only of supper and forgot the camera. What I did remember to do was to sit a couple of aubergines in there while the oven was still medium hot.
Baked aubergine makes an amazing Greek dip - melitzanosalata, and a slightly smoky flavour is essential. Be sure to puncture the aubergines with a knife in a couple of places as they have a chestnut like tendency to explode in the oven. I left my aubergines overnight and as you can see the result looked like leathery, deflated balloons - exactly what I was after.
Split the aubergines open and scrape the roasted flesh out with a spoon, if areas of skin are blackened and come away with the flesh so be it as they lend depth to the flavour. Once you've got as much from the skins as you can, chop it roughly with a kitchen knife until pulpy. Add to this 2 cloves of juicy garlic, crushed and pressed to a pulp also, and plenty of freshly chopped flat leaf parsley. Add a generous slug of Greek olive oil and season with salt, pepper and plenty of freshly squeezed lemon juice to taste. Cover and refrigerate for a day to allow the flavours to mellow.
Result? Not the prettiest of dips, but for me the most delicious - and on this occasion my family voted it the best I'd ever made. I'm afraid I can't take the credit, it was undoubtedly due to the oven and just the right amount of smokiness it imparted.
That said, I did also make calzone to go with it. Using the same dough as I did for my pizza I instead formed 12" circles and slathered them with creamy garlic butter (made with garlic, butter, olive oil, parley, & basil). Fold over as you would an omelet and press the edges together firmly with thumbs. Watching these little babies rise in the oven was most satisfying, and on this occasion we had it hot enough to cook them in little more than 3 minutes. With cooking times as short as this you can't afford to leave the oven unmanned, and be prepared to do a lot of swift manoeuvring of calzone as the side
exposed to the embers will be cooking at a totally different speed to that of the opposite side. Barbecue tongs and such come in very handy, and thankfully the calzone and pizzas we have cooked do move, (and turn if need be), very willingly on the floor of the oven.
If you haven't the time to make them yourself, shop bought hummus, taramasalata etc are often rather good, and together with some shockingly good melitzanosalata, and calzone straight from the oven, you have an excellent lunch or starter.
Happy days! Sandra Tate
Bluestone Wood Fired Ovens Website click here
Wow, talk about good timing, Ben Pike of Bluestone Wood Fired Ovens turned up with this little beauty just in time for the hottest Easter Bank Holiday weekend in living memory. The menfolk of the household, (one recently returned from Uni for a planned eat-parents-out-of-house-and-home visit) gamely volunteered to help lift it up the winding path, and twenty steps, to its present perch before a Devon stone wall and view to the moors. This was no mean feat since the oven weighs-in at over 130kg and the path is the only means of access to the house. Our hope is that Ben will be in no hurry to repeat the exercise in reverse and may choose instead to donate it to us...
By the time it was set up it was already 5.30pm and the entire household were fired-up (sorry... ) to put this beast to the test. Unfortunately we had no logs. Out into the Totnes rush hour traffic, and with little idea of where we would find a log-selling establishment at all let alone one that would still be open, we headed for Riverford Farm Shop and greedily eyed its wooden fencing as we reeled into the car park. Lady Luck was for once on our side and we came away clutching the last bag of logs that they had.
As Ben would have it, the oven takes an hour to reach a good temperature, just enough time to make a batch of dough and launch into a pizza fest. It's not often that everyone is inspired in equal measure to make something happen, but this was how it was, the Tates were rising to the challenge like our lives depended on it. One manning the fire, one preparing a tomato sauce and filling bowls with a selection of toppings, one setting the table, and little old me knocking up a lovely silky dough, laced with olive oil.
By the time I was at this stage - throwing my favourite toppings (spinach, Gevrik goat's cheese, black olives, mozzarella) - over the tomato sauce, the oven was throwing out so much heat we made the decision not to add any further logs. In hindsight we could have been more courageous, but trial and error is what this oven is all about. First lesson learned was that a 12" pizza will not willingly slide from its tray to the oven floor, so (and it may seem daft to say this) but make sure its on a mat or tin, or tray that will fit through the opening. Once in there, the rising/cooking is virtually instantaneous, as is the scorching that results on the side nearest to the heat source, so have oven mits on and be prepared to turn the pizza every few seconds. "Awesome" was the word most bandied about by the boys, "delicious" swiftly following as we seamlessly combined slicing and eating one pizza as the next of us composed a new one for the oven.
I say that we should have had another log on the fire, but it was enough. We managed four fabulous pizzas, though they each took slightly longer to cook as the oven temperature went into decline. By then the sun was going down, the tea lights were lit, and the bananas were baking in the last of the oven heat.
All in all a most magical, family evening. We said "cheers" to Bluestone and wondered at my good fortune in spotting a message on Twitter asking for food writing volunteers to host this wood fired wonder.
My Pizza Dough - enough to make 4 generous pizza bases
800g strong bread flour
20g fresh yeast
3tsp salt
3tbsp olive oil
525ml lukewarm water
1 Crumble the yeast into a large bowl and pour the water and olive oil over. Weigh the flour and add to the bowl together with the salt. Bring the dough together into a mass with the help of a plastic scraper and turn it out onto a lightly oiled surface. The mix will be quite wet, don't let this worry you, it will become more elastic as you knead it. I say 'knead', I 'throw' it and turn it, lifting it up from the surface and over itself, to work the dough and introduce air. After working it vigorously for 5 minutes return it to the bowl and cover over tightly with cling film.
2 Leave for an hour then turn it out, this time onto a floured surface. Knead briefly into a neat ball then divide into 4 equal pieces of dough. Turn these into neat balls and leave three of them dusted with flour and covered lightly with cling film to rest. Take the fourth ball and roll (or stretch over your hands) to make your first 12"pizza base. Once formed, lay this on an awaiting tray, dusted with flour or, preferably, semolina flour. You are ready to add topping - don't overload or it will be soggy and unappetizing - spread a sparing amount of tomato sauce (chopped tomatoes & olive oil with fresh basil & garlic reduced over a low heat for up to half an hour until thick). The rest is up to your own liking and imagination!
Sandra Tate
Bluestone Wood Fired Ovens Website click here
e and stick to steel ones). Remember also to make a marinade and set some of it aside to apply to the meat as it comes off the grill as the marinade that is on the meat will have succumbed by the time they are cooked. I boned and diced lamb shoulder meat as it has a lovely fat content that keeps the kebabs juicy, and marinated it for an hour in olive oil, crushed garlic, lemon juice, fresh rosemary, oregano and seasoning - together with some chunks of red pepper.
