The BBQ

9th May 2013

The first Barbecue of the year. There’s something magical about it, especially on a summery bank holiday weekend.

I went home to Buckinghamshire and while I cannot claim to be responsible for all of the beautiful food we had (thanks family!), I can share it with you.

Get things kicked off with Pimms – lots of strawberries, apple, cucumber and mint.

My ultimate favourite (which I intend to blog about separately) comes next. Hot crab dip is great to snack on while you prepare the rest of the food and get the barbie heated up. Salty tortilla chips and cucumber sticks are perfect for dipping.

The choices for the grill were – monkfish, chicken, sausages and steak. So we sloshed together a marinade for the monkfish. It’s made of olive oil, lime juice, coriander, and fresh chilli.

The fish then gets popped into the marinade and left to soak up all the lovely flavours before cooking.

Apply butter and garlic generously to some large Portobello mushrooms, which can be cooked up on the BBQ as well!

There are always lots of pretty flowers dotted around the kitchen at home – I liked these tulips especially.

Chop up tomatoes and spring onions to make a simple salad.

Here’s another salad – leaves, peppers and feta cheese.

Buy some ready to bake garlic bread from a supermarket, and serve it up when the meat and fish is sizzling on the grill.

Now, I’m told by a barbeque expert I know (that’s you Daddy!), that perfect results are all about the timing. Everything being cooked on the grill needs to be added in the right order to ensure it’s all ready at the same time. For example, sausages take a lot longer to cook than fish.

Luckily, the responsibility for this task was not in my hands, but the hands of the expert. And look how well it all turned out! We just had to carve and dig in…