Barbecues

What is it about the first hot weather that always get people going crazy to barbecue. Frankly, the last thing I want to do for lunch on a hot day - there are too few of them to waste - is to stand with the sun on my back over a pile of intensely hot briquettes (or whatever) smelling the aroma of meat sizzling mingling with the sweat dropping off my forehead. Who wants all that cooked meat (and barbecues are mostly about meat, although some fish is actually just as good or better. But most of what people eat on barbecues is rubbish anyway.) Give me a nice salad or some meze and shady terrace anytime.
Dont get me wrong, I love cooking outdoors and do so at every opportunity. But to me, barbecues are best saved for warm evenings, when the sun is low in the sky or just setting, the fierce heat of the day has gone and appetites can be properly matched by the smell of smoke and grilling food. One of the best barbecues I've ever had was using a couple of disposable barbecues on the beach at Sennen Cove in Cornwall one June evening a couple of years ago. It was early evening, we needed our sweaters, the tide had gone out after a long hot day surfing, and we grilled local mackerel and chicken on skewers made from rosemary twigs. We played beach cricket in the twilight afterwards. All around us, other scattered groups were doing the same, the smoke of the barbecues and little fires drifting up and along the sands, everyone relishing the space on the beach that had been impossibly packed a few hours earlier. It was glorious.
And, sod the sun, you can barbecue in the rain. Maybe its just me, but I love warm rain on hot days, a combination you don't get much in their country, but is commonplace in warmer climates. Last Monday, the Bank Holiday, after a two days of warm weather, was a typically British summer muggy, cloudy day It was Max's 15th birthday and I'd been to the cinema with the boys and their mother, my ex, Marion to see Star Trek. (Excellent re-invention, actually. And I'm old enough to remember the original.) We were hoping the forecast rain would hold off, so that we could have a barbecue in my garden afterwards. When we came out of the cinema it had been raining, but the air temperature was possibly even warmer than earlier. There was a smell in the air that Marion said reminded her of the Med. So we had to barbecue. My garden was still, quiet and warm, with the birds singing evening songs. We ate sweetcorn, baked feta, my home made lamb koftas, chicken kebabs, made garlic brushetta by grilling bread on the barbie and toasted Max's birthday with some excellent M&S sparkling Burgundy. (Sorry about the plug, but its very nice) We survived the odd brief repeat shower of rain, sitting under the parasol and moving the barbecue under cover. And we sat talking by candlelight long after it was dark and the birds had gone quiet. It was not sunny, no-one was offered a blackened sausage or a still raw in the centre chicken drumstick and there wasn't a can of beer in sight. But it's what I call a barbecue.