Some recent highlights, food wise: Barbecue with friends last Sunday, immediately breaking my rule about bbq's during the day - see last blog - okay, it wasn't that hot and we had to do it during the day because its the only way I get to see G and B and L, who had school the next day and so could not come in the evening because they live a long way away. Did spiced mackerel and herbed sea bass on the barbie accompanied by lemon/fennel/olive potatoes - see blogs of about a year ago - which L adored, so much that he left me a little note and drawing and a FB message the next day. Shame my sons have grown out of that kind of thing.
Used mashed leftover mackerel to make crostini on Monday for lunch, with salad. Leftovers make the best food, sometimes.
The spiced mackeral was made using something I have discovered in Turkish (actually Kurdish, I suspect) shops around north London. I was told Kayseri Cemen was a dip - they keep it in the chiller cabinet next to the humous and taramalsalata - or should be spread on toasted pitta. But it is almost too spicy for that, although you can do a little bit, but seems best suited as a more earthier, full bodied version of harissa, the north African spice paste I adore. I used it instead of harissa in a marinade for the mackerel - mixed with olive oil, cumin and salt and pepper and it was terrific, with a real depth of flavour. I did the same this weekend on some chicken. Fabulous. Middle Eastern-flavoured food does seem to work better on warm summer nights. A small, foodie, discovery of the summer.
Have been drinking - since my palate returned -some lovely, lovely white wines for an Independent Ten Best White Wines column, due shortly. A couple of weeks ago, I took some around to my old friend and colleague Mike Durham's for a tasting of Italian cheeses - he was inspired by something I wrote earlier this year for the Wine Society newsletter - http://www.thewinesociety.com/Wine.aspx?PageCode=enjoy&PageName=How%20to%20Enjoy%20Wine&SubPageCode=match&SubPageName=How%20to%20match%20wine%20and%20cheese - so arranged for an evening spent tasting cheeses he had brought back from a stay in Italy. After a bowl of pasta, we ate two hard pecorinos, a very soft, smelly cheese and a medium hard cheese wrapped in vine leave, all brought back from Rome and all excellent. The two pecorinos - salty and tangy -worked very well with an organic Chianti and the others with two contrasting pecorinos (the grape, not the cheese) - the lovely, lightly fragrant Colline Pescarse IGT 2007 from M&S and the much more full bodied, nutty, complex Colle Die Venti, Terre Di Chieti 2008, from Wine Rack. Mike reckoned he knew the village, close to his Italian home, so it just about the got the vote for the Ten Best on that alone.
A footnote on the Wine Society piece: I write - and have written for many years - about many complex and often difficult subjects for national newspapers. As a journalist, one of the ways you get to judge your impact is by the amount of what you might call reader response and is fair to say that I probably have had more response to that piece, in a limited circulation newsletter, than I have had to many serious news reports and features in national newspapers. It may reflect better on the Wine Society than it does on national newspapers! I had one reader email me to say that, prompted by my piece, he and some friends had embarked on a five hour cheese and wine matching marathon - all the combinations carefully thought out - and that they had a splendid time. I only wish all my writings had been so inspiring.

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.