Hot Grill Summer

Huge thank you to Clare for titling both this newsletter and my midlife crisis.

I’ve been slowly leaning, Pisa-like, back into my BBQ roots. BBQ has always been a part of my identity. A grill or smoker has always been our first household purchase, sauces and rubs are smuggled across the Atlantic with every trip; I’ve always spent too long planning the menu of every summer party we’ve ever held.

Covid definitely dialled my BBQing up. We’re fortunate enough to have our own garden and slow-and-low is a great way of filling the empty hours. Having a child also made a difference. It is important to us that our second-generation-immigrant child has a connection to their home culture. It sounds frivolous, but BBQ is my home culture, and it is important to me that it is important to them. BBQ in my life is not a ‘new’ thing.

Last year was something of a tipping point: re-licensing as a KCBS judge, visiting my first BBQ competition in decades, spending an increasing amount of time destroying lumps of meat and boiling up new sauces, even writing (and somehow publishing) a couple of pieces on the topic.

This year, I’ve fallen in entirely.

My friend Paul and I have signed up for our first competition. It is, I hasten to add, a ‘backyard’ competition - a non-KCBS format that’s designed to be friendly for newcomers. We’re starting slow… if cooking six types of meat in two days for blind-tasting by expert strangers can count as ‘slow’.

Also on the calendar: a BBQ class, a few competitions to judge (with more to come), and at least two ancillary food festivals. In broader notes, I want to work on the food writing, so there’s some of that in the ‘schemes tracker’.*

This may derail at any moment. Covid again, work needs, sudden life events, whatever. We may also be really bad at BBQ, like, unbearably so. (If so, I’ll probably never speak of this again, and I’ll thank you to never remind me.) But the past few years have seen me take the steps from ‘I think I’m pretty good’ to ‘I think I’m pretty good, in an awkwardly-unBritish-way-of-self-praise’ to ‘Let’s see if some strangers think I’m good as well.’

There’s a lot to be done. Being a truly good BBQ cook means being good consistently, and being a great one means developing a distinctive taste and style. Basically, this is going to require a lot of practice.** Paul’s a hell of a cook and we’ve already been driving one another to new levels of meaty achievement. I think, together, we’ll be able to whip up something interesting.

Yes, but I know you’re asking yourselves ‘what does this mean to my weekly newsletter content?!?!!!?’ Absolutely nothing, although please do be gentle when it all goes wrong. But as well as keeping a secret BBQ tracker***, I’ll be sharing occasional updates into this email. All tips and tricks are welcome. But being publicly accountable will help keep me on track.

If this works out, maybe we’ll have a BBQ shindig someday: you all deserve a good meal for putting up with me.

^{*Yes, I have a schemes tracker. Doesn’t everyone?}

^{**I am also trying to shed twenty pounds. This is going to be a weird year.}

^{***Yes, I now have a BBQ tracker too. Honestly, Google Sheets should sponsor me.}

what I’m reading (online)

• A rather charming journey through reading ‘too many’ debut novels. Because of The Kitschies there were a few years where I also read vast swathes of debuts in a go, and I agree with some of this author’s conclusions - namely, it is really fun to go into a book with no knowledge or expectations. (Reduced expectations in some cases, as we ‘assume’ that debuts will lack the polish of writing experience.)

• My sister and nephew went to one of these giant virtual stadium/bar things, and they loved it. I also want to give it a shot - why don’t people try bringing that to London instead of the giant space nad?

• Via Web Curios. Totally into this site that sells reprints of old propaganda posters. 

what I’m reading (offline)

A few recommendations:

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I’m coming to this late, of course, but, hey - this book is good. Reid does an amazing job of a) giving all the characters different voices and b) making them flawed but not unlikable. I wrote last week about sports and, uh, narrative perspective. And, in Daisy Jones, there’s something wonderful about a lot of un-self-aware characters all fulfilling their own Destiny, often at cross purposes. I had two small issues. First, I didn’t love the ending/denouement, but I will admit it was thematically appropriate. And second, I haven’t liked any of the covers. Daisy Jones, as described, is breath-takingly beautiful and charismatic and iconic. She exists on a level that mere mortals cannot. Which is a tough brief for any ol’ model or stockshot: no one will never match our imagination of this transcendent figure. I think, rather than try to find a ‘Daisy’, they should’ve gone with a different approach. That said, it has sold six bajillion copies, so what do I know? (Could’ve been seven bajillion, yo!)

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. I’m really coming to this late. But, yes, Whitehead is very good, and this novel is very good. I’ve been reading a lot of Dark Academia recently, and one of the challenges in that particular genre is demonstrating how smart the characters are. Writing intelligent, clever characters is tough, and it is easy to see how authors can slip into ‘tell, not show’, with protagonists that quote Sophocles at one another or give lectures. Elwood, the protagonist of The Nickel Boys, is unbelievably smart, but his intelligence is never pretentious or forced. He acts ‘smartly’ and Whitehead’s use of allusion is always natural. It is one of the many, many (not-)small things that makes this book impressive.

The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood. I’m very exacting in my Dark Academia (I HAVE HIGH STANDARDS), so here’s one that made the cut. It is fast, intriguing, and properly sinister. Like many other DA books, it is about an outsider character who joins a secretive group of ‘elites’, but, in this case, I think the protagonist is secure enough that you get the slightly ‘objective’ perspective needed. The elites are… weird. They’re charming, but not overpowering, and the seductive appeal of being a member is balanced out with an awareness of the actual, real world outside of that circle. It is tidily done.

what I’m cooking

• Baby back ribs. Two racks, for SCIENCE. One had a mustard binder [when you slather the meat with mustard first, so the rub sticks better] and the other was rubbed right into the meat. Honestly, there was no difference. The slab with the binder had a slightly different colour, and, if anything, had less of a bark [the crunchy external bit].

• Two sauce experiments. One was inedible. I like a vinegary sauce, but this one was toxic. If you fell into a vat of it, you’d come out ready to terrorise Gotham. The other was inspired by my discovery of sour apple juice in the local corner store. Solid, but very shallow.

• ‘Heart of rump’. Batch-cook for the weekly lunches. Basically a lean brisket, which is self-contradictory? But somehow works! Braised it and seared it. Yum.

The third book in Stark Holborn’s mathematical gunslinger series - Triggernometry Finals - is out now. This is an excellent series of novellas that’s fun as anything, delightfully weird, and well worth picking up.