Cooking or carving? No contest

Well, this is certainly a first. Nearly 1 year and 23 posts on and here I am recommending ready meals. The horror, the horror.

But before you all decide to never read this blog again, ever, at least consider my defence.

There are some occasions when food has to take a back seat and no where is this more true than the dads' surfing weekend.

After months of debate a date has been fixed - well in advance of having any idea of what the swell will be like. A lovely holiday cottage has been rented. Complicated pick up rotas have be
agreed.

Only two things are certain:

1. Leaving London on the Friday will be long and painful
2. If the waves are any good we will want to spend as much as possible on them (or in my case in them)

Which is when the ready meal as supplied by the Waitrose £10 dinner for two comes into it's own.

Rather have than 4 grown men stumble round a supermarket trying vainly to come up with some kind of coherent menu, in 20 minutes I have spent £41.95 (bizarrely not buying a 4th bottle of wine adds to the price!) and got starter, mains, puds and wine all sorted.

Simply bung it in a coolbox, sling in an ice block and load it alongside boards, wetsuits and the rest of the essentials. 

Then, when you finally arrive in Wales some hours later, you can turn the oven up high and be eating a pretty tasty pizza with salad in about 15 minutes. Which compares favorably with trying to find a restaurant where the kitchen will stay open after 9.45, which isn't a curry house).
So that's Friday sorted.

And Saturday is equally easy. No need to cut short your attempts to perfect our bottom turn (crouch, reach with the arm opposite to your front foot and lean into the rail since you ask). By the time you get back after you have finally struggled out of your wetsuit and had that post surf beer, it will be later than you think. But again the ready meal is your friend. Place in oven and heat through while you have a shower and try to get the last few grains of sand out of your ears.

Now I appreciate that to some eyes, this post could show me as a total impostor - all my talk of the importance of cooking fresh, real ingredients disappearing like oil into a frying aubergine  when things get tricky.

And those eyes may be right.

But in the final analysis, as a wannabee surfer based in the smoke, the point of these weekends is to be in the water. And anything, but anything, that will help maximise that, is worth it.

Including looking like something out of Woody Allen's "Everything you wanted to know about sex...." 

Fact.

Black is so flattering.

Ribbed for my pleasure

It's a sad fact, but quite often I am guilty of quickly scanning a recipe and thinking that although I don't have all the ingredients or really enough time, I can probably wing it. 

And quite often I am wrong. 

And the last bank holiday weekend was no exception. The forecast was good, with a whole day extra of weekend courtesy of May Day. 

So having spent big on a half leg of lamb (great butterflied and grilled fast directly over the coals) I threw caution to the wind - and my wallet to the wolves - and added 2 racks of ribs. 

Quickly scanning the internet for a recipe, I found one on the Guardian - from an award-winning BBQ chef no less.
I had no more than 50% of the ingredients listed; no oven thermometer and only 3 hours to spare rather than the 4 or so mentioned, but I pressed on anyway.

And I'm pleased I did. Because somewhat unusually the end result was really really good. So here's what I learnt.

The first stage of slow, indirect, cooking in a lowish heat, can be done in about an hour. The crucial thing is to apply a dry rub with some paprika and sugar and a few herbs (well that's all I had anyway).

The wrapping in foil needs to be super-tight because the sweet stuff of honey and sugar - is apt to leak unless it is. But again it doesn't require every ingredient and the full amount of time.

What really makes the difference is a decent BBQ sauce - with some heat and depth to contrast with the sticky ribs. And my big tip here is to use some dried chipotle chilies along with plenty of brown sauce and ketchup. They make a real difference to the flavour. In fact the sauce I had was made a couple of weeks before from a hairy bikers recipe. Given the high sugar and vinegar content this will keep perfectly well in the fridge for that time. 

I'll never know if my ribs would have been as good if I'd followed the recipe, but it did prove that sometimes we get too concerned about following a recipe to the letter, when actually using our own judgement would work out just as well.