Fire is The Thing
I have to tell you, all this recent hand washing leaves me distinctly less than cheerful. I live for dirty hands, soil under my nails and charcoal practically fossilised into my cuticles, having mucky paws makes me happy.
Obviously I’m being a little flippant, but there’s more than a glimmer of truth here. My mood, my cheerfulness, is directly correlated to the weather. In the summer, I’m often ecstatic, long days full of light give me so much energy and drive. The rain, wind and dark of winter always get me low, but over the years I’ve learnt the only way to tackle the S.A.D.ness is to get out and grab it by the bollocks with both hands. I never, ever feel worse after being outside, even if its just a short walk around the garden.
This is why as a greedy cook and a food writer, I have naturally, almost magnetically, gravitated towards the fire. Cooking with fire is just another excuse to be outside, facing the elements, unshackling myself from the kitchen. It is also a small act of rebellion, the sticking of two fingers up at the often relentless treadmill of domesticity.
Cooking outside is deliciously analogue in an overwhelmingly digital world. You not only cook the food, you have to make, and master, the heat source too. You can’t just dial the knobs up and down to set the flame to high or low, or jab at the buttons to set the oven the timer to achieve ‘perfect results every time’. I find this liberating and empowering. In these constrained times of recent weeks, technology has become even more prevalent in our already tech-filled days as we battle to retain some connectivity with our distant loved ones. Taking your kitchen outside punctuates the day beautifully, adds just a little drama and adventure to the necessary act of feeding everyone.
As a food writer it has taken a certain amount of discipline to break free from the ‘bung it in the oven at 180°C’ culture of recipe writing. I can’t do that with my recipes, I can’t possibly guarantee that if you follow them precisely they will turn out how they did for me because each and every fire is different. The fire I light today will behave slightly differently to the fire I lit yesterday. Your fires will be different again, so many factors to create infinite variables - the wood, the wind, the drizzle, the humidity. Also the skill, confidence and patience of the fire lighter.
I founded the Bristol Fire School because it struck me that the fire is The Thing, the linchpin to success. To maximise enjoyment in cooking this way you need the skills to relax and roll with the fire, to adapt and make adjustments, know how to manoeuvre and flex when things go off kilter. Once you’ve mastered the fire it just becomes cooking, doesn’t it?
I cannot wait to throw open my garden to friends, old and new, to light some fires and cook some thing delicious together. All these recent Zoom parties may be virtual, and rather strange in many ways, although the hangovers they generate are still very real, but even they serve as a cheering reminder that one day soon we can gather again around the fire to share good times. Nothing makes me happier than crashing onto my pillow amid a puff of woodsmoke.
Genevieve Taylor