Just Cooking Outdoors with Helen Graves
LIVE FIRE: Seasonal Barbecue Recipes and Stories of Live Fire Traditions Old and New by Helen Graves (Hardie Grant, £26) Photography: Rob Billington
Helen Graves talks about illegal rooftop barbecues, the joy of cooking and eating together outdoors, and why tenderstem broccoli is the thing everyone needs to grill.
Helen's new book Live Fire is published by Hardie Grant.
Helen Graves is a food and recipe writer and editor and she used to write a much loved blog called Food Stories.
The Guardian podcast I mentioned in this episode is called Let's Eat!
Lecker is written and produced by Lucy Dearlove
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Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.
You can access the transcript for this episode below.
Lucy Dearlove 00:03
This is Lecker. I'm Lucy Dearlove. On this episode, I'm talking to Helen Graves. Helen is a food and recipe writer and editor based in South London. She's known to many as a barbecue specialist. She's the co founder and editor of a fantastic independent food mag called Pit, which also has its roots in live fire cooking. She's known for her foolproof and creative recipes. She's known for her excellent food and travel writing, both in national and international publications. But also for great local papers like Peckham Peculiar, I love reading her work in there. But to me, and many 1000s of others, I imagine, Helen will always be known as Food Stories, after the food blog she started in the mid to late noughties. In this interview, Helen and I talked about about how she approached writing her first full length cookbook...
Helen Graves 01:14
I wanted to sort of explain to people how I came to be the cook that I am today. Because I do use a lot of global influences and my cooking... be it through different techniques or different flavours. And I wanted to kind of explain how that happened. But also wanted to acknowledge the people that have influenced my cooking,
Lucy Dearlove 01:31
Why barbecue is so specifically appealing to her as a way of eating together....
Helen Graves 01:36
It's always fun when you like go to someone's house for dinner. But when you go to someone's house for a barbecue, it's almost like you know, you're going to have a good time.
Lucy Dearlove 01:44
And why grilling tenderstem broccoli over fire is a tiny rebellion against what many people expect from barbecue culture in this country
Helen Graves 01:54
Because the stalk sort of shrivels and goes like, like a like a dry fried green bean or like an asparagus. Yeah. And then the ends, they go really quite burnt and you get the bitter bits. But then you can put a dressing on them and balance out that bitterness and the frilly bits soaks up all the dressing.
Lucy Dearlove 02:12
Firstly though, we're going right back to the beginning.
Helen Graves 02:16
Because I started in food when I started a food blog, when there weren't really any food blogs around. It was a long time ago, dunno, must be like 15 years ago, and the first blog post I ever did, I was living in a block of flats at the time and I set up a barbecue on the roof. Somebody spotted me and just like put a letter...I had a letter from the council the next day saying that you can't barbecue on the roof. I was like, Oh yeah, that's probably quite obvious actually. It's like a bit of a fire hazard. But I still wrote it up. And I think that was actually my first ever blog post. So my transition into food and barbecuing did come at the same time.
Lucy Dearlove 02:50
And that's funny, actually, because the story I wanted to mention to you, which was the first time I met you is I booked you to be a guest on a Guardian podcast about food I was producing, which I can't remember how long ago it was. But it was a long time, maybe five, six years ago. And I remember you telling a story about having to have the Council or the fire brigade come up to your flat to basically like officially certify...because you had so many barbecues officially certify that you are allowed to have them on the balcony.
Helen Graves 03:15
That's right.
Lucy Dearlove 03:16
I guess you're now like on the right side of the barbecue law.
Helen Graves 03:19
Yeah, different block of flats. Actually, I'm still in that flat. I'm just about to move out. But um, it's got a huge balcony, which is kind of like more of a room without a side on it. So yeah, you've got like five barbecues, and they've got like, yeah, I've got like a big egg. And then it's not a big green egg, but it's a Kamado Joe and then I've got a mini green egg. And I've got a jerk drum which is more good for like catering because you can get loads on it. And it's got two levels. So I did like friend's birthday party with for that, with that recently. And I've got a Weber kettle which is what I tested every recipe for the book on because that's what people have. And then I've got an Outback barbecue. I worked with them and I'm just about to get...Weber actually asked me the other day, they were like, Do you want another barbecue, it's a smoker? I was like, yeah, just sort of like thinking if I just move that there and move that there. I can probably fit another one in. So that will be six. But yes, I had to get permission. I was like, right this time I'm going to do it right. So the fire brigade came round, had a look around the balcony. And they were like, Yeah, this is okay.
Lucy Dearlove 04:25
If you're interested. The Guardian series was called Let's Eat, I'll link to it in the show notes. It was basically my first freelance podcast production gig where I'd essentially been given free rein with guest booking. And I largely just asked people that I really loved in food. Marie Mitchell was on it as well Olia Hercules and Ed Kimber. And along with Helen I also booked Lizzie Mabbott, who also had a food blog I was obsessed with called Hollow Legs. I can't really remember when I started reading food blogs. I read lots of style and fashion blogs as teenager things like style rookie style bubble white lightning. But at some point in I guess my early 20s, it started becoming a habit to regularly browse a select group of food blogs for restaurant recommendations mostly. And sometimes I would even search the name of the restaurant I wanted to go to along with the name of the blog to see if they'd written about it. I did that a lot with Lizzie's blogs. And I also did it with Chris Pople's blog, Cheese and Biscuits. There's just something about...restaurant writing had never really felt that relevant to me before. This was the era of the London Paper and London Lite, the battle of the free paper on the streets of London. And I definitely remember reading restaurant reviews in those but only in the same way that I read the horoscopes. It just didn't really seem that relevant to me on a real life scale, no shade to astrology. I wanted to talk to you about the blog, because I mean, that's how I first like read your work. And it was an era where that was basically the food writing that existed outside of like, you know, like broadsheet restaurant reviews, and all the rest of it. That was the interesting thing that was happening. What was it like at that time? Can you just talk a bit about what it was like to be writing about food at that time, and the kind of responses you got, and finding that community?
Helen Graves 06:16
Yeah, it was wonderful. It was like a completely different internet. You know, it's this wonderful corner of the internet, where everyone was just really nice to each other. We all, nobody did it to monetize...the word monetizing wasn't even used, then, you know, or maybe it was, but I wasn't familiar with it. And nobody made any money out of it for like the first five years. And we just did it for completely just because we wanted a space to write something about food, and we weren't professionals, I'd never done any professional food writing, there was no chance I was going to try pitching the idea of pitching something somewhere was absolutely terrifying to me. And also, I wasn't good enough back then, I kind of just practiced on my blog. And I had that blog Food Stories for like 10, more than 10 years, probably 12 or 15 years. And, yeah, we used to just comment on each other's blogs. So that was how you found other people, you would just leave a comment on their blog, and then your username would be a link. And then they'd just click on the link and then find their blog. And then you start reading their blog and add it to your Google Reader.
Lucy Dearlove 07:20
Ah Google Reader, RIP!
Helen Graves 07:21
Google Reader! I loved it so much. And then when I go away, or something for like, a week, I come back and my Google Reader would be like bursting with new blog posts, I'd be so excited to go through them all. You would never get any negativity, maybe like the odd comment or something. But not like below the line situations are now. It was genuinely just a really accepting lovely space to be in. And I'm so happy that I did it and was part of it. Because that's never going to exist again, the internet is a different place now. It's just not possible. And that's really, that's sad, but you know the world moves on. But I'm just really happy that I was there at the beginning. And I recently retired that that blog,
Lucy Dearlove 08:03
Oh, did you?
Helen Graves 08:03
Yeah, so it's more of just like a CV kind of website, a normal website now. But I've kept some of the recipes. Not some of the early ones, the kebab one is...on the roof is not on there anymore. And that's I think I had to take it down. I can't remember why maybe I was embarrassed about something that I wrote. Some of the early stuff that I wrote was just not the best, you know. We all...that's the thing. We all sort of like grew up on the on the internet and sort of like, interning in our own spaces, almost like yeah, just kind of practicing our writing. And I tried to, I was trying so hard for so many years to be noticed. And then Twitter happened. And that's when we were able to start advertising yourself, which we've just not been able to do before other than leaving a comment on someone else's blog. And then suddenly, there was this social media and I could find this network of people and like you say, I met Chris and Lizzie, who were still like close friends today. And I could just, you could link to your content and all the, all your followers would see it and that's when things started to take off. And then my first piece of work was a really massive thing. Just completely randomly. It was a billboard campaign for Lurpak butter. They just emailed me and I was like, Are you sure you've got the right person? Because this is crazy. And I made a pie and I went along to the studio in East London I was just completely overwhelmed. They had a food stylist ther, photographer to make this pie look amazing. Backlit, so it was really dramatic. And it was a chicken pie. And it was on billboards all around London. And then it had its own hashtag on Twitter: #piewatch. So people would snap a picture of it and then post it on Twitter. And it was just, I mean, I was sbeide by myself. Yeah, and honestly, I mean, now I would be beside myself as well.
Lucy Dearlove 09:52
That's the holy grail of sponcon even now.
Helen Graves 09:55
So yeah, that was where it all started.
Lucy Dearlove 09:57
I don't want to get too meta because I feel like I'm talking about food writing a lot recently, rather than just doing it, especially with doing the Vittles live event at the British Library food season last month, which was about British food wrotomg, but as Helen's someone who's been involved in independent food media as it's evolved over the past decade or so, I was really interested in her take on the current food media landscape, especially the bit that sits outside of what's kind of considered more mainstream feed writing. What's the main outlet for this sort of writing now? I asked her.
Helen Graves 10:33
Well, it's all about newsletters, isn't it? I mean, what Jonathan Nunn has done with Vittles is incredible. I'm sure people that listen to this podcast are probably Vittles readers as well.
Lucy Dearlove 10:42
I think there's a lot of crossover.
Helen Graves 10:43
I think there's a lot of crossover. And I think it's really important what he's done, actually, because he's given a platform for people that didn't have a space before. And it's, you know, it's pretty incredible, actually. And I think he deserved that success that he's had with that newsletter, it's amazing. I'm an avid reader. Yeah, because what happened was food writing kind of stagnated a bit. You know, there's still loads of great food writing out there. But no one was really doing anything different. And him, you know, finding a way to make a space for those voices, I think is just really, really interesting. And really important. So I think he's given the the whole industry like a massive push forward.
Lucy Dearlove 11:23
I agree with you. And I think what Jonathan's done with Vittles is amazing. And the fact that it's not just a personal space...he is, like you say, using that platform to create space for other people, which I think is amazing. But it's almost like...for me it's almost like a product of we're really obsessed with like the cult of personality now. So it's almost like there has to be somebody that's already got a personal brand. And I mean, I'm not saying Jonathan did really have that, he built that himself and as part of Vittles, as well. But I do think that's really interesting. Because like maybe, I don't know, 10 years ago, all the people that are writing for Vittles might have started their own blogs. But that feels like just a little bit more futile now. Because there's not really...I don't know, it's hard to explain it. But I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and I can't quite articulate why it's so, why it feels so different. And I think because I work in media as a producer, like just seeing the kind of appetite for talent, quote, unquote, and people have to have a following. And yeah, and I feel like, I'm much more interested in what everyone has to say about food.
Helen Graves 12:20
Yes.
Lucy Dearlove 12:21
Not just select people who might be famous for whatever reason,
Helen Graves 12:25
I agree. And because I'm a person who's like, not a personality, I'm like, not a in front of the camera person. I've been asked to do like demos and things quite a lot. And I've just have to say, I'm sorry, but it's not my skill set.
Lucy Dearlove 12:40
Okay, so you do turn that stuff down? Interesting.
Helen Graves 12:42
I turn it all down. Yeah. Because it's just not, I don't feel comfortable doing it. And I think it's really important, I don't have to say yes to everything. And there was definitely a time where I would have done that. And that would have been awake for a week. Like not sleeping crippled with anxiety. I'm not the person that stands up in front of everyone and kind of performs. It's just not me. Yeah, but I know what you mean. Like, there's a lot of...like, TikTok is a great example. Right? You know, that there are a lot of people now that just have huge profiles on TikTok, you know, videos that making food and things like that. And that's great, but I just don't consume any of that media. I'm not interested in the slightest. It's like reels on Instagram. I am I have trained my algorithm to exactly know what I want, which is videos of cats, and like people falling over drunk, right? All I'm interested in. If it shows me a food video, I'm like...
Lucy Dearlove 13:36
the algorithm must find you very confusing, "but her content!"
Helen Graves 13:41
Every now and again, it has a go at showing me a food video. And I'm like, no, because it is...
Lucy Dearlove 13:45
Why do you think you don't like it?
Helen Graves 13:47
I don't know. I think it's just that side of food media that I'm just not interested in.
Lucy Dearlove 13:53
Yeah, fair, fair
Helen Graves 13:54
Sorry to anyone that makes it but...
Lucy Dearlove 13:56
I think it's really interesting because there's such a n aesthetic to like those TikTok videos as well. Like I personally, I'm an avid consumer of them, and I love doing TIkTok.
Helen Graves 14:03
Are you?
Lucy Dearlove 14:04
Yeah. I'm kind of interested to see how a new generation is going to take to cooking through it, I guess. Because I wonder if...it's a different way to learn how to cook, I think. Like, if you see someone doing something, it's very different to seeing a photo and reading about how it's made. So I'm quite interested in that.
Helen Graves 14:21
There's a massive contrast between the sort of old food media and the sort of like slowness and the sort of vibe of being relaxed and you know, maybe watching like Keith Floyd, faff around for like, half an hour, you know, or like watching Delia make a cake or something. And that was kind of long and drawn out and hear let me show you every single tiny thing that I'm doing. And then now it's like condensed into sort of 30 seconds and there's there's a lot of like hacking going on. It's a lot of shortcuts. There's a lot of...not that there's anything wrong with that. Take these ready made products and you can make this thing that sort of resembles another thing that takes a long time to make, which I have nothing against but it's just interesting. Yeah, so it's sort of gone from like here's cooking as a sort of relaxing pursuit to here's how to make something really tasty and like no time at all with like minimal effort.
Lucy Dearlove 15:14
I also wanted to talk to Helen about Pit, the independent food magazine she started with art director Holly Catford and photographer Robert Billington. Originally focused specifically on live fire cooking, Pit now has a broader remit around food in general. And I'm going to use the example of the much cited MSG issue. But just the breadth of stories that PIt covers is extraordinary, the photography's all stunning. There's these great illustrations. And it's been such a success story at what is obviously a really tricky time for print media.
Helen Graves 15:53
I know it's a bit of a cliche, but it's a bit of a Tina Brown approach. Like it's like there's, you know, there's a lot of fun stuff. And there's a lot of more serious stuff. And even the more serious stuff, we try to present it in a fun way. So Pit did start out as barbecue magazine. And now as you say, it's got a broader remit. So it's more of a, we just evolved, you know?
Lucy Dearlove 16:12
Yeah.
Helen Graves 16:12
And we just found...it's not that we didn't want to just be a live fire magazine, but there was so many stories we wanted to publish that people were pitching. And it just made sense to broaden. Yeah, um, so now we do we cover a couple of live fire stories, every issue, but it's just it's, it's a much broader general food magazine. Pit started because Holly emailed me one day, because Holly works in magazines as a full time job. And she wanted to start a magazine. She'd been barbecuing a lot with her with her boyfriend at the time. And she knew that I was really into into barbecue, too. And she just emailed me one day and was like, Do you want to start a magazine? And I was like, probably, yeah. Then we were like, Oh, shall we go to the pub? So we just went to the pub. And that was the basis of the foundation of Pit, meetings in the pub. And then Holly knew Rob anyway, she worked with him on like editorial photography, shoots and stuff. And we just all get on really well. And they're like my best friends, you know, and that is, I think that comes through in the magazine, I think, well, I hope it does, because we really love working together. And we really, as I said, we try to keep an element of fun to the magazine, I just think it's really important to have that light hearted element to it. But also, we do try to cover much more in depth stories. And I'm not sure there's another print food magazine, like that, that would publish something about, you know, sex workers in India who were making, you know, illegal liquor production to survive, right. You know, that kind of journalism I'm not seeing anywhere else in print, in a print magazine. And I'm so proud to be able to publish stories like that. But then we also have, you know, something at the other end of the scale in the same issue.
Lucy Dearlove 18:07
Helen's first full length cookbook Live Fire came out last month. In many ways. It feels like all of the things which have defined her career so far coming together in one place. It's beautifully and cleverly designed, her Pit colleagues, Holly and Rob have stepped in on art direction and photography respectively. And Valerie Berry's food styling is exceptional. It's also full of meticulously developed creative recipes, but also features almost journalistic elements with kind of half reported, half first person profiles about people and dishes and places that have influenced Helen's cooking and recipes. These sections give the book a dimension that doesn't often come through in recipe writing: a very real sense of how this dish, and way of cooking is part of someone's life. There are also some stories that I think a lot of us just wouldn't necessarily immediately associate with live fire cooking, because they're unfamiliar. So Swiss goat farmers heating goat milk for cheese over a wood fire; many generations of fish smokers in Craster on the Northumberland coast; are cooking tortillas in Belize, among many others.
Helen Graves 19:21
The tortillas...I was really lucky enough to do quite a bit of travel writing because travel and food obviously go together super well. And I used to write travel stories for quite a few magazines and I was in Belize once in Central America and there's a lot of Mayan people live there and there's you know, this incredible history with this, with this culture. And I found myself just, around someone's house for lunch like just amazing how just go anywhere and people just invite you in.
Lucy Dearlove 19:54
Do you speak Spanish?
Helen Graves 19:55
No, I wish! Yeah. This is more of a like, gesturing situation. These women just kind of like...there's no tortilla presses. So they just kind of have a ball of masa. And then just kind of pat it out, but like making a circular motion with their hands, but like really fast, and then cook it on the comal, which is like a flat, like a plancha, or just a flat piece of metal over a fire in indoors, but like kind of ventilated, but like, filled with smoke. And I remember texting my boyfriend and being like, I know how to make tortillas, now I know how to make tortillas. And they when they were cooking them on the comal, they were doing this thing where they were kind of like patting the tortilla with their hand to see if it was cooked. And when they pat the top of the tortilla, it puffs up into like, like a pita. Yeah. And I was like...you're right, it was a bit of a nightmare with the translation. But I managed to ask them, Is that how you know it's cooked? She was like, oh, yeah, yeah. So I was like, great. When I get home, I'm going to be like the tortilla master. But...I can do it a bit, but it doesn't happen every time so I'm quite disappointed. Yeah, if what I...I don't do it with my hand, but I just do it with like a spatula or something. Just use that, I don't really cook tortillas on the barbecue. I normally just cook them indoors, a cast iron pan, but really hot and then give them a pat and then sometimes they go 'poof!', like puffed up. It's super satisfying. Yeah, but I think the reason they didn't and this is probably wrong, but I think I didn't have enough moisture in my masa mixture. Right? So I've got more hydration now that recipes in the book. So give it a go, give it a try patting. Other stories I've got in there... I mean, Jamaican jerk absolutely had to go in because...I mean people know me for like being quite obsessed with that, those flavors of Caribbean like, scotch bonnet chili is something I use probably, you know, three times a week, I'm like quite immune to that heat. And I often forget how much I'm putting in and that you can see people's cheeks beading up with sweat. Oh, sorry. But I think it's an amazing fruity floral fragrance that chili. I just can't get enough of it. And combined with all spice berries, and like spring onions and thyme and garlic and lime juice in a jerk marinade. That to me is one of the best things you can eat. And then...it was so interesting to me because jerk is...it has to be cooked over smoke, like smoke is such an important part of the flavor profile of jerk. And so when I started going, you know trying to find different jerk places and speak to different cooks. And they were like, look, it's not, you can't cook jerk in the oven. It has to be cooked over fire, it has to be cooked for a long time. Jerk chicken has to spend a long time with lots of smoke, which is why when you see a jerk drum drum billowing smoke, you're like, This is a good one. So I mean, I love...the three places that I love in the most and London: Tasty Jerk in Thornton Heath, and then Smoky Jerky in new cross. And then JB Soulfood, which is in the book, in Peckham, Ben and Jennifer. They're just...er, Bill and Jennifer, sorry. They're just amazing. And I remember finding that place and just walking down the street ain Peckham, the high street, it's just off the high street and just smelling the smoke and being like [sniffs] I can smell it. Ah, there's a good one. There's a good one. And then when I turned the corner, there's there's massive queue out of the door. So I was like, right, great. So I go there a lot. So they had to be in there. Yeah there are loads, I could go on forever. Sorry. And then the other one I absolutely had to get in was FM Mangal, which is a...I always though they were Turkish but they're actually Kurdish.
Lucy Dearlove 23:25
Oh I didn't know that!
Helen Graves 23:26
Yeah. In Camberwell in southeast London where I live there. I go there so often. It's embarrassing and I get their Adana wrap, just a very specific order. Double Adana wrap. So it's like two kebabs, obviously. And it's really super thin bread. It's not it's like it's sort of thickness of lavosh. But I don't think is a lavash, it's like a very stretchy, maybe it is I'm not sure. And then the salad and that obviously chili and garlic sauce, and then the sumac and the onions. And I just... I've eaten that I would say I've been like kebab like literally hundreds of times, probably even 1000s over the years. So that had to go in as well. But yeah, what I wanted to do was paint...there's a lot of London in there because that's what...part of my story I guess. But there's also something about smoking traditions around the UK. So yeah, there's kippers up in Craster. And I just wanted to sort of explore...there's beach barbecue, all sorts. I did a beach barbecue thing, a beach barbecue story in Wales with for Pit magazine. So that's in there, too.
Lucy Dearlove 24:34
How did you go about deciding what was going to go in it? I just feel...I feel overwhelmed just thinking about that.
Helen Graves 24:41
Well, I wanted to it was I wanted to sort of explain to people how I came to be the cook that I am today. Because I do use a lot of global influences and my cooking, be it through different techniques or different flavors. And I wanted to kind of explain how that happened. But I also wanted to acknowledge the people that have influenced my cooking. Because I think quite often that's not done. And I just really thought that was really important. But I wanted those people to tell their stories in their own words as well, which is why I decided to do the interviews, and then sort of write them up in that sort of like, interview, half interview, half sort of narrative style. And I think it's worked out well. But like you say, it's like impossible to include everybody. So it's sort of the people that have really shaped my style the most, I guess, like my friend Magda, and her husband, Jack. Magda's Eritrean, and she cooks the most incredible food, like you have the giant injera bread, and all the food has kind of piled on top of it. And it's just such a social way of eating, which is quite sort of like similar to barbecue in a way, you know, I think barbecue is a very unique way of eating. In that. It's always fun when you like go to someone's house for dinner. But when you go to someone's house for a barbecue, it's almost like, you know, you're going to have a good time. And I don't just mean, if there's alcohol involved, there may not be alcohol involved for you at all. But it's sort of like when there's a barbecue, like, the gloves are off in terms of entertaining, I think. And that's one of the things that I really love about it.
Lucy Dearlove 26:11
One thing that the stories and the way that you've written them up in that style that you described, so kind of like half like a narrative sort of feature style. But also you very much hear people talking in their own words, they really bring it to life. So it makes you understand, like you're saying, like, about the real, like joy of experiencing that food in person, I think I can't remember the name of your Cypriot friend, the psychologist? And she was talking about how there's just a real difference between like formal dining at the table that she experienced in England, and then going to Cyprus, and like, barbecue would just be this whole different thing, like, what do you think it is about it that makes it such as like, a unique experience like that?
Helen Graves 26:52
Well, I think it is unique, but also, I think it's like, really, every day, that was the thing with the book. It's like, it's like, these are people that, that're from cultures that do just cook over fire, like, like, in some parts of the world, you know, barbecue is just cooking, because it is might not have a kitchen, you might not have gas, you might not have an indoor space to do that. So I wanted to really bring all those stories into the book. And I think that's what you mean, when you say that, you know, it's kind of brings it to life, because it's just so natural for these people to cook that way. Whereas for, for me barbecue growing up was like getting some sausages on a disposable barbecue. My parents didn't have barbecues at all. There were no, there was no...I never saw any barbecue culture. Sort of finding all that was a really exciting thing for me.
Lucy Dearlove 27:41
When did you find that?
Helen Graves 27:43
When I moved to London, because I grew up in a really like boring village. Sorry if my family is listening to this! In Gloucestershire. Exposure to different cultures was extremely limited to put it mildly, it's extremely white. So that just wasn't, you know, I never encountered any different kinds of food, really. And I moved to London about 20 years ago to do a master's, when I used to be a psychologist before I was a food writer. That was when I was like, Okay, wow, there's some seriously exciting stuff that I've not been eating. And now I need to eat all of it, like immediately, every day. And that's when I really knew I was like, what have I been doing, I really should be working in food.
Lucy Dearlove 28:27
Right.
Helen Graves 28:27
And then so started the kind of long road towards making that happen.
Lucy Dearlove 28:32
I think one thing that really struck me about...not just Live Fire your book, but also like other writing that you've done around barbecue and live fire cooking is kind of like misconceptions that people have about that sort of cooking. Can you talk a bit about the sort of misconceptions you've encountered and how you in the book went about pushing them off the table?
Helen Graves 28:53
Yeah, I really wanted it to be just about cooking but outdoors and not all about meat crucially, there was, there are plenty of meat recipes in the book. There's also plenty of seafood and plenty of veg and a few desserts and I just I thought that was really important because there's a lot of barbecue culture...there is a side of barbecue culture that's very much just about stacking up meat and I don't have anything against people...you know, do what you want to do like but it's just not my thing. I have been known for saying like barbecue not bro-becue because I think there is a quite a bit of like masculine culture and bro culture around this around barbecue. And it's about like, you know, sticking as many sausages as you can on skewers or like having like five cheeseburgers and covering it in cheese and that's, you know, that's fine. But I just think there are so many more beautiful ingredients that you can cook on a barbecue, especially like for vegetables, you can really bring out the characteristics of different vegetables like one of my favorite things to cook on the barbecue is tenderstem broccoli, because you've got the two parts of the, of the...I was gonna call it a floret but I feel Like it's not really because it's got a longer stem. You know what I mean?
Lucy Dearlove 30:03
Yeah, I wonder if it is called something different. I mean, I guess it is technically still a floret but is a floret part of the bigger head? I don't know.
Helen Graves 30:09
I don't know. But yeah, because the stalk sort of shrivels and goes like, like in like a dry fried green bean or like an asparagus. Yeah. And then the ends they go really quite burnt and they get the bitter bits, but then you can put like a dressing on them and balance out that bitterness and the frilly bits soaks up all the dressing. And I just find that so delicious. But then with you know, more sturdy vegetables, I like to give them a bit of a soak in the marinade sometimes even like overnight if it's just really simple, and I remember! And they really suck it up and that you can really, you know, like carrots, for example, I love to do.
Lucy Dearlove 30:45
You mentioned parsnips in the book as well.
Helen Graves 30:47
Parsnips are in there, yeah, and I smoked them I put like a little bit tiny bit of wood in there, or you could use wood chips...smoked parsnips are just delicious. And I do like a quick pickled chili dressing on the top. And I think just something different to do with parsnips. Because personally before I wrote the book, I think it probably ate parsnips like once a year. I was like I wonder what what else could you do? That's the great thing about writing this book some of the recipes in there. I was like, Oh, just try it probably won't put it in, you know. And then when I tasted it I thought no, actually this is a real banger...it's gotta, it's gotta go in. There's a duck with a Blackberry hoinsin sauce.
Lucy Dearlove 31:24
Oh, wow.
Helen Graves 31:24
I thought I'd probably don't want to mess around with hoisin because it tastes pretty amazing already. But I thought actually, I wonder what it's like with, with sort of sweetness and sharpness of blackberries in there. And it's really good with the duck and the pancakes and you know. But yeah, vegetables, root vegetables I love but it's just about cooking them a little bit differently to the the more delicate vegetables. And the other thing is I wanted it to be seasonal. So obviously I'm not suggesting like stand there in the pouring rain. Like or if it's snowing or something. I wouldn't do that. But I just think it's really nice way to get a different dimension of flavour into your food. And you can, you know, smoke something a little bit and then maybe finish simmering inside, or do it the other way round. Or to like do a whole pumpkin...I've got a pumpkin in there filled with like a beer fondue.
Lucy Dearlove 32:14
Yeah, the picture of that is...I mean, all the photography is incredible. But the picture of that is like, wow,
Helen Graves 32:19
Yeah, Rob's photography is really amazing. And Valerie Berry who did the styling, she's like, she's just...I just idolize her. I just love her so much. She's really talented. I just really fangirled on her. She was just really nice about it.
Lucy Dearlove 32:34
Well, it looks beautiful!
Helen Graves 32:35
Yeah, it does yeah, I'm getting emotional thinking about it actually because she's just really great. But yeah, there's a big, a big cheese pull on the fondue. So yeah, stuff like that. You could do that for like a bonfire party or something, for example, it'd be great.
Lucy Dearlove 32:48
I was gonna ask you about the seasonal aspect to it because I think...I think you shared an Instagram story about it, there was...someone was talking about that I can't remember the context. But somebody referred to it as "seasonal and achievable", which I really liked. And it's so...we just don't think of barbecue or like outside cooking in that way at all. And I thought that that was just really refreshing, like, as an approach. And also as some...my dad is like, big into barbecuing in the rain all year round. So I was like I personally relate to this.
Helen Graves 33:18
Love it. I have stood out there with a brolly over the barbecue before but the first time I did it, I tried to use the brolly again. And obviously, absolutely reeked of smoke. It's not just a little bit, it's unusable.
Lucy Dearlove 33:30
Oh, wow, okay
Helen Graves 33:31
Yeah. So just a warning.
Lucy Dearlove 33:37
And so the last thing I wanted to say is that...So like many people in London, I don't have any outside space. I live in a top floor flat. I don't have a balcony. I don't have a garden. But I feel like you've written Live Fire in a way that means it's also for me, which I think is really clever! Was that something that was important to you?
Helen Graves 33:57
Oh, thanks for saying that. That's a really nice thing to say. At the end of the day, I just want people to cook from the book. You know, I just want people to eat something nice. I want people to enjoy the food because that's what I do. And so basically almost every recipe, the jerk chicken, for example, I didn't do a recipe for indoors. Because like I was saying earlier, it's so essential to have that flavour of smoke in there, but nearly 99% of recipes there are alternative instructions for cooking in a griddle pan. That's the ideal situation, is to have a cast iron griddle pan, but you could just get something really hot, you know. And like for other things like the slow cook dishes, you know, like a shoulder of lamb, a leg of lamb sorry, you can obviously do it in the oven. The dessert recipes...like there are some peaches cooked in wine that you have with like gingernut biscuits and clotted cream. You could just do those in the oven. So yeah, there were...there are alternative instructions because I just want people to eat the food. Even if they don't have any outside space, and then maybe one day you will.
Lucy Dearlove 34:57
Well that is...that is truly the dream!
Helen Graves 34:59
Or you could just go to your friend's house and hopefully they will have a...
Lucy Dearlove 35:02
I have said that to my my garden having friends, that I am bringing the book round.
Helen Graves 35:07
When I get my new place, I'll have a big barbecue, come round
Lucy Dearlove 35:09
Great, great. Everyone can just have a go at one recipe, you can..you can you can take the night off
Helen Graves 35:15
That'd be great, I wouldn't be able to help myself, I'd have to get involved.
Lucy Dearlove 35:26
After I stopped recording, Helen was talking more about the process of writing the book. And she told me that finishing it had a very unexpected side effect for: her cooking changed. She started to be drawn towards different dishes, different flavours, like she'd needed to get this book out of her, and then she could move on to a different stage of her cooking. I think recipe books can be easy to take for granted for readers sometimes, that produced such enormous volume and it's hard to keep up. But this small detail seemed so profound, and really highlighted that it's easy to forget how personal books like Live Fire are for the writers.
Helen Graves 36:14
Obviously, I'm really excited. But also I'm really nervous because it's such a personal thing. Making a cookbook especially this is my first...I've written a small sort of a small sandwich book before that was about eight years ago but this is my first proper cookbook. And I put so much of myself into it. It's so personal and it sort of feels like when you, when you're releasing a first cookbook you're sort of setting out...you're setting the scene, like here I am you know introducing yourself and and that's really hard emotionally and like when I finished I just ate cheese sandwiches for a week because I just could not face cooking anything and I had no creative juice, no...no brain power at all. And I was just emotionally wrung out you know. So now like a year later, I feel I can actually enjoy it.
Lucy Dearlove 37:15
Lecker is written and produced by me, Lucy Dearlove. Thanks Helen Graves for being my guest on this episode. Helen's book Live Fire is out now on Hardie Grant. If you'd like to support Lecker financially, you can donate to my patreon: at patreon.com/leckerpodcast. There are now monthly free newsletters via Patreon so you can sign up to get those sent into your inbox for free. And there are also monthly bonus podcast episodes for paid Patreon subscribers. So for three pounds a month, you can get access to those. Loads of other ways you can support Lecker: you can rate and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Buy merch from the Lecker Big Cartel site and just tell your friends All the music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions. I also just wanted to say that this episode is being released later than I planned because I've been really busy. I'm producing a brand new Radio 4 food podcast presented by the incredible Andi Oliver. It's called One Dish and I'd love for you to give it a listen. Each episode features a guest talking about a food with significant meaning in their life, from Cheryl Hole on lasagna, to Candice Brathwaite on fried plantain. It's available now on BBC Sounds or wherever else you listen...this is not sponsored, although it probably should be. But I'd love for you to listen to it. Lecker will be back in your podcast feed next month. Thanks for listening.