When I was a young boy my grandparents
lived in a remote cottage in Wales. It was a wonderful cottage with a
huge garden where they grew all their own fruit and vegetables. They
even kept chickens and a pig.
The main room was the parlour, and it
contained a huge fire range with a massive chimney from which hung
chains on which they would suspend a big black kettle over the ever
burning open fire. The fire also heated an oven to one side and a
boiler to the other. All their cooking was done on the range over the
open fire. As a small boy I remember toasting the most delicious
toast in the world on a toasting fork held close to the flames.
In the days before the television took
its place, the kitchen hearth was the centre of family life. As well
as being the place where food was cooked, it was also the main
gathering point, the focus of all that went on in the family; in fact
focus is the Latin word for fireplace.
Although things are very different
today, there is nothing quite like relaxing with family and friends
in front of a log burning stove. It is a very different kind of
warmth from the warmth you get from central heating. It is focussed
warmth, and something to focus on visually, and it creates a very
special feeling of being relaxed and content. That welcoming warm
glow from those slowly burning logs penetrates through to the very
soul.
A recent symposium in Leeds was about
open stove cooking. It was called ‘Open Hearth Cookery’ and
covered such things as the Roman technique of cooking over ashes and
recreating ancient English dishes cooked over a ‘chafing dish’
which is a sort of portable grate; something like a cross between an
old fashioned grate and a modern charcoal barbeque.
Cooking over an open hearth is a craft
that in many ways has influenced cuisine throughout Europe and most
of the recipes that we use today were first created for cooking over
an open hearth. Only recently have they been adapted for cooking in a
modern kitchen. Modern cooking is far easier that it was back in
those days, but there is little doubt that the flavours are not so
good.
The Leeds Stove open hearth cooking
symposium included advice on how to control the heat, which requires
a knowledge of how the fire operates along with a knowledge of how
different kinds of wood burn. Not all woods are good for cooking;
generally hardwoods are best. Oak, ash, and hard maple are good,
though any woods that generates an even intense heat and many red hot
cinders and coals will do. Blazing fires may look good, but they are
not very useful for cooking.
Perhaps it is certain nostalgia for the
taste of cooking on an open stove that feeds our passion for
barbeques. Cooking over hot charcoal is certainly the next best thing
to cooking over an open hearth. According to a famous online
encyclopaedia, barbecue originated in America in the 1800s when
cowboys on Western cattle drives used them to slow cook tough cuts of
meat such as brisket. (If you have never eaten brisket that has been
slowly barbecued for 24 hours, then try it; it is tender and
perfectly delicious.) Unfortunately, today charcoal barbecues are
being replaced by gas barbeques, which are not the same at all.
One technique that we learned at the
Leeds stove cooking symposium was to cook on the hot surface of a
wood burning stove using a Dutch oven, which is a cast iron cooking
pot with a tight fitting lid. You can monitor the temperature using a
stove chimney magnetic thermometer. We intent to try to slow cook a
joint of brisket this way; we’ll let you know how we get on.
The Leeds Stove Centre has many different multi fuel stoves to choose from. Visit http://www.leedsstovecentre.co.uk/
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