Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall cooks a delicious recipe on the Vulcanus Grill. Kernow Fires, Cornwall L

[Music] when i was first sent the spec for the vulcanus and some pictures and asked if i was interested in taking a look i thought i have to it's such an intriguing looking bit of kit and you know it's so visual you could see straight away that this could be that you know a nice centerpiece uh somewhere to gather around and that's exactly what it's proved to be i've had one of these in my garden at home for a couple of months in the earlier part of the summer i've had a really good play with it and it's fun to use and it's versatile you know you can cook a lot of things on it you've got a lot of surface to cook on around the edge you've got this steel plate kind of like a planter you've got varying different heat spots it's super hot close to the edge and then you've got these cooler corners and i really like that because when something gets a little bit too hot or it's charring a bit too fast you just move it over to the corner and we'll see that in a little bit uh but you've also got the real fire in the middle that's the crucial thing you know you're always looking at flames or hot coals and you've got the little wisps of smoke curling over the edge of the hot plate and that's you know that's bringing you a little bit of flavor and you've also got the option of sticking the big steel barbecue right over the top and cooking over those coals so there's a lot you can do with it and you know you have two or three people four people cooking at the same time it's it's very very social and the funny thing is that one of the things i've been cooking on it a lot is vegetables now that's not really a surprise here at river cottage we're very plants forward in our in our menu design and the recipes we're developing at the moment you can see straight away that you could cook a steak or a piece of fish on this but the first recipe i'm going to do today is actually a vegetarian recipe it's all about this fantastic summer veg a lot of us think of outdoor cooking as a mainly carnivorous affair and fish gets a look in from time to time but i have to say i'm really passionate about grilling vegetables out of doors barbecuing them or or cooking them here on the vulcanus i just love the flavors you get that caramelization and the first dish i'm going to do for you is a completely vegetarian dish using this fantastic haul from the garden we've got these hispy cabbages if you've never had barbecued cabbage before that's about to happen these young onions they're bigger than spring onions but you know smaller than than old onions and the first harvest of these lovely little courgettes that have still got their flowers on so i'm just going to prep this veg and get it on the volcano's and you'll see just how quickly everything comes together you've got these four plates of searing hot steel around the edges of the volcanos and once you put something on that it's going to cook really fast and it it needs your attention i mean it's great that it cooks fast who wants to hang around when you're hungry but what this means is i want to get my veg really well prepped and organized so that i can just get it on there and by the time the last bit of veg has gone on probably the first one's going to need turning pretty quickly so nice even cutting and well organized prep of the veg means that it can then all happen very fast once we start cooking these hispy cabbages are great for grilling because they've got this lovely tight head and when we cut through the middle you'll just see imagine that surface imagine that cut surface on the grill we're actually going to cut them certainly into quarters and we'll have a look at that i think we're going to go for eighths [Applause] and i think we're going to use both these cabbages these lengthways wedges you can now you can begin to see how this is going to sit on the grill roughly even now i haven't left myself with a lot of stalk to work with so that bit might fall apart but we'll see how it goes it's sort of held together by its own curls at the moment similarly with this one so the wedges are slightly different and we are going to have a few loose leaves but that's all to the good i'm going to do the second one the same way oh i've got to straight down the middle you want to it's this thick part that's holding the cabbage together so you really want to cut that as close to the middle as you can so that when you go for those eights you've still got a nice bit of stalk holding the wedge together so i've got two cabbages divided into quarters and quarters again gives me 16 wedges and i'm just going to get them all off the grill and over here while i deal with the courgettes and the onions now we've got a bit of curl on these courgettes so i'm going to work out what the best angle is fairly thick slices i'm looking to maybe get three slices off of each courgette maybe four but nothing too thin or they're gonna they're gonna char away to nothing a bit too quickly it's useful to have a nice big blade like this for slicing these veg this is a lovely variety of courgette very tasty but it does always like to curl which makes it a bit challenging to prep but it's behaving got these lovely yellow ones it's a variety called gold rush i'm not sure you could tell the difference in flavor in a blind tasting between the yellow and the green but the fact that they're so colorful just makes them look you know the two together looks really delicious i'm going to hold on to those flowers i'm not going to put them on the grill because they'll shrivel up pretty fast but i will come back to them and use them to garnish the finished dish i may have slightly more courgettes than i need here just want to get a reasonable balance of the different veg finally i've got these beautiful onions and i've already given them a bit of a trim but the slightly larger ones i'm going to cut in half and the slightly thinner ones are going to leave them whole and then they should cook at roughly the same rate and i've left quite a lot of this green part on they're so fresh that's also going to be delicious time to get some of this lovely veg on the grill starting with the furthest place that i can comfortably reach and i'm not going to jumble up the veg it makes more sense if i see everything's cooking together still a good whack of heat coming off that grill i think that needs to go in half again you can hear the sizzle and you can smell that caramelization and this is something that you know earlier in the year i was doing this with asparagus which finished a few weeks ago i was taking lovely tight-hearted little gem lettuces and cooking them preparing them almost exactly like this crispy cabbage and they are grilling beautifully and now this cabbage has just come good it's a really really lovely thing to put on the grill so we've got a nice rack of cabbage there now let's put the courgettes in them no the onions will take a little bit longer than the courgette so let's put them here flat side down for the ones i've cut in half i think that one might want to come in half actually we've got these straight white ones that look almost like leaks and we'll get the courgettes down this side now you'll notice i haven't oiled these at all i'm putting these straight onto the seasoned plate which has been seasoned with a very light film of oil but i like that i like the the way that the i don't want to fry them you know i want them to just char so that means putting them straight on to essentially a dry plate feels like i can just about reach over there it's really satisfying to see this grill now just covered with this beautiful veg and i'm pretty sure that the first cabbages i put on are going to be showing some color yeah look at that lovely color not quite there yet nudge everything maybe a tiny bit closer to the grill these thick stalky parts do take a little bit of cooking to get tender so i'm just nudging them into the hotter zone and there's a really pleasing logic about the way this whole bit of kit heats up you know you you know that these edges are fiercely hot and you know that as you come a little bit further back it's going to be a little bit cooler and that's why i've loaded the stalky ends of the cabbage to the heat and the bulb the ends of the onion because those are the bits that need a bit more heat and need a little bit more cooking i'm hearing a lovely sizzle i'm smelling some delicious seared vegetable smells and it's time to start turning these over yeah look at that color that's just perfect nothing too fierce or black and obviously the cabbage itself is starting to tenderize you've got these seared edges but the middle of the cabbage is kind of steaming through in fact you can see the steam coming off it we'll get those turned first and in the same order that it went on it's it's getting turned with those stalky ends still close to the hot pot let's have a look at these onions again lovely color you can see them starting to get tender they're curling a little bit and you just know that that color on an onion spells sweetness you're caramelizing the natural sugars of the onion there's a lovely char stripe on that one that's not cut and of course these different vegetables are offering up really very different flavors you know you've got the bittersweet brassica the cabbage you've got that the natural sweetness with that slight uh brassica note with the onion you've got that um that kind of mellow sweetness but with the with the oniony tang and the courgettes you know they're almost creamy but the way they take the charring just develops that flavor and intensifies it just look at this lovely bit of color on these now there's going to be a bit more to this dish than just a couple of big plates of grilled veg i'm going to make a really delicious way to to kind of dress the veg add some crunch a whole extra bunch of flavors and i'm going to cook on the grill something called the ducker you may know what that is but if you haven't come across it before it's a north african blend of toasted nuts and spices with a little bit of chili can be finished with a bit of fresh mint and that's going to be a brilliant way to finish these veg so to do that i'm going to put a cast iron pan and that's the other nifty thing about the volcano's you know you can just use it like a hob you can put other things on here you know i could be boiling potatoes in the corner in a saucepan full of water or frying an egg or whatever it might be you know you've got a hot plate and all that versatility as well as this flavor from the wood smoke coming out of the middle so as these veg gets a nearing completion i just want to move this grill up to the hotter part and then over here i'm going to prepare the ingredients for the ducker i've got these hazelnuts which i'm going to lightly bash now a few of them are going to be whole they do have a tendency to jump out like jumping beans so i put my hand over the top and bash sideways so i have a mixture of whole ones broken ones crumbs different textures and of course by putting them in the pan i'm really going to develop those flavors so when i've got them kind of bashed into halves and quarters and a few holes left i'm going to tip that right into the griddle pan spread it out and then in with the hazelnuts go some pumpkin seeds and a handful of sunflower seeds i like to keep these whole they don't really need bashing up just give those a stir now you don't want to overfill the pan because you want some heat and you want those seeds to toast so you want just an even layer not not a big pile but they're going to toast nice and slowly my cabbage has been on for yeah the the cabbage is pretty much done so i think i've got enough veg here to make one lovely platter there's a really easy way to dress this veg and that's to actually create your dressing on the platter so that when the hot veg goes in it starts picking up that dressing straight away so here i've got some really nice olive oil and i'm going to trickle that over the the platter quite generously i'm also going to put a good sprinkle of salt i'm going to cut one of these lemons in half knock out those pips good squeeze the lemon straight onto the plate and then if you see a pip flick it off because i can tell you nobody wants to bite down on a lemon pip when they're enjoying this grilled veg it really is not a palate pleaser so off you go a little bit more of that olive oil and also just the finest sliver of garlic which again the heat of the veg is just going to mellow out these very very thin slices of garlic one clove is plenty i'm gonna spread that around and then later on when i toss the veg the garlic will move around with it but the heat of the veg going onto that garlic is going to be just enough to to take the edge off it so here we go the hisby is gloriously coloured nice and now there's always a risk that something goes down the middle and i'd had had one bit of hispy by the middle and another bit by the leaf am i gonna retrieve that it's quite fierce but it's good there's another one i'm spreading that around so it picks up the dressing there's a few loose leaves but they're not too burnt to be part of the dish that one wants a little bit more cooking that's that was heading towards the cool corner so i'm just going to leave it there a bit longer i'm going to move the nuts around in the griddle and how are we looking here yeah these have got lovely color on both sides everything's sweet and tender you'll notice how obviously the veg is contracting a little bit concentrating as it chars it shrinks a little bit on the grill and that means the flavors are concentrating too and we're going to get an absolute whack of delicious flavor from all of these veg i think the courgettes are slightly ahead of the onions so they're good to go and just before before i start putting the courgettes in another generous trickle of oil so we're dressing as we go another pinch of flaky salt another squeeze of lemon definitely no pips and i think we can take all this off in a bundle and then spread it around and move my griddle plate remember never to pick it up by that handle because that's going to be insanely hot just move those around get the shapes going in different directions that they can probably take a little bit more color and then finish off with these lovely onions just curl everything around so it's well distributed these white onions that haven't been cut in half are going to take a tiny bit longer you can see that because they're holding their shape they're not quite tender in the middle whereas these guys are lovely and collapsed and curling and that means they're done and everything's starting to mingle last two bits of courgette off the grill we're there with the last of the hispie the final wedge it's got a thickest stalk beautiful color on the onions soft and tender now a final trick of olive oil a good twist of pepper onto the second lemon half now the ducker isn't just about the nuts and the seeds it's also about the spices and i've got some whole coriander seeds not going to be whole for long some cumin seeds and i'm going to give them a really good bash that's almost a tablespoon of each quite generous with those quantities i'm not smashing them to a powder but i'm just breaking them up because that releases their amazing aromatic flavor and then the seeds go on top of the nuts and spices obviously they don't take as long to toast obviously i've got steel on steel and i think i'm not getting quite enough heat into that griddle pan so i'm going to do something a little bit radical i'm going to take the heatproof glove and you know this is the fun thing about this bit of kit why not speed things along by putting that straight onto the coals that will definitely get some color into those nuts now pretty soon i'm gonna hear the spice seeds popping can you hear that crackling and i'm starting to see a little bit of color on the bashed hazelnuts and the seeds and that means our ducker is getting to where it needs to be and there comes a moment when things start burning quite quickly so now that we've got the heat i think we can work with the residual heat got plenty of heat there now so let's lift that off brilliant i just needed to get the cast iron griddle nicely hot similar temperature to the plates here now i could have put the nuts and seeds straight on the plates but you can see how they'd have been difficult to gather in but because i've got a lip on this nice old griddle uh they're gonna behave themselves but as soon as we start to see real color we want to stop it cooking too much so i'm going to swap that pop that back down there and let this beautiful docker cool off a bit to finish the ducker a pinch of chili i've got some salt and pepper but there's one thing i need from the garden i'll be right back and here it is fresh mint that's going to get finely ribened as the ducker cools off and this fresh mint really does give the ducker an incredible lift and it actually goes beautifully with all the grilled veg this is moroccan mint the kind you make minced tea with but it's also a really good culinary mint ribbon it once i'm not looking for mint dust just put the knife through it a few times sprinkle it over the toasted nuts seeds and spices good pinch of salt on the ducker the nuts are cool enough now not to wilt the mint and a little kick of chili flakes just at the end i'm just gonna give that all a little mix with my fingers before i top off this lovely plate of grilled veg with the ducker i'm going to add one last thing this is a hummus it's a loose hummus so it's got extra lemon juice it's also made with a bit of roasted golden beetroot which gives it this fine color and just to add a bit of lusciousness to the dish i'm going to dab a little bit of this around the grilled veg and this is kind of what makes this into a really generous hearty main course dish it's not just a side it's not just a plate of veg to be nibbled at it's a really substantial feast of grilled summer veg and it gets finished off with this amazing ducker also prepared on the volcanus i don't need everything that's in this plate just enough to give some savor and crunch all around the dish and that is a very generous plate of food lovely grilled vegetables caramelized corners and charred edges the the toasty seeds the nuts and the spice from the ducker and a little bit of creaminess from the hummus and that is a wonderful way to celebrate summer veg and celebrate the power of the vulcanus you

Channel: Kernow Fires

Views: 22,957

Keywords: woodburner, cornwall, fireplace

Id: xlbKHdIXVR8

Length: 26min 17sec (1577 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 16 2022