Short self-test with the grill book, one of the countless volumes on the subject of barbecue that come out on the market every season. The copy is narrow, lies comfortably compact in the hand, pistachio green cover. Motif on the end paper: delicate flowers. Shouldn’t this be a heavy tome, smoky in colour, with something sizzling on the cover? Instead, one of the first photos shows: a berry dessert with tentatively browned almonds. Shouldn’t it somehow blaze more on the pages?
No flames, no fat that runs into the embers – the fact that you are actually amazed by this shows how deep the clichés about grilling are. Even if neck steaks are out and women no longer just want to make the pasta salad but also the fire, there is still something martial about the outdoor kitchen. Nevertheless, Rukmini Iyer is spot on with her pastel book “Green BBQ” (Dorling Kindersley). The British best-selling author has a keen sense of the culinary zeitgeist, and when it comes to outdoor cooking, the signs are pointing to sugar. Grilling desserts is now taken seriously. That’s right, because why should sweet fruits, for example, look worse on the grill than vegetable skewers? And besides, once the grill is fired up, why not prepare the dessert on it as well? It doesn’t have to be something with – undoubtedly delicious – smoked vanilla to get you started.
Rule of thumb: Never leave desserts alone on the grill!
Ice cream, peach halves or warm cheesecake from the grill: for someone like Bart Mus, this has long been part of everyday work life. Born in Belgium, he is a grill master at the “Weber Grill Academy”, where participants in basic or advanced courses learn the basics about cooking, roasting or sautéing on the grill. Mus worked as a chef for many years, and when I first started as a grill master “I was mainly interested in: Is it even possible to make the recipes that I knew from gastronomy on the grill?” He only dared to try desserts after a while, with the result: Yes, it works. After a few failed attempts, he even managed to make cheesecake, which his German colleagues tried to talk him out of with a smile.
Cheese and other cakes can also be baked well on the grill.
(Photo: Christin Klose/picture alliance / dpa-tmn)
The most important rule: cakes, meringue tarts or glazed fruit must be kept away from the heat. Desserts, with their tender, often melt-in-your-mouth texture, are not a robust steak that can withstand the highest temperatures. When talking to Bart Mus, you immediately notice that he usually speaks to inquisitive groups of students as a teacher. “Where do you bake a cake in the oven at home?” he asks. “Exactly, middle rail.” Therefore, a tray or a casserole dish with sweets should never be placed directly on the burning hot grid in the kettle grill, because temperatures of up to 250 degrees can be reached there, even if the lid thermometer shows 180 degrees. With an inverted aluminum tray – or of course the professional heat shield – as a base, desserts get the right, indirect heat. “Once you understand that, you can try any sweet recipe on the grill.”
Most newcomers don’t go that far in experimentation, although interest in grilled desserts continues to grow, says Mus – especially among male course participants. To start, he likes to recommend a light fruit crumble, for which peaches, mixed berries or sliced melon and pineapple pieces are evenly distributed in a casserole dish. Crumble a crumble of butter, sugar, flour or hazelnuts over it and “bake until golden brown, no more than thirty minutes”. Easy to make, easy to prepare – and the communal experience at the table is something special. “The dessert in the middle, everyone tries it, it’s a nice end to a barbecue evening.”
Purists swear by grilled fruit
Another rule: never forget the time. Hearty foods like lamb sausages or marinated zucchini can use a few charcoal spots in a pinch. Desserts are also more sensitive. This is especially true for delicate things like the small ice cream bombs, for which Bart Mus puts a scoop of ice cream, taken the day before, directly from the freezer, on a shortcrust pastry tartlet, completely covered with meringue and browns everything in the preheated grill for three minutes. “In the meantime, it’s best to hold the lid tight,” he says – which means: don’t just refill the wine glass, but stay at the grill. Three minutes is pretty short. You need even less patience for a gag that Bart Mus recommends to the most scrupulous as the first sweet acid test: freeze milk slices and grill them with the lid open for one to a maximum of one and a half minutes on each side. “It’s a gimmick, and that’s exactly what I want to encourage people to do: just try desserts on the grill.”
Purists tend to swear by fruit as a dessert. For the recipes in Rukmini Iyer’s chapter “Something Sweet”, halved apricots, peaches or passion fruit, brushed with a little olive oil, are simply placed directly on the grate of a simple charcoal grill (push the embers aside). Cooking over charcoal gives the fruit a special aroma, but the sophistication of the desserts often only emerges afterwards: with dressings made from rose water, orange juice and pistachios, a dollop of mascarpone cream with almonds – or with the rosemary sugar, in which the fruit halves are dipped beforehand and which turns into caramel over the hot coals. Iyer also wants to take away the shyness of her readers about trying sweets on the grill and emphasizes that not everything has to work the first time. Regarding the peaches with orange blossom water, rosemary and crème fraîche, she writes: “It doesn’t matter if some sugar falls, the peaches caramelize beautifully anyway.”
Peaches, nectarines or apricots can be grilled very well, for example rolled in rosemary sugar, which caramelizes over the embers, and then served with crème fraîche or ice cream.
(Photo: mauritius images / TPP)
Accentuating the inherent taste of natural products, which is intensified in a simple way by the heat of a wood fire: This is also the method of Chris Bay and Monika di Muro, although the two would prefer the word “philosophy” here. With their company Chillfood in Bern – and two cookbooks published by AT-Verlag – the Swiss have made a name for themselves as specialists for so-called fire kitchens. At events in unusual locations such as an old mill or a roundabout in the middle of the city, people cook over beech wood embers, in clay pots, on heated stones, with wooden sticks as skewers. An archaic process that the duo consciously understands as a return to the unaffected. “More and more, ever faster, ever more complex and crazier”: This is how they see the “world of culinary art and its extensive marketing” – and counter it with the idea of beneficial reduction.
Visitors to the company headquarters, an old brewery directly on the Aare, quickly realize what this means. Chris Bay then likes to demonstrate his favorite dessert, which consists of exactly three ingredients: organic lemons, which are placed whole in the embers until they form brown bubbles. After ten minutes, the cut inside is partly still sour, partly surprisingly musky and bittersweet, is sprinkled with raw cane sugar and a little gin is sprinkled over it. “A dessert that makes you happy,” says Bay, “because it couldn’t be easier and yet it’s full of surprises.”
Grilled peaches with rosemary caramel
Rukmini Iyer recommends peaches that are not too ripe for this dessert, so that the taste still has some of their fine fruit acidity (from Green BBQ. Vegan&Vegetarian. 75 grill recipes for indoors and outdoors, Dorling Kindersley)
ingredients (for 4 people): 3 heaped tablespoons of raw cane sugar, 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, the needles finely chopped, 4 peaches, 40 g of roasted flaked almonds, 2 teaspoons of orange blossom water (pharmacy!), crème fraîche
preparation: Mix together the sugar and rosemary and set aside. As soon as the grill is hot, press the cut surface of the halved and stoned peaches into the rosemary sugar. Grill cut-side up for 5 minutes, turn and grill for another 5 minutes. Be careful that the sugar only caramelizes and does not burn. Arrange the peaches on a platter. Sprinkle with slivers of almonds, drizzle with orange blossom water and serve hot. Serve with the crème fraîche separately. Alternatively, of course, ice cream goes well with it.