Happy Winter 2019

The country might be deluged in water, and shadowed by the faces of the murky duo of Trump & Johnson. But don't fret, we're here to keep the fires burning, the grills glowing, and through all of this, the warmth of our spirit is in abundance.

If it's kiln dried wood or restaurant grade charcoals, and a whole lot more you're after, then get in touch here. www.londonlogco.com

I can promise we'll deliver, but as for the rest, I'm not sure what they'll be turning up with, other than more hot air and guff.

Take care

Mark

New London Log Co website 2018

www.londonlogco.com

It's been great having this blog on Blogger. It's been 8+ years and 397,984 views of sharing, learning and growing, it's taught me so much, about the power of words, and with it the freedom it's given me to talk endlessly about wood, in all its glorious forms. Along with the team at Log Co HQ to communicate our thoughts and ideas into the restaurant industry.

Without this powerful tool, we'd not exist in the way we do, so if you're at the beginning of an idea or journey, I recommend you make use of this or other free blogging platforms.

As things grow so does the requirements of a business, so we've built a new website. From here on in please click the link above and it'll take you through to our new website.

Many thanks


Mark

How Bake Off's controversial fire challenge tapped into a roaring food trend

*To read the full article click the link above in the header

So there it is, folks. After weeks and weeks of watching the contestants battle it out to be crown the king or queen of The Great British Bake Off 2018, it was talented-but-shy Rahul Mandal who finally clinched victory. 

And while there was some controversy over whether or not Rahul actually deserved to take home the crown, the more interesting debate was over the nature of the final challenges in the tent. 

One challenge saw the bakers leaving the tent (surely not!) and heading over to a live fire to cook pitta bread and prepare accompanying dips. Cue a storm in a Twittercup about whether making dips constituted 'baking'. 

Still, that controversy shouldn't engulf the really-quite-interesting challenge of cooking on a live fire. The technique, which, as Paul Hollywood noted, has "been around for thousands of years”, is a hot trend on the restaurant scene at the moment, with new eateries popping up left, right, and centre offering dishes cooked either over a live flame or, as on Bake Off, on a slate held over an open flame. 

Perhaps it's little wonder that this ancient practice is being revived. The simple yet theatrical method sits perfectly at the crossroads between various modern food trends: dining as an experience, traditional cooking, local methods, and a back-to-basics kitchen approach. 

Mark Parr, the owner of the London Log Company who supplies firewood to hundreds of kitchens across the UK, and a massive live fire enthusiast who goes by the moniker Lord Logs on social media to share his love for the art, notes that this is exactly how our caveman ancestors would have cooked: "It's the essence of what drove us to be here." 

What's the point of cooking on an live fire?

Whisky fans will already know that different kinds of wood can impart different flavour profiles into their drinks. The same goes for cooking on a live fire, which imparts a distinct taste and texture depending on the wood that's used. 

Parr gives the example of Scandinavian smoked salmon. The dish has a sweet taste that's totally different from Scottish smoked salmon, for example, because it is usually smoked with alder wood, a tree which grows near water and harbours a fungus that must produce a sugar to survive. "Wood is organic, it becomes of the soil it grows in, which gives you different notes to navigate between. Wood exists on an aromatic spectrum with dark and light woods offering totally different tastes."

And this helps to explain why cooking on a fire is suddenly so popular. Parr says that we've basically perfected the art of taste in most fields of cooking, to the extent that there's not many new discoveries left. Live fire cooking is one of the few remaining blind spots.

Neil Rankin, chief director and master chef behind Temper restaurants, whose live fire restaurant Temper City was chosen as one of The Telegraph's best new restaurants in 2017, says fire cooking allows chefs to give their dishes a much more personal touch: "Cooking over fire allows constant manipulation of the product. You can see it cooking and keep adjusting it for colour and cooking degree. The interaction is not only more interesting for the chef but also the customers who are watching you cook."

Cooking with a live fire is a must at St Leonards, one of the many hot new UK restaurants embracing the ancient art CREDIT: BACCHUS

While acknowledging all those brilliant reasons to jump on the live fire trend, Andrew Clarke, one of the restauranteurs behind the London live fire eatery, St Leonards, says that cooking with live fire is simply more satisfying: "I think I've got the most fun kitchen in London. We've got so much going on, no one could get bored."

"It's a very primal way of cooking as well, you know? That excites us. You're not just looking after the ingredients, you're looking after the fire; it can't go out, it needs to maintain a certain temperature; there's a lot to play with. It seems like a very simple way of doing things but it's not. You've got to be on the ball, working out where your hot spots are and where's good for slower cooking."

How to cook on an live fire

While most of us will have cooked food on the barbecue over summer, cooking over a live fire is a totally different beast.

“Wood fire is a gentler heat than charcoal, although right over a flame, there is more direct, sharper heat, and it may be higher too," explained chef Niklas Ekstedt, pioneer of the modern cooking with wood flames trend, when The Telegraph spoke to him at his restaurant Ekstedt in Stockholm. 

Traditionally we're used to seeing meat cooked on a live fire. Where would a hog roast be without its delicious smoky taste? Vegetables are more of a challenge, as they have a high water content – although that doesn't mean they're impossible. "Vegetables are actually better than meat and fish in my opinion," says Rankin. "Meat and fish are great if you’re skilled but sometimes its easier to just cook them in a pan or use a proper smoker.

"Vegetables take heat well. You can burn then and they don't stick or create flames as meat does with its fat."

How do you perfect the art? “Choose a dry wood, so it will burn evenly, and start frying something," he says. "Try cauliflower, haricots verts or broccoli in a little bit of fat – butter is difficult as it burns, so use animal fat or clarified butter like ghee. If it catches fire a little bit, that’s fine.”

Of course, while live fire cooking is an interesting trend, not all of us have the facilities to invest in a great big fire pit or collect special wood to burn. But fear not, Clarke has a simple method of getting the benefits of live fire cooking with nothing more than a simple barbecue:  "Wood chips are an easy way of doing it. You can soak those in water and sprinkle them over the hot coals and you'll get some of the same flavours coming off.

"You can also burn the wood. By burning the wood rather than soaking it, we get a flavour that's a lot more subtle. As soon as you put the wood chips in water, you're going to get more intense smoke and a more intense flavour."

At which point, Rankin serves a reminder that live fire cooking has its dangers. "Don't hang meat directly above the fire. It should be offset. A restaurant did that recently at a street food event and everything went up in flames. Fat is no different to oil so you need to be just as careful.

"Also don't be wasteful and burn down wood for charcoal. Buy nice clean burning charcoal and save wood for smoking in smokers that waste less fuel or for wood fired ovens."

Related Topics

• Great British Bake Off
 
• London
 
• Baking
 
• Fire
 
• Restaurants

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BBC R4 The Food Programme
The Carnivore's guide to meat and fire



I've been a huge fan of the BBC R4 Food Programme for years and listened to it many times on i-player whilst cooking. We had a brief chat on the previous show about Barbecue a couple of years ago, but this year we're in fine company with Tim Hayward and the team

Much of this was recorded at Meatopia 2018 in London's Tobacco Dock in Wapping, E1. It's a nicely put together programme and it shows how far we've all come in the world of Live-Fire cooking

Have a listen, there's a link over on the right in the 'Press London log Co' section

Enjoy

Mark

To the future & beyond: Live-Fire Cooking in 2018

It's often a case of what next, where's this going, what's coming up, where should we go?
It's always been like this in greater and lesser degrees, and the future though it's daunting and exciting in equal and paradoxically variable measures, is often informed by the past.

So I look forward and into to an events calendar this year that's on the "Oh good god, really?" side of daunting & exciting.  But as I'm happy to inform people, this 'Live-Fire cooking" wave we ride, one that's getting stronger and wider is part-of, not an exception to the canon of global cooking. It's much more like cooking in the way we recognise, than say when the microwave oven was introduced. That was a leap into the new, but now look around or more like listen to the "ping" in near every household.

I'm not expecting our cooking with Full-Fat Fire to be as ubiquitous, but it's spreading (see what I did there) it's becoming cultural over fad, and for that I'm grateful. But it's also practical in a greater way and by scale, I try to imagine an event like Meatopia, Wilderness and the oldest food related event, the Ludlow Food Festival without it now. It wouldn't happen or be anywhere near the same.


Some places we offer to set a fire are met with a battery of Health & Safety questions and much as I'm good with health and great with safe, I see a fair bit of primal fear in the eyes of the questioning party I'm tasked with explain our vision to. When we say fire I'm thinking a few pans and a grill area, whereas the other person may be visioning a seaside town recreation ground with 30 foot of flames licking off a pallet and old mattress bonfire, though they do visibly relax when I talk them down from their fears and assure them it'll be ok, it's food were cooking , not an incinerator or a forge we're recreating.




I put it down to experience and fire is an elemental we should treat with great respect, less it catches us out and all hell can ensue.
So I accept the spectacle of the fire is both arresting and compelling and the first thought we have is normal, in that "I don't want to burn the house down" isn't a bad response, in fact it's the response I'd suggest we heed. But, but but...once we understand the parameters and contain the dangers to a greater extent, then we can play with fire and have fun with it.

However, it's with time and experience that we learn to be relaxed within the presence of fire, it has a compelling energy. I'm trying to remember the last time I burnt myself on a fire. I've scorched myself on the oven indoors and I still have the scars from a commercial charcoal oven (yeah you Josper), but an actual fire? I can't remember, though I did loose a few hairs of my arms tending the bigger fire at Wilderness, but that's hair and it grows back.

In the bigger picture I'm wonder if all the digitised experiences we get are leaving us a little lacking, so the real fire at home, in the garden, or in a grill or fire-pit at an event is some kind of medicine for the weary spirit, or maybe is it just excitement at the thought of some controlled jeopardy, a perception of danger.

Or simply the chance that it may well burn your food when you're not paying attention, though with a little skill and some practice it can be tamed to be both delicious and mesmerising. But remember, like the sea it is to be respected, drop your guard and it may well lick you to remind you of its power.

And lastly, if you can visit Wilderness, Meatopia, River Cottage Food Fair, River Cottage Festival Ludlow Food Festival, The Good Feed in Manchester, The Good Life Experience (and I'm sure I've missed a few) then you can get to see hands on what we do, come and put an ear towards our talks and we're often to be found close to the fire, often with food to share.


See you somewhere during the coming season.

And as Buzz Lightyear says "To the future and beyond"

Mark

P.s. I've created an Instagram account FutureFireCollective for likeminded chefs, fire makers and anyone with a soul for the flames. There's no membership as such and all are welcome, please do join in and follow, but come with good spirit and share that with others.

Food Festivals and Events: Real-Fire Cooking

The Summer Season is awash with events, but much as these things are; there's events and then there's events that are special and worth attending. 
*subject to ticket availability

The Krug Champagne House teams up with Chef Francis Mallmann. 
This is one of the special events of the season.  

The food and music festival, will be held on 29 July from 4pm to midnight, in the ‘grand English wilderness’ of Hampshire and will be set up in the grounds of The Grange, a 18th-century heritage site owned by the 7th Lord Ashburton. 

Wilderness.....
Nomads and gastronomes. Rockers and roamers. Drifters and dreamers. The reclusive, the wild and the weird. Welcome. Step in and linger. We invite you on an escape like no other.

You are embarking on an all-guns-blazing tour of the arts and heart-stopping delights that we have chosen to import to our paradise corner of the world. Explore far and wide. It’s all for you.

We also wanted to create a place where you can keep reality at arms length, where experience is everything: a humming microcosm in the Wilderness that dazzles and thrills every single sense.

This is one of our favourite escapes. One which has freedom and enough to fill an entire 3 days if you wish........

See here for further details.....

Meatopia V 2017...

We're 5 years old now, all grown up and standing strong and joyful. London Log Co joined with this event at the very beginning, we've grown together and we're part of something we're proud of. 

This year we have 70+ chefs over the three days, with new ideas and food coming to the to the passes this year. From Cornwall we have the company of Nathan Outlaw, a man who holds more Michelin stars for fish than any other chef in the world. He'll be cooking sea beasts (yes fish!) over fire and i'm personally very excited at the prospect. He's a good friend and a great chef, it will be epic.

See here for further details...

Keep in touch, feel free to ask questions.....

Best

Mark

details.....

Briquettes vs Lump Hardwood: A London View

There is some despair it seems, over using Briquettes vs Lump Harwood Charcoal. And I feel the time has come to banish our collective shame, to shed the unnecessary guilt over such things.
So together let's put our our hands up and say ...
"Yes, I use briquettes" .......(errr....and why wouldn't you?)

I saw a tweet today by @lulgrimes  (food anorak) Lifestyle Director at bbcgoodfood.com. And like Lulu, i'm a self confessed food (with added fire) anorak. Lulu's posts a link to Matt Duckor's article "Why I'm Over Using Lump Hardwood Charcoal" on the American foodie site Epicureious.com.
It's a great site along with the likes of EaterNY and  Bon Appetit Magazine

He writes:
'For the last few years, the only thing the grilling obsessives I know wanted to talk about were the wonders of lump hardwood charcoal. "It burns cleaner" than charcoal briquettes, they'd say. "And it's hotter too." Grilling gurus would extol lump hardwood charcoal's all-natural benefits, painting it as the flame-licked analogue to the meat world's pricey grass-fed beef. Lump hardwood charcoal, they'd claim, is just plain better than its more manufactured predecessor.
The Best (and Fastest) Way to Fire Up Your Grill
Every time I heard this, I felt a deep shame. You see, I had always used traditional charcoal briquettes—they're available everywhere and were what I was familiar with. They're what my dad used to light our Weber when I was growing up, and they seemed to work perfectly fine for him"

It's a strong article and on a subject over which i'd pondered for many years. And it has a very valid point, but one which i'd counter by asking "Why one over the other?"
I'm no Gregorian monk and hair shirts just aren't my thing. And i'm done with all this X vs Y mantra. Togetherness is the way forward, divisions are a no-no here in the U.K. But i'm all good for making things easier.

He goes onto say:
"For the last few years, the only thing the grilling obsessives I know wanted to talk about were the wonders of lump hardwood charcoal. "It burns cleaner" than charcoal briquettes, they'd say. "And it's hotter too." Grilling gurus would extol lump hardwood charcoal's all-natural benefits, painting it as the flame-licked analogue to the meat world's pricey grass-fed beef. Lump hardwood charcoal, they'd claim, is just plain better than its more manufactured predecessor."

My thing here is; it's about what you know of the the ingredients of your fire. The comparison is fine if we're talking like for like, in that Lump Hardwood Charcoal is made from pure wood, the assumption being that briquettes are (mostly) not. True, but much like sausages, which are all sausage shaped; it's what's in them that counts. So as with sausages, there's also briquettes. It's about finding the good ones, and when you do, oh the joy. Good and clean, solid and so dependable you could fall asleep in the deck chair and they'd still be there glowing away when you woke up.

Matt further quotes Adam Rapoport: Bon Appétit Editor-in-Chief 
"I got the courage to revert back from another briquette sympathizer: Bon Appétit Editor-in-Chief Adam Rapoport, who switched back last summer.
His tale is similar to mine: seduced by lump's food-world coolness, only to reject it eventually at the suggestion of another food writer, in this case New York Times food editor Sam Sifton. "He compared briquettes to a steady baseline in music"

And i'm all for the baseline (lord knows of the hours i'd spent back in the day 'hands in the air" in house-music clubs) But we all know we need a horn section and a little jazz over that baseline, else it all get too gas-like-flat. So let's mix it up, briquettes (the good ones) underneath and the real woody charcoal on top, between the meat, to create the flavour notes we crave.
Or less it get too serious, then heavens we're all heading back to the Gregorian chants, where the grill becomes the altar and we the monks around it. I leave that to the real Chefs and the temples of fire restaurants, where they tame-the-flame for a living; it's their calling, they wear the robes.
Amen to them and that!

Where does this leave us (non-chefs) ? 
It leaves us together, out in the yard, the garden and the parks, enjoying the joys of cooking over the flame, convening with nature and having FUN with friends. Cut the guilt and shame, get to know your fire, what's in it, how's it made. For what it's worth (and being the self styled master-of-coals, the Earl of Embers, the one and only "Lord Logs" of London Town)

Here's my advice:
Seek out the best Lump Harwood Charcoal you can find. And while you're at it, seek out the best ALL NATURAL Briquettes you can find, my favourites retail ones being made from pure coconut husk by-product. They'll glow a beautiful sweet lilac with a mauve gas ring around the edge. Make this your "base line" by building a bed of heat and then once it's there, gently add the Lump Hardwood Charcoal for heat and the most unmatchable flavour.

*Other briquettes contain some fairly nasty mineral coal (the stuff dug from the ground), burn retardants, rock dust, and other material materials. It's why you get so much DUST, not ash.

Firing Coals: Fast Cook 
Steaks, fast meats and grilling. I go for pure Lump Harwood every time. Unmatchable flavours and hot but manageable heat requirement.
Tips: Pile up the Lump Hardwood in the middle of the grill and place ALL NATURAL fire lighters in the TOP surface of the coals, as the best fire burns TOP down, not bottom up. (maybe this is where the fast burn/inferno comes from) Light the firelighters and wait until the white-grey ash appears, the coals underneath glowing solidly, then (and only then) level the fire into the shape required.
Here you're good to go, fast, hot and maybe just for that one or two fast and hot items.

Firing Coals: Slow Cook (drawn out for hours over the day/night)
Here's where the ALL NATURAL briquettes come into their own, allowing that slow and leisurely pace to happen. Around the BBQ and thought the day.
Tips: Fill the Weber Chimney starter (this is what it was actually designed for) with the briquettes (but do avoid the Weber own brand Briquettes) place a little real Lump Hardwood on the top (a little in the bottom is good too) and fire from BELOW again with the all-natural fire lighters. When you get a good glow going right from top to bottom, then tip carefully into your BBQ. From here you can gradually add real Lump Hardwood Charcoal during the cook session as required, so you get all the heat and all the flavours you're looking for.

Technique and Skills:
No-one is born with the skills of Fire-Craft, though some cultures seem to have the knack. We can learn and once mastered we move along just fine. Take note the next time you're in a Turkish Grill restaurant, they master the fire each and every day. You'll see how they set the fire, and it's not all one flat fired inferno.
The heat will be on one side, or two with a safe space in the middle (that's what direct and indirect roughly is) and you'll see ash, and ash is your friend. Save it to go in the middle of the safe zone, it catches fat and retains heat. And if your fire rages too hot, sprinkle a little of the ash on the surface of the coals to reduce the oxygen. Once under control you can 'riddle' with a gentle poke about and drop the ash off the surface, making the fire raise the temperature again as required.

And further from Matt Duckor's article:
To be clear—I'm in no way advocating the use of quick-light briquettes. Those get pre-soaked in lighter fluid, giving food that comes within a 50-yard radius of the stuff an unpleasant, butane-kissed flavour that evokes the Wicked Witch of the West.
But good old, dependable, uncool charcoal briquettes? I've stocked up on them for summer, and all is back to normal. Maybe our Dads were right after all

Last words
I concur, though i'm a Dad too and this is my way. And the emotion we dig deep into when cooking and living is a strong driver in our choices. For the final word on the love between Parent and child, read here:
The late great Josh Ozersky: saveur.com
(and I weep every time I read this)



Big Love to all

Mark