Friday, August 4, 2017

Book Review Assist: Pitmaster Recipes Techniques & BBQ Wisdom

Liz, my wife, is a cookbook collector.  She loves them! Small ones, large ones, old ones, new ones it does not matter to her.  Church cookbooks written by God fearing  Southern Baptist ladies, a small book of Halloween treats for busy moms, and a bit of everything in between.  As I write this I am looking at our "cookbook" cabinet in our kitchen, with multiple shelves and a couple of things occur to me.  First is the sheer number of her books that fall into two main categories.  Southern or "country" cooking themed books, and Coastal cooking themed books, both of which make sense as I was born and raised in South Carolina, and Liz, originally from Tennessee, considers herself South Carolinian by marriage.  Wait a minute.....this totally explains my expanding waistline and my foray into the XL size shirts of late.  This realization is actually quite thrilling for me because for a while now I have been told, by Liz, that this expansion was due to a lack of any real exercise beyond walking out to the beer fridge, and the bicep curls I do when I lift the lid on my Big Green Egg.  Boy I cannot wait to tell her it's not actually my fault, but rather her fault, and she should take responsibility for her actions.  I will let you know how that is received in a later post.

Another thing I noticed is that my grilling & BBQ cookbook section is trivial in comparison to Liz's allotted space.  I have like part of one shelf, way up high in the cabinet, almost like Liz is trying to marginalize my cookbooks.  I have more books than the ones on the half shelf, where are they? I want to know! I know she loves my cooking, so I'm sure it's not about her being some sort of "grill-ist", and discriminating against my collection..... Right? Oh my gosh! Oh the HUMANITY! Could this be true, in my own house?  No, no it can't be, I don't think so.  Although I can't be 100% certain, or one hundy, as the kids say these days, but I feel good about it, about her not being a "grill-ist" because a few months ago I was asked by my friend and mentor,  Chris Grove (@nibblemethis) to help him review a new cookbook, and she did not recoil at the thought of another grilling/ BBQ cookbook in the house.  In fact, she acted as if she was excited for me, although she mumbled some things about being somewhat perplexed as to why Chris would ask me for an assist....... I ignored those comments.  Even though I knew where she was coming from, as Chris gets asked to review things all of the time.  However, this was a first for me, and I walked around with my chest out farther than my belly, which is tough nowadays as I mentioned earlier, like I was Foghorn Leghorn strutting around the barnyard.  Although I had a small role, I was proud, and guy has to start somewhere right?

I cannot thank Chris enough for the opportunity to help him.  He asked me to cook a few things and write about it, as well as, to write about the overall feel of the book and any thing else that so moved me about the book.  The book is Pitmaster - Recipes, Techniques, & BBQ Wisdom by Chris Hart (@WickedGoodBBQ) and Andy Husbands (TheSmokeShopBBQ), and it is a great read and wonderfully well thought out and put together.  Although these guys hail from a different part of the country than I do, I don't hold that against them, they know BBQ, and that is a language we all can speak without an accent getting between us.  I will refrain from reviewing the review here, but please go to http://www.nibblemethis.com/2017/02/book-review-pitmaster-recipes.html for the full review.  Chris did most of the heavy lifting while I played a minor role chirping in here and there, which as I said, I was more than happy to do.  So go check it out!




While you're checking things out on the interwebs,  follow me on twitter @Grill_Porn and on Facebook at Grill_Porn (JeffGreeneBBQ)