Library News, by David W. Keeber
Red Rock News
Date: July 20, 2007
One of the most common images of summer is the man of the house dressed in an apron with something like “Kiss the Chef” emblazoned on the front, standing next to a barbeque grill belching smoke is if it were fogging for mosquitoes. As the charred meal comes off the grill, the man basks in everyone’s adulation and the wife, who shopped for everything, prepared everything, and will clean up everything sits quietly by, biting her tongue.
We can only hope that the scene, while probably not too different from the one described, would not include “charred meat,” but rather, the food would be more than just meat, and it would be done to perfection, healthy and eagerly anticipated. That sort of result doesn’t happen by accident, though. This is where the Sedona Public Library can help. Searching our catalog for books on “barbeque” will reveal more than one hundred in the Yavapai Library Network and almost 20 within the walls of this Library. These range from the basic how-to books, to tomes on how to build a backyard barbeque to last the ages. Heck, there is even a sewing book that tells you how to sew a cover for your grill!
Personally, I have one barbeque cookbook that serves as my standard text. Steve Raichlen wrote How to Grill. It contains basic recipes for meat, chicken, pork, fish, vegetables and lots of inventive and tasty rubs to apply. More than anything, it teaches the basics of grilling to ensure that you get the work of actually cooking the food done right. It is only after that when you need to learn fancier recipes.
For those fancier recipes, try Taming the Flame: Secrets for Hot-and-QuickGrilling and Low-and-Slow BBQ, by Elizabeth Karmel. One thing that appeals about this title is how Karmel quite easily pushes past the “glass ceiling” that seems to keep the barbeque domain a strictly male environment. She even sports a button calling her the “BBQ Queen!” She does teach the basics, but also has dishes that might more naturally come from the pages of “Gourmet” magazine. This is almost a Joy of Cooking for the barbeque and presents women as a fait accompli at the barbeque.
Some cookbooks we offer are type specific such as the Chicken on the Grill, by Cheryl and Bill Jamison, or The Great Big Burger Book, by Jane Murphy and Liz Yeh Singh (two women, I might point out!). If you have a hankering for a certain type of meat, but have run out of new ideas, these books offer some simple or complex new ideas that will turn heads and build your reputation as a Grill Master.
There are concerns about whether or not grilling is the healthiest form of cooking. It should be understood that anything cooked to a cinder has the potential to be unhealthy, but there are good cookbooks that provide healthy recipes for your summer fare. Bobby Flay’s Grilling for Life offers 75 healthier ideas for big flavor from the fire. His is not the only title that addresses healthier grilling, so you need not think that only the most tasteless foods could be cooked on the grill and still be good for you.
We should recognize that cooking on the grill is just the most obvious part of a general lifestyle that involves good food, outdoor activities and, quite often, friends and socializing. If you see your grill as the centerpiece of a larger set of activities, consider some of the many titles that provide instructions for building a grill in your backyard or even how to construct an entire patio area that serves as your summer, outdoor living room. There are many such titles throughout the Network and any book that is located at another library in the county can be placed on hold and set to either the main Library in west Sedona or the Village Service Center on Cortez Drive in the Village of Oak Creek.
Once you spend a bit of time with any of these great cookbooks, hopefully you won’t end up being the butt of a comment like the one my mother used to say whenever Dad brought in another sacrificial “something” off the grill. “Oh, he treats me like a Greek god. I get burnt offerings every day!” Visit the Sedona Public Library for books on grilling and let your prowess at the grill stand you in good stead.
