070/18 – Tomato Pie:

Fire and Food by DJ BBQ only came out last week and the first dish I cooked was the Grilled Halloumi Burger which was really well received! Christian suggested Tomato Pie next so I added it to the cook list for this week.

066/18: Grilled Halloumi Burger

Fire Food is available for £10.20 at the moment:

All the cooks from Christian’s first book can be seen here:

The Charcoal:

The plan was to cook 2 dishes at once but I was short one ingredient for the other dish so cooked this first. With less space required I chose to cook on the Weber Kettle and fired up a full chimney of Oxford Charcoal Sweet Chestnut. I love cooking with this lumpwood as it smells so good!

Once the charcoal was fully lit I poured it into the charcoal baskets set to each side of the grill so there was an indirect zone through the centre.

The Prep:

I took my lodge cast iron pan out and smeared butter all round the inside. In a bowl I mixed Cheddar, Onion, Mayo, Worcestershire Sauce, Oregano, Salt and Pepper. 

The bottom of the pan was covered with cubed wholemeal loaf. The recipe suggests white bread or sourdough but we had half a loaf of wholemeal bread that my wife had made the day before so I used that instead. Next up, sliced tomatoes were placed over the bread then seasoned with salt and pepper before another bread layer was added. The cheese mixture was spread over the bread before more sliced tomatoes were added. The previous cheese layer had used all my cheese mix so I made another batch but this time Amber Mist cheese was used. It’s a cheddar from Snowdonia Cheese Company mixed with smokey, peaty whisky (Islay?) and it tastes fantastic! Last layer on top was spring onions and sliced chillies.

The Cook:

A lump of Cherry wood was placed on the lit coals then the pan was placed in the centre of the grill over the indirect zone. It was slightly overlapping the charcoal baskets so I planned to rotate the pan every 5 minutes.

15 minutes in and taking on a nice colour.

25 minutes in, the butter had charred a bit on the edge but I wanted a bit more colour on the left hand side so gave it a few more minutes.

Spot on, time to come off.

Time to Eat:

It’s hard to explain how good this smelt as it was sat there but it was 2pm and I was starving so was ready to fire straight in!

Glorious!

SUMMARY:

When you read the ingredients for this dish it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be an overly complicated dish taste wise but I can only tell you the first taste totally blew me away! It was so good I had double portions! My wife isn’t keen on cheese or warm tomatoes but even she inhaled hers! This will be a dish that gets cooked more often, especially if I have some space on the Kamado Joe when something else is cooking!

The combination of all the ingredients just work well together. The fat in the cheese melts down and spreads through the whole dish and the bread crisps up from the same fat and the butter. Some of the best bits were the charred bits around the edge, worth fighting for those if you cook it!

Another great vegetarian dish, I enjoyed it so much I didn’t even think of it being a vegetarian dish or lacking meat. 

Really enjoyed both cooks from this book so far, what to cook next??!

Cook Difficulty:	2/5
Cook Duration:	Quick: 2/5
Cook Equipment:	Weber Kettle
Cook Method:	Indirect (Canyon)
Charcoal:	Oxford Charcoal Sweet Chestnut
Smoking Wood:	Smokewood Shack Cherry
Cook temperature:	200c
Cook time:	30 minutes
Internal temperature:	N/A
Notes:	1: Cook it more often!

THE BOOK:

If you like the look of this recipe you can buy the book from Amazon (£10.20) by clicking the picture below:  

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