Veggie Barbies

The title is in fact a lie, if only partially, given that at both of our recent barbecues we ate meat, but we did manage to enjoy loads of vegetables done over the coals, and indeed in them.


I'm taking a wild guess that this is not news to those of a true vegetarian persuasion, but vegetables respond as well to the BBQ treatment as meats do. The best veggie thing we did - both times as the first was so enjoyable - was sweet potatoes, double wrapped in foil and buried in the very white hot ashes. The best results were with medium sized tubers, cooked in that way for a good 45 minutes. The skin was somewhere between burned and caramelised, but once cut into the flesh, with a bit of butter and salt, was totally delicious.


Those sweet spuds however, didn't benefit from the smoke and grill elements of the process, which mushroom kebabs (brown shrooms with garlic cloves between them) did, likewise courgette kebabs done with bay-leaves as separators.


Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'd like a totally veggie BBQ, but neither these days would I fancy one of the total meat-fests of the not too distant past. Another veggie winner was whole medium-large onions left in their skins and slotted on a metal skewer to help the heat get to the middle. The skin was charred, the next layer overdone and not worth eating, but the rest was - again - sweet and delicious. I tried white onions and red, and the latter was the tastier.


We love garlic, and had a head each done in foil on the grill, with a few herbs and a bit of oil to keep them company. The cloves could be squeezed onto the meaty bits for an instant sauce, and the second time I did enough to have some left over to make a sauce - with leftover onions too - that two days post-BBQ went with some roast chicken. Magnificent, but one of the most fart-inducing concoctions known to man.


Even Swiss chard, one of those things that we kitchen gardeners grow and end up not using all of, was a winner, cooked in foil with some butter and crushed garlic - I said we like it - leaf and stem.


We owe some vegan friends - health rather than conviction I think - a BBQ, so with a little tweaking I'm confident we can feed them well without too much need for bought-in veggieburgers. Up the mushroom quotient, and with a few more different varieties added, and it should be proof positive that Fascinating Aida were wrong with their classic lines 'Inviting a vegetarian to a barbecue, it's taboo, it's taboo, it's taboo.'