Easy barbecue ideas for summer

New Zealand Barbecue Cookbook, by Simon & Alison Holst (Hyndman Publishing, RRP $19.99):

Our summers here in the south might sometimes be a wee bit dodgy but when we do get a good weekend, there’s nothing better than cracking open a nice cold beer and cranking up the barbecue.

If you’re sick of the same old charred sausages and scorched chops, New Zealand’s first family of food have once again come up with the goods: a little book packed with great barbecue recipes.

There’s nothing too taxing in the actual cooking side of things so these are perfect recipes for when you’ve got family and friends over: you wont be tied to the kitchen filleting sardines or any other tricky tasks.

They also, naturally, feature ingredients that we’re all likely to have in our fridges or pantries already. And if we don’t already own them, we wont have any problem finding them in our supermarkets: there’s chicken, pork and ham, corn, capsicums and kumara. It’s kind of refreshing to find a cookbook that doesn’t offer up lists of ingredients that involve scouring the internet for specialist delicatessens or chartering a private jet to hop over to far off Somewhere to get some rare ingredient that you will never use again.

But really, this is the Holsts so their good judgement should come as no surprise.

As always, the book is more than just a collection of recipes. There’s also a section at the start with advice on how to barbecue and the tools you can use.

And finally, the recipes themselves are great. We’ve taken half a dozen of them for a test drive so far and are looking forward to trying the rest.

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