Finding Fire: Cooking at its most elemental

In this extraordinary book, acclaimed chef Lennox Hastie teaches you how to train your senses and instincts to respond to fire - and how different ingredients react to it - to perfect the art of cooking with flame. A world expert in cooking with fire, Hastie is a masterful guide to how important the fire itself is. His narrative and step-by-step instructions explain the '6 stages of fire', the varying properties of types of wood and the optimum temperatures required to get the best out different ingredients. He also references the diverse methods used by different cultures over the centuries that have influenced the way we cook today. Interwoven through this instructional text, are over 90 recipes for seafood, vegetables, meat and desserts, where he puts theory into practice and shows you how to get the very best result for each dish. The recipes themselves are simple and intended to help you master different techniques and ingredients with delicious results. Far more than a barbecue cookbook, Finding Fire is an inspiring journey to mastering the art of cooking over a wood fire.

Lennox Hastie is a UK-born, Europe-trained chef with an Australian father and Scottish mother. After working internationally for several years he opened acclaimed Sydney restaurant Firedoor in 2015. His background was essentially technique-focused classic French, before a trip to Spain that saw him land a job at Michelin starred restaurant Asador Extebarri where he worked for 5 years. Lennox's mission at Firedoor is to show that there is more to wood fire than pizza and barbecue, at least as so many of us know it. His unique approach saw Lennox awarded Best New Talent with Firedoor nominated for Best New Restaurant in the 2016 Australian Gourmet Traveller Awards. Firedoor currently holds a chef hat in the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide and sits at number 17 on the Australian Gourmet Traveller Top 100 Restaurants.