It’s not a place for everyone and you should seriously consider not writing in
Those of you who followed me since a long time may perhaps remember the date of October 20, 2016. That was the day I inaugurated this blog. It’s been incredibly only two and a half years but it seems like a century ago.
Very frankly speaking, it was then a choice against the current. “The Blog is a dead instrument,” they said. “What was once done by Blogs, today is done by Facebook” was the classic comment. But I did it anyway. I have always been convinced that on communication as on any other topic, it is never a matter of instrument itself but always of the use made of it. I built thebarktenders.com just as I thought it should be a blog and I think I managed to convey my vision, my recognizable way of doing things. Today it is undeniably one of the most interesting laboratories on reading the barbecue phenomenon and on the development of new techniques and set ups, as well as being probably the most important Italian reference about smoking and in particular cold smoking..
That day I published an article called “A New Adventure” where I enunciated a sign of those that were my intentions, sought through that project. In the text, I prophetically said:
what I have in mind does not exist, I have the possibility to propose something new, to be able to express something of myself to others through the embers.
Now it is sweet to me to sail in this sea. Cheerful dedication, expert experimentation, exciting professionalism. I want this to be my barbecue
It is certainly not a secret, the blog was born to support my catering business, created previously on the same assumptions: I wanted to give my identity to this kitchen, my way of making barbecue, my own philosophy to what I propose. Also in this case it was born something new, which in the catering scene was not there and not only at the national level.
In an expression of cooking that unfortunately remained behind the world that surrounds it, which has not been able to find its own place in the modern kitchen and passively accepts the supporting role that is unjustly attributed to it, I have developed along time my idea of barbecue and recipes that reflect it in what I have repeatedly called Creative Barbecue. I like to discover, experiment, create. I know how modern barbecue should and must be, both technically and emphatically. Today I feel the need to make this approach public and to formalize it, to share this idea and the techniques behind it, to make available what I have developed in recent years with those who want to do it right. But there will be time to delve into this aspect.
Before that, however, it is necessary to tell you what I think about sharing. I am just one and I can not interface with the infinite. The time I have available is what it is and if I decide to venture into such a thing, I will do it the way and with whom I want. I therefore ask your pardon in advance if fall the filters and I speak to you with extreme frankness and sincerity but I prefer to prevent before medicate.
I’m not one of those who sees life made up of whites and blacks. In the communication the suggestion is always to make absolute statements because the internet public is that of the contestation to the vaccines, that does not want to think, that wants easy certainties. The story must be that the barbecue is carcinogenic or that it is not. Who cares of all the thousand variables that are in between. If it is made correctly or not, if one eats it once a year or three times a day, if it is cooked on charcoal soaked in petrol or on hardwood charcoal. It must be yes or it must be no. Because the message is intended for those who do not want to think, for those who want things no more complicated than the instructions of a CD player: insert disk + press play = listen to music. Well, I’m not made this way. The truth is that here I would like to deal only with intelligent people, even if they were few. People who can understand that real life is a little bit more complex than that and I’ll tell it to you the way it is. If you think that doing barbecue is like reading an Aspirin leaflet reluctantly I prefer to tell you that this place is unfortunately not for you.
In the past I never hidden to see the barbecue in this way. Just open some photos to realize it: my recipes are public and are there to be seen, I never spoke in my articles of pulled pork, beer soaked sausage or “the ten ways…”, I have never participated in streetfood events selling stereotypical sandwiches just because so at least they are known yet by everyone. It ‘s that in my disclosure I have always promised to provide assistance to anyone for the sole pleasure of doing this, literally day and night, week days and weekends, on working days and holidays even if the questions were not related to cold smoking but just to simple ribs. Many of you I believe they could confirm it. The volumes have become too important and the mission that I have given is becoming almost impossible among cell phone, whats’up, messages, messenger, Facebook on three different pages, mail, etc. The time has come to convey your requests regarding what I do to a single channel.
Furthermore, the expression “what I do” would represent the limit. Do not hate me but I can no longer do indiscriminate tutoring, I do not have the material possibility of doing it even more for the fact that I do it for free, when my job has been for years to do classes and consultations. And if I have to choose of keep doing it, I have to go in the direction of those who can objectively take more advantage of my specific help, where this can make the difference in bringing it to a higher level. So reluctantly, I chose to concentrate here only on a medium-level user to up, the only one that worth to be followed directly.
I’m aiming for a 2.0 user who is mentally predisposed to conceive the barbecue as a tout cur kitchen. This must be a place to discover, rediscover and create and where to learn how to get there. If you need to know what a water pan is, how to stabilize a kettle or how to cook Beer Can Chicken, this is not the place for you. There are much more suitable ones, with more specific material, where you will find assistance devoted to that and it is there that you have to write.
I do not like the so-called cdc, it does not belong to me and must not belong to this place. Not designing your own cooking means approximation. Here, no “I’m making a roast, do you have any advice to give me?”. But what advice should I give you? What would you want to do, what goals did you have in mind, what is your cooking project? Write to me to develop one together or to learn how to develop one of your own, do not call me with the eggs just poured in the hot pan.
For the sake of completeness, I finally detest apathy and clichés. Here no fingers next to the steak to make you feel how good you were (?) in asking for a so thick cut, no poor points squeezed on very dry flats to show that you have succeeded in the incredible feat to melt the vein of fat that there’s in the middle of it. Please do not even give me anything like “they told me that they are no goo … oh no” and other worn-out and weary catchphrases that now only make the umpteenth person abusing them appear stupid. Here I would like to share only with people thinking with their own brains, who strike for what they say and what they do, not for this mass of idiot things. Will we be only two? No problem, it will mean that we will only talk in two. Will I be alone? And what difference does it make to me, my work comes from people who get married and want me to cook for them, that in 99% of cases does not even know how to light a grill on and that has no even interest in doing it. The fact that this place may work or not does not change anything compared to what I was yesterday.
In short, as you have already understood, I opened a group, in fact I like more to call it “a club”. Is called Barbecue Creativo. It is not for everyone and you should probably consider carefully not to write in. But if you want to share with me my way of seeing barbecue cooking, my philosophy, my approach to cooking on fire, the recipes you see me posting in my events, the techniques used to obtain them and the method by which I designed, well maybe you might be interested in knowing that that club can can be found here.
