Grilled plums, five-spice crumble and honey-rum cream

Helen says: 'I love a grilled stone fruit. It’s a handy technique for fruits that perhaps aren’t at their peak; at least, they’re not those you’d be precious about eating straight up to savour their perfect ripeness. Grilling brings out both sweetness and juice; softening and caramelising the fruit. I serve these plums with a quick crumble topping that’s warm with Chinese five-spice, and a softly whipped cream hiding a kicker of rum. I also find that adding one form of cream to a dessert immediately makes me want to add another, which is why I often serve both whipped cream and ice cream. You’ll never look back, I promise.'

Lighting your barbecue

Place a natural wool fire lighter on the base of your barbecue (remove the grill first), then fill up your chimney starter with lump wood charcoal. Light the fire lighter, then place your full chimney on top of it and wait for 5–10 minutes before tipping the coals into the base of the kettle.

Barbecue setup

There’s really only one setup your need to know about, and that’s a two-zone setup for ‘indirect cooking’. This just means that the coals are banked to one side of the barbecue creating a hot zone and a cooler zone. The hot zone can be used for searing and quick cooking, while the cooler zone is used for cooking larger bits of meat, for example, cooking things through more slowly and gently, and serves as a safe place to put things when they’re cooking too fast and/or flames are flaring up due to dripping fat.

The only time I really deviate from this setup is when I’m cooking wings, when I arrange the coals in the centre of the barbecue with an empty ring around the outside. It’s the same principle as above, but there’s just extra room to cook more wings evenly at the same time.

On the occasions that I specify heat level in a recipe, 'medium hot’ simply means adding more coals, while ‘medium-low’ means adding – you’ve guessed it – fewer.