Just Add Fire

Carla Lalli Music

Brooklyn, NY

Grow up in a house with an outdoor wood-fired oven and a mother who grills and it is perhaps inevitable that you, too, will find yourself with your own backyard hearth. "My mom is my inspiration," says Carla Lalli Music, video host and cookbook author. "Women can—and do—cook over fire."

Smoke and flame permeated Lalli Music’s childhood and, decades later, life in Brooklyn, New York, with her own family had her lusting after a restaurateur neighbor’s outdoor oven. In 2015, Lalli Music’s husband, Fernando, asked her pointedly when the enormous pine tree in the couple’s backyard died, “What do you think about a wood-fired oven in its place?” The answer was a clarion yes.

Fernando sketched a concept for a hearth that would feature an arch, rather than the classic oven dome. They wanted their hearth to look aged, so Fernando found a retired member of the bricklayers’ union, from whom he sourced old bricks. “I was mostly concerned about the height of the cooking surface. I didn’t want it to break too high because I’m 5-foot-three,” recalls Lalli Music. The hearth’s cooking surface was locked in at 4-feet-by-3-feet. She realized as she researched options that this project could become complicated. “We had a Pinterest board and referenced everything from simple setups, like Sunset magazine would feature, to the insane built-in rotisseries from Grillworks," says Lalli Music. "All I needed was a fire and a place to lift the food above it. I don't need gears. That's extraneous to the dream, which is to have fire and to be able to cook on it."

In the end, simplicity became the guiding force. So much so that at one point Lalli Music considered having no walls on the hearth at all. “Then I remembered we’re not in a huge field in Uruguay. We’re in a backyard surrounded by other houses,” says Lalli Music with a chuckle. “Plus, with walls, I have more temperature zones and the ability to hang something over the fire from the roof.”

Employing a bricklayer who had built pizza ovens before was a boon. He adjusted the plans so that the dome was shorter and wider than the original plans. After years cooking in restaurants and in magazine test kitchens, Lalli Music knew she wanted the hearth’s cooking edge to feature a “piano,” that front-lip section on most industrial stoves that restaurant cooks use as a warming station and storage area during service. In Lalli Music’s hearth, the piano is a raised ledge half a brick height taller than the cooking surface itself.

Other practical additions included leaving the hearth bottom open for wood storage and installing a horizontal rebar across the top section of the oven, ideal for hanging a leg of lamb or a cast-iron Dutch oven by its handle. In the wing-it spirit of the project, Lalli Music remembers the hearth’s first use was a hazy failure: “The learning curve was steep. We thought the smoke would rise to the top of the oven. Wrong. It blew smoke right into my face as I cooked.” They had the builder return and drill a hole into the back of the hearth, installing a two-foot chimney.

Lalli Music's newest cookbook, due out in October 2021, features a section on grilling. At home, she cooks turkey—whole, spatchcocked or broken down into legs and wings—in the hearth. She slow-roasts huge cuts of beef in her indoor oven, then finishes the meat in the hearth to crisp it and imbue it with wood smoke. She even cooks clams in the hearth in a cast iron skillet covered with a sheet tray; she also bakes biscuits in a cast iron dutch oven outdoors. Her keenest advice for people considering expanding their grilling approach: “People who are learning to grill miss the part that if you’re comfortable cooking in a pan, just bring the pan outside!”

James Gop

Richmond, Massachusetts

James Gop, the founder of the live-fire event company Heirloom Fire, outgrew his first catering rig as the company's business profile swelled. Heirloom Fire's expansion was a serendipitous boon for Gop's personal outdoor kitchen because, for years, Gop didn't have a grill at home. "Like the saying goes 'The cobbler's own children never have any good shoes,'" says Gop, chuckling.

That first rig was modeled after a conventional catering grill. But Gop goes big with everything: Heirloom Fire uses custom-made equipment that includes a unit with a 15-inch flywheel with gears, and the Berkshires, Massachusetts, company creates a sweeping old-timey vibe for its catering gigs, complete with staff in button-downs, vests, suspenders and an array of derbys and bowler hats. Gop, of course, also went grand and custom with his starter grill. "What I tried to do with this piece is encapsulate everything I have on-site at an Heirloom Fire event," says Gop. "This unit doesn't break down into pieces. So I figured I'd go completely wild with it." Part of the Heirloom Fire brand is chunky angles, so the rig's legs were replaced with square stock, and couplings were added that can be tightened to hold their grip so the unit remains level on uneven ground.

After endless tweaks and modifications, the rig is now eight-feet tall and two-feet-square in length and width. It features an open firebox at waist level and a three-tiered plate system to one side. The three-tiered stack includes a top-tier for hanging roasts and chickens and a plancha for intense-heat cooking. "I love a good charred carrot from the plancha," says Gop. "You get bitterness and sweetness and toffee qualities."

Too much is never quite enough for Gop, so he also had an oven fabricated that lives under the grill rig. It is built from a bent piece of "steel—"picture a 50-gallon drum barrel shape," says Gop. The fire is built in the back of the oven, and he uses it most often to bake sourdough bread made from a starter culture from the 1800s. A counterweight door was installed to open the oven using a brick and a pulley, rather than maneuver the substantial door by hand.

The unit was retired from event use in 2017 and kept in storage for two years. "I used to go into my storage area and found myself moving this piece out of the way," recalls Gop. Not any longer. The rig is now a centerpiece of Gop's home outdoor cooking area. When he's cooking at home, that is.

Norberto Piattoni

Los Angeles, California

Asados are the fiery backbone of so much of life in Argentina, and for Norberto Piattoni, born in the northern Argentinian province of Entre Ríos, this style of outdoor live-fire cooking provided the steady rhythm of daily life. "Anytime you celebrate with your family, you do an asado," says Piattoni.

His father, grandfather, uncle, and friends all grilled. He saw gauchos grilling cows on makeshift setups on their farms. After abandoning a career in chemical engineering, Piattoni was lured back toward the flame of live-fire cooking. He cooked in parrilladas (live-fire restaurants), then joined Francis Mallman, the legendary elder statesmen of high-end live-fire cooking in South America. These days, Piattoni consults and cooks private events and dinners, all using a battery of live-fire stations.

He employs traditional iron asado crosses, onto which are strapped butterflied whole lambs for cooking near a mound of flaming wood, and hangs a long row of whole chickens from a wood beam to cook them in a similar manner. These are the tools of a professional live-fire chef. But Piattoni is equally adept at jerryrigging an asado from random backyard bits and baubles. He recently quick-fire assembled a parilla from two pairs of cinder blocks stacked lengthwise on each other to form a base. Over them, he laid a ¾-inch-thick slab of carbon steel. To avoid building a fire on the grass below, Piattoni lit hardwood on one side of the carbon-steel plate. Then on the other side of the plate, he put together an impromptu grill zone by adjoining two cinder blocks at a right angle, laying a discarded round grill grate on them, then stabilizing the grate with two hefty stones. As the wood burned down to red-hot coals, Piattoni diverted them under the grill grate. An apt, efficient solution done nearly without thinking. That is how much this style of outdoor cooking is in Piattoni's blood.

If you happen to have an outdoor space that is conducive to on-earth cooking, Piattoni suggests repurposing the embers. His approach is to create a series of ember zones in thin, wide squares and rectangles. He sets whole beets, butternut squash and potatoes, on these scant piles, and the vegetables go smoky and soft during their slow sauna run. Crafty live-fire cooking uses the heat source in multiple ways, at the same time.

"Every Friday growing up, the construction workers would finish their work week with what we called an asado de construcción," recalls Piattoni. To do so, they would assemble a grill from whatever materials were around. It is a keen reminder for the home griller that anyone can grill, pretty much anywhere and with anything.