Camp oven roast lamb with cannelini beans, tomato and olives

Camp food? Cooking with wood? Oh my how the images flow into my head…

Cooking with wood (hehem) is something I am a fan of, in more ways then one. Hey, I’ve told you before, food excites me, yeah. If I may indulge myself (going to anyway); the last few or more posts we’ve put up have been from holidays, camping trips and weekends at other peoples houses. Yet we still keep writing, eh. I never asked for a holiday from good food, oh contraire. I think I spend considerable time spruiking the opposite. Maybe the name of this blog, or my subtle-as-a-sledgehammer-between-the-eyes comments are a clue. Maybe not.

Was that even a segue? Who knows? WGAF?

So I ask you, what virtue of cooking on a wood or coal fueled fire isn’t to be appreciated (or what’s not to like about cooking with wood. Hehe)? You get to light a fire for start. How is that not fun? Unless you’re 10 and you set fire to the block of land next door and the fire dept. has to come and put it out and then your mum gets hella pissed at you and you still remember how bad you “got it” 25 years on… There couldn’t be too many chefs out there who would not agree with the merits of a wood fired grill or oven. Mmm, smokey goodness. I don’t like them anyway…

The actual story about camping.

There’s the rolling sound of the ocean licking the shore (yeah. I did good at making that sound pervy eh?), birds having a happy time waking you up at 5am, the ocean to swim in, the river to swim in after you go in the ocean so you don’t turn into a walking salt-flat, a wood fuelled combustion cooking and heating system AKA. The fire, cooking on the aforementioned fire, the enviro-friendly composting toilets, faecal matter caked to the sides of the bowl… other peoples faecal matter… that fat bogan chick who just got back from a boar hunting trip up norths faecal matter… no flush in site… OK. There may be one or two things about camping I’m not so into, but I’m going to let that slide. The food we cook on the fire more than compensates.

This night we decided it would be leg of lamb in the camp oven, with cannellini beans, tomatoes, olives, anchovies (you guessed it) and herbs.

Camping mis en place. Bring some cool shit. It’s not that effing hard people. Unless you’re trekking through the Himalayas with only a backpack in which case you’re excused. Unless #2, you spent three bucks a day on a Sherpa in which case load him up. Get your three bucks worth dammit. Those guys love carrying shit for fat American tourists*… it’s not that I don’t like fat American tourists. It’s just that, well, nobody likes fat American tourists. The skinny ones are heaps nicer. Bahahahaha… haha… ha… ha… hmmm.

Dig upwards Grazza. Dig upwards.

Once your piece of lamb has reached the glory stage of its time with you, add the onions, garlic and anchovies and cook out until the onions are soft and starting to caramelise.

And then the rest goes in. A tin of crushed tomatoes, a tin of cannelini beans, olives, parsley and rosemary that I picked from our garden on the way out because I am a bit of a wanker like that…

Let it simmer kid. Let it simmer.

Note the camp salt and pepper mix there. Leave the saxa on the supermarket shelf and mix up some sea salt with freshly ground pepper. Stupid not to…

Eat it with only the light of a kerosene lantern to illuminate the path from the plate to your mouth. Leave your plates etc. out overnight so all the little night creatures can clean them for you. Then go to bed, we’ve got fuck loads of nothing to do tomorrow…

*Fat American tourist. Jennee commented that this term will probably lose me a lot of my American followers and I should take it out. I normally trust Jen with these sorts of things because she has a heaps better gauge for what’s fit for human consumption. Not this time though. You guys must realise by now that this is a big laugh to us. And if you don’t then you should go away because you smell and you make me want to self harm J