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Campfire Cookery


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Heston Blumenthal may triple-cook his chips in dry ice, Jamie Oliver may be able to roast a duck on a VW campervan stove, and Ray Mears can whip up a three course meal from Witchetty grubs and his old socks...

But beware all you celebrity chefs and survivalists...OCV has a huge bonfire and we are not afraid to use it to cook tasty, if slightly charred, nosh.

The culinary talents of OCV have been put to good use at a number of recent task-social events at Westonbirt Arboretum and Stansfeld Outdoor Education Centre. As the sun set, we sat on comfortable logs around the fire to cook some delicious food in the embers.


Round the fire at Westonbirt

The twilight silence was broken only by cries of...

"Ow the frying pan handle is too hot"

"It's your turn to get the potatoes out, I've already singed my eyebrows"

"I think I've dropped my sausage"

"This garlic bread looks like carbon", "No that's a stick you fool"

"It is fine, it only looks burnt because it is in the dark"

"Are you sure I'm eating a vegetarian burger..."

So here are the best OCV recipes for you to try at home...and don't forget the crucial ingredient for any campfire recipe: The tin foil.


Camembert-in-a-Box Fondue

(Inigo Surguy)

1 round camembert cheese in a wooden box
Some lazy pre-chopped garlic
1 loaf of fresh bread

  • Take the camembert out of the box and remove the plastic wrapper. This is very important or you will get nasty melted plastic.
  • Put the camembert back in the wooden box.
  • With a knife, make some small slits in the top of the cheese and smother the top with lazy garlic.
  • Put the top on the camembert box and wrap the whole box carefully in tin foil.
  • Put the tinfoiled box in the embers of the fire and cook for 25 mins or until the cheese is melted.
  • Carefully unwrap the box, open the lid...and it is ready.
  • Dip hunks of bread into the gooey cheese and enjoy.

(This recipe can be done just as easily in your oven at home without the need for the tinfoil)



Tinfoiled potatoes

Baked Potatoes with Chilli

(Miranda Gardner)

1 potato per person
Pre-prepared chilli (made to your preferred recipe at home)

  • Wrap potatoes in tinfoil and cook in the fire for over 30 mins (put the potatoes in frying pan before burying in embers for ease of taking out again).
  • Heat up chilli in pan over the fire.
  • Be very happy that you pre-prepared the chilli so you don't need to prepare and cook it over the bonfire.
  • Carefully remove potatoes from fire and from their tinfoil.
  • Cut open potatoes and smother with chilli.

Baked Banana and Chocolate Stegosauruses

(Miranda Gardner)

1 banana per person
Pack of chocolate buttons

  • Peel a banana.
  • Place banana on a large enough piece of tinfoil.
  • Push chocolate buttons into the banana along its length so they look like the spines on the back of a stegosaurus.
  • Wrap the banana carefully in tin foil so no gaps are showing.
  • Cook in the embers of the fire for 20 mins or until the chocolate is melted and the banana is warmed through.
  • Try to eat without getting chocolate all over your fingers and face.

(This recipe can be done in a conventional oven, and the baked bananas also taste lovely with ice cream).


Baked parsnips

(John Gorrill)

1 parsnip per person
1 John Gorrill

These are the sweeter, richer alternative to baked potatoes, and they taste so good there is no need to add butter or extra toppings.

  • Ask John to wrap up the parsnips in tinfoil and place them in the fire.
  • Let them cook for 30 mins, or until John says that the parsnips are ready.
  • Unwrap the parsnips and eat, ideally without burning your mouth.

S’mores

(Michelle Reid)

This is the Canadian version of marshmallows toasted on a fire, with extra calories.

Pack of marshmallows
Bar of chocolate
Pack of plain biscuits, e.g. Rich Tea, Digestives, or Graham Crackers if you are in Canada

  • Take two biscuits and lay flat in readiness.
  • Break up the chocolate bar into chunks and put a couple of chunks on top of one biscuit.
  • Get a marshmallow and put firmly on a long clean stick.
  • Toast marshmallow, holding it about 7 to 30 cms above the fire until the outside of the marshmallow begins to brown.
  • Carefully remove marshmallow from the stick.
  • Place marshmallow on top of chocolate on biscuit and place other biscuit on top.
  • Squeeze biscuits together gently so marshmallow melts the chocolate a little.
  • Eat greedily as if you were still 7 years old.
  • Decide that it would be far too decadent to have another one...but do anyway.

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