The last knockings of 2023 are upon us and we find ourselves glamping in beautiful Northumberland. It’s freezing and the wind is blowing the rain sideways, but we are having great time and looking forward to seeing in the new year by watching the nearby Allendale Fire Festival where 45 brave (foolhardy?) men each carry a flaming tar barrel above their heads through the town in what can only be described as a health and safety officer’s worst nightmare. It is a great deal of fun.
The place we are staying at allows us to conduct our own fire festival as each glamping pod comes equipped with a fire bowl, plus cooking grate. Me being me, I also bought along knives, a plancha, skewers, a flambadou, a burger press and cloche to play with and Polly being Polly, brought along all the actually useful stuff like herbs, spices, onions, mushrooms, chicken thighs and so on. One of our best 2023 buys was a new camping fridge which runs off the leisure battery in the van, so anything perishable was put in it. Alongside some beer. Obviously.
On the way up, we stopped at Mainsgill Farm Shop which is just off the A1 after you pass Richmond going north. Here we picked up bacon, sausages, a pair of individual dauphinoise portions and a beautiful bit of venison fillet. We also found they had a sort of black pudding/hogs pudding roulade which looked interesting as well as calorific. With our wallets considerably lighter we carried on through Barnard Castle and across the North Pennines AONB, which is breathtakingly beautiful, to Langley Dam where we are Glamping in a lovely pod by the reservoir. With all the ingredients we had, this is what we cooked:
Breakfast.
Breakfast should be easy; a couple of hot pans and an array of ingredients that get popped in in descending order of time it takes to cook. Sausages first, followed by bacon, then slices of the black/hogs pudding roulade thing, then mushrooms and eggs and so on. This breakfast required some perseverance however as I was very keen to use the fire bowl. Given that it was 2°, windy and a bit drizzly getting a fire hot enough to actually cook on was a challenge. Not only were the atmospheric conditions not in our favour, the supplied logs we had were definitely on the damp side and so the couple of hours I spent creating the fire, and breakfast I made using it were very satisfying indeed.
Getting a fire going with damp timber is not an impossible task, but it does require patience and, preferably, an axe or hatchet to split your logs into smaller pieces. I always bring an axe when we go to places that let you light your own fires and, on this occasion, it was invaluable. The wood we had was a mix of oak and (I think) birch which are both excellent for cooking with – the downside is that they are both quite dense and take a while to get going even if the moisture content is below the recommended 20%. Before I struck a match, I spent time splitting the wood, not quite to kindling size but not far off – more surface area tends to increase the likelihood of the wood catching as more oxygen can blow through the fuel. I set the fire using the top-down method espoused both by Genevieve Taylor the chef and author, and Phil our chimney sweep. Picture a kind of airy Jenga arrangement with thicker bits of kindling at the bottom and thinner, more combustible bits at the top. The fire then gets lit with a couple of those waxy, twisty, wood shaving firelighters on the top and, as the uppermost bits of kindling catch, sparks and heat drop down to the next layer and so on. In relatively little time I got a decent flame going and so was reasonably optimistic about breakfast appearing in the near future.
My optimism was misplaced.
All fires require fuel, oxygen and heat to get going and the problem when timber is damp, is that all the energy that should be radiating heat is spent on boiling and evaporating the moisture within the wood fibres – you can hear it hissing and can see liquid oozing out of the cut ends of the sticks. This means the fire never gets very hot, so never really burns, so you get loads of smoke, usually the kind that follows you around so that no matter where you stand, or what the prevailing wind direction, it is always blowing in your face. To solve the problem, I laid a ring of logs around the edge of the fire bowl to heat up, away from the direct flame, in the hope that this would drive off some of the moisture before adding them to the fire. This worked, and I was very pleased with myself, but it still took about 2 hours to get a fire that was hot enough to cook over. No matter! We are on holiday! We have all the time in the world! As a contingency, Polly did have the foresight to make a small mug of porridge oats with spiced apple in it as First Breakfast which all the hobbits present appreciated.
The full English Second Breakfast was lovely when it was finished and, honestly, well worth the wait although had we actually been in Middle Earth, Strider and Legolas would definitely have been keen to crack on with adventuring before it was cooked. A word on the black/hogs pudding roulade; it was delicious but it’s the kind of thing a chap should only have in very small quantities. Your arteries will thank you.
Dinner number 1.
Our adventuring for the rest of that day consisted of sitting around, reading books and doing a Christmas jigsaw. While this furious activity was undertaken, a number of chicken thighs were busy marinading away in the fridge, covered by Polly with a tandoori paste from Gymkhana, the restaurant sort of behind the Ritz and nearish to Green Park tube in London. It smelled incredible before it went anywhere near a flame which I always think is a good sign. The fire was much easier to light this time with the wood I had seasoned up a bit earlier, plus I threw in a few handfuls of charcoal which definitely helped. The chicken got threaded onto flat skewers I got from Axel Perkins whose kit is brilliant. I’ve not met Axel, but he adds little handwritten notes into the packages he sends and he seems like a lovely bloke.
After about half an hour, the fire was hot enough to cook on and, with much less smoke than before, I plonked the chicken onto the griddle with a very satisfying hiss. I’d brought along my Meater+ probe to monitor the temperature and make sure I didn’t poison anyone. Meanwhile, Polly made an amazing rice side dish with onions, mushrooms, spinach and chicken stock. The thighs took about 25 regularly turned minutes of cooking by which time they had a very satisfying colour with the characteristic blackened corners of good tandoori chicken. We slid the meat from the skewers and tucked in. My God they were good. We both agreed this is the closest we ever got to an “authentic” Indian restaurant tandoori and, with the rice, it made for an amazing meal. The jar of paste was quite expensive at £7, but we could have made it go further – probably to marinade enough chicken for 6 or 8 people so that would make it a bit more economical. I used the paste left in the marinading tray as a baste and brushed it on each time I turned the skewers. I could imagine having a bunch of mates round and serving slices of the chicken with those yoghurt and flour flatbreads which are a breeze to make.
Dinner number 2.
The day after, we had a fun day pottering about in Hexham which is about a 15 minute drive away. There we met an old friend for lunch – Janice did the catering for our wedding and is originally from the northeast. We had a lovely time, in a lovely pub that served lovely beer and amazing fish finger, beef or sausage sandwiches. That evening, we returned to the pod with the Mainsgill venison fillet on my mind. I had wrapped it in a blanket of streaky bacon which I’d got from the butcher in Allendale who, very generously, chucked in a bit of butcher’s twine so I could tie it all together. The bacon is important for venison fillet as it is so lean, and if you are going to cook it over fire, you run the risk of it drying out a bit. The bacon acts a porky shield and adds a little of its fat into the bargain.
I managed to light a great fire with very little fuss and got the fillet hung on a hook over the flame – the fire bowl comes with a tripod that fits over it that you could hang a kadai, or Dutch oven from if you wanted to cook something with liquid in it. The idea was to let the fillet cook gently over the indirect heat, then finish it off on the grill closer to the embers. All was going swimmingly until the heavens opened and it absolutely belted it down with rain. Luckily, I had an umbrella handy, but sadly this was not quite big enough to protect the fire, the venison and my person, so I bore the brunt of the deluge. Stoically I continued, braving the elements whilst periodically Polly would appear to hand me a can of beer to keep my spirits up. My sacrifice was worth it however as the venison turned out to be amazing. I’d cooked it for around an hour to about 52° and then let it rest; the temperature when I sliced it to serve was 57° which was absolutely perfect. There was a lovely, uniform pinkness to the meat and a great smoky undertone provided by the oak wood from the fire. Meanwhile, Polly had cooked the dauphinoise portions and some excellent, nutmeggy spinach. I cannot imagine a better camping meal.
The joy of all the above was to be doing it outside, in beautiful surroundings even if the elements and the fuel were not necessarily running in my favour. It shows what can be done with a little knowledge, intuition and perseverance. It was great to cook using the fire bowl and, with better timber, it would be absolutely joyful. Once it got going, it kicked out loads of heat and so on drier nights, with company, a bottle or two and marshmallows on skewers, it would provide the centre point for a really fun evening. I’m pretty sure the recipes outlined above could be done on pretty much any cooking set up, be that open fire, BBQ or gas grill – give them a go and let me know how you get on. As a write, the sky is blue, the wind has dropped and we are about the sally forth to the Cart Bog in, a mile or so away for Sunday lunch. A perfect way to see out 2023 – see you next year for more live fire adventures (assuming I survive the tar barrels).
PS – Happy platinum birthday Dad!
Live Fire Journal 