There are four
key ingredients that elevate this beach campfire meal above a normal
chilli: bacon, beer, dark chocolate and
accidental campfire ash. It’s ideal for
keeping the dream alive into the autumn, as you can keep warm around the fire
on the beach after surfing if you’re at the sort of spot where you can light a
discreet fire that won’t spoil anybody else’s enjoyment of the place. Alternatively, you could always do it over a
fire pit in your garden if you have one.
I’m going to
assume that you’ve all cooked some sort of "minced beef and tomato" based meal at
some point in your life (chilli, bolognaise, cottage pie etc) so will let you
work out for yourself the quantities of ingredients based on the number of
people that you’re feeding and how hungry they are. This will do for about 4 hungry adults who’ve
spent a few hours paddling in the sea.
You will need:
- Decent firewood
(bits of tree that still look like bits of tree - nothing tanilised like garden
decking and no crap gluey scrap wood like plywood or MDF)
- Charcoal (bag
of)
- A dutch oven
(big, heavy cast iron cauldron) or a heavy old casserole pot, and somebody
willing and able to carry it to wherever you’re cooking.
- Tin foil
- Knife
- Wooden spoon
- Bowls +
something to eat with
- Cup + scissors
(optional)
- A couple of
onions
- A couple of
carrots
- A few cloves of
garlic or a decent squirt from a handy tube of minced garlic.
- 10 or 12 Mushrooms
- Red and green
chili pepper, more or less depending on heat
- Green and Yellow
pepper
- 1 or 2 fancy
long red Ramiro peppers
- Bunch of
coriander
- Block of butter
- Small bar of
dark chocolate
- Beef stock cube
or pot
- Tin of red
kidney beans
- 2 tins of
chopped tomatoes
- Salt, pepper and
paprika
- Beer – a couple
of those small French stubbies in green glass bottles is ideal.
- Bacon lardons or
cubed pancetta – handful of.
- Beef mince,
about two handfuls is the way I describe the quantity that I need to my local
butcher. He has normal blokey hands, but
I don’t know what this translates to in grams.
- Jacket potatoes
or rice
Method:
- Light a small,
hot fire surrounded by rocks somewhere that you’re not going to incur the anger
of any busy bodies and where you can easily put out the fire and leave no trace
of it ever having been your outside kitchen.
- Once it’s well
established, add charcoal and allow to get to a nice, white, even cooking
temperature just like a conventional bbq.
- Don’t cook over
raging flames – wait for white, dusty, embers which give off an even heat.
- If you’re going
with baked potatoes then spike them, wrap them in foil and place them in the
embers to bake for an hour or so.
- Place the Dutch
oven on the white coals. If you’ve got a
fancy tripod then hang it from that.
- Things happen
quickly when Dutch ovens get hot, so be ready.
- Throw in a thick
slice of butter and melt.
- Roughly cut
onions and carrots into this and soften until the onion is translucent.
- Add bacon
lardons or pancetta cubes. Fry.
- Mix in minced
beef, chopped chilis and garlic. Brown.
- Season with
salt, pepper and paprika.
- Add about half
the bar of dark chocolate, in bits.
- Roughly chop in
peppers and mushrooms (can be left whole).
Soften.
- Throw in both
tins of tomatoes.
- Put in the beef
stock cube or pot.
- Pour in a load
of beer.
- If you’re having
rice then put a pot of water on for the rice the appropriate amount of time
before you plan to eat.
- Let it bubble
away and keep stirring. You can’t
control the heat aside from moving it to a cooler part of the fire so just go
with it. Ash will most likely float into
the pot too. So what? You can’t stop that and it’s just the same as
burning meat on a bbq.
- If you need to
add more liquid (beer or water) then do so.
Over the course of 45 minutes or so it should reduce down to a nice
thick consistency with a gloopy, shiny gravy.
- 5 minutes before
serving tip in the can of red kidney beans.
- Tear up the
coriander or, alternatively, put it all in a cup and chop in the cup with
scissors. Throw that in.
- Check seasoning
and adjust if necessary.
- Hook out the
potatoes (hoping that they haven’t just turned to lumps of coal) and butter, or
drain the rice.
- Pile into an
enamel bowl.
- Serve with more
beer and smoke in your eyes.
When you’re done
make sure you kick out your fire or pour a few buckets of seawater on it and
dig the ashes deep into the sand. Take
all of your stuff away and don’t leave any trace – there’s nothing worse than
being the first person on the beach in the morning and seeing a beautiful beach
with a blemish of somebody’s campfire from the night before spoiling the
pristine sand.
Also...
If you're UK based and have wandered past the magazine rack in your local newsagent in the past week then you may have seen the latest issue of Wavelength Magazine (#235 Autumn 2014), and if you're particularly eagle-eyed then you may have seen my name on the new-look front cover. I feel honoured that Tim Nunn and the team at Wavelength thought my photography worthy of a portfolio feature and ran some of my favourite surf images across several double page spreads. These are images that I've been sitting on for a while, only letting them see the light of day at exhibitions as I was hoping that they might eventually appear at size in print. I'm so pleased that they're now out there for others to see rather than just sitting on my hard drive. I'm also really grateful to Mr Chris Nelson (of Approaching Lines and the London Surf/Film Festival) for writing an introduction that made me both laugh and blush in equal measure...and for giving me a new nickname.
I'd be stoked if you take a moment to check it out, and hopefully see fit to purchase a copy to help support print media.
