Ash On The Fire

Curry on the coals!

 

Saturday night in the "Ash On The Fire" household is normally curry night. One of my favorite dishes is Thai Green Curry.  So for this blog post I thought I would try cooking a thai curry on my Muurikka skillet. The skillet is basically a shallow disk of iron with 3 screw off legs, ideal for for cooking on open fires.

Cooking on a skillet is a little different from a dutch oven. With the dutch oven you either place it on the coals or use a feeder fire to give you a constant supply of heat. With the skillet you can start a fire, place the skillet on top and start cooking. To regulate the heat you just build the fire up or spread it out.

So for the curry  I decided to use a recipe from one of Jamie's earlier works, The Naked Chef. In this he has a great Thai Green Curry recipe from scratch. (Disclaimer, I do not recommend any form of naked cooking when in the presence of hot coals!!)

 

 

As you can see the first step is to get your fire going, again I used a simple criss cross fire to get a good bed of coals but also to give a bit of height to the flames. This is my preferred fire for most of my outdoor cooking as it is quick and simple.

I did this dish for 2 people. You start by making a marinade/paste from; 3 spring onions, 3 green chillies, 1 table spoon of fresh ginger, 1/2 tablespoon of coriander seeds, 1 lemon grass stalk, hand full of fresh basil, large hand full of coriander, the zest and juice of 2 limes, a large glug of olive oil and salt/pepper to taste. Whiz everything up in a food processor till smooth.

I have yet to find a way to do this away from the kitchen, but I think a large pestle and mortar could do the trick. If you are planning to do this far from the kitchen you could easily prepare this ahead of time (or cheat with a sachet of thai green curry paste).

I then marinaded 2 skinless sliced chicken breasts in half of this mixture. You could then bag up the marinaded chicken to take with you to where ever you want to cook your curry.

The smell from this marinade is fantastic, it is a very fragrant citrus smell that you can't help dipping your finger in!

The kitchen was awash with different smells as earlier in the day we had collected our first batch of elderflowers of the year for cordial and Turkish delights!

The marinade doesn't take long to have its effect, I left the chicken in the mix for about 30 mins. By this point the fire was just about ready. The first part of the cooking required the chicken to be cooked over a high heat for about 5 mins. To achieve this I kept the fire quite high to the skillet.

 

Once the chicken had been cooked through it was time to add the rest of the mixture, 200ml of coconut milk and simmer for 10 mins. The advantage of this skillet over a a flat cooking plate is that you can cook more fluid dishes like curries, as the slight depreesion means no spills!

 

To simmer I just spread the fire apart by removing the supporting logs that I had used to build up my fire

 

 

 

 

Then I spread the coals to reduce the overall heat of the fire under the skillet in preparation for adding the the rest of the curry, so that it would nicely simmer without burning on contact. I had to concentrate during the simmer to make sure the curry was not over any cold spots on the skillet. The dish did need constant moving to to stop any sticking.

 

 

To maintain even heat during the simmer I had to add batons of wood under any large cold spots. In order to get the heat going quickly I found that I needed to fan the coals to ignite the batons.

 

When it was bubbling away the smells coming from the skillet were irresistible! As well as keeping an eye on the cold spots I found I had to keep track of the dog as well!

 



  

The end result was delicious washed down with a pint of locally brewed Harvey's Lewes Brown Beer. Overall I was impressed with how easy it was to cook this on the skillet.

Learning's; my batons of wood were a little too thick so didn't give me the heat at the speed I would have liked. In future I will split them down a bit more.

Cleaning of the skillet is easy as long as you have seasoned well before hand. I increase the heat of the fire and add water to the skillet. I allow the water to boil then wipe clean. I then keep the skillet over the fire until any remaining food is burnt off. Finally I wipe over with vegetable oil whilst still hot.

 

 

 

 

From the kitchen to the oven

My first post! Always tough to decide on where to start, but seeing as it is food related, the best place I reckon is breakfast! Something I am keen to try and do is to translate regular cook books to outdoor cooking. One of my favorite cook books for this is Jamies's "America", so for my first post I am going to give his Mexican breakfast a try in my Dutch Oven.

 

I love cooking in a dutch oven.   It gives an even heat distribution, but the challenge is maintaining the heat.  The mexican breakfast is a quick cooking recipe so it is possible to cook it over the coals of a small fire. For longer pot roasts, stews, joints etc. I have found that you need a feeder fire to deliver  a constant supply of coals over a longer time period.

 

So first thing is to get a good bed of coals.  The quickest way to get this is with a criss -cross fire. Getting to light fires in the garden for a blog post is always a fun way to start the day.

This little fire produced a good bed of coals in the space of about 30 minutes. Which gave me plenty of time to get everything ready  for the  pot

 

A Mexican breakfast is quite simple: 1 thinly sliced clove of garlic, 1 thinly sliced red chilli, 1 thinly sliced onion, 1 thinly sliced red pepper, 2 bay leaves, a dried chili pepper, a tin of chopped tomatoes and 4 eggs.

What worked well was to have the oven directly on top of the coals; there were just enough coals to heat the entire base. It didn't take long for the base of the oven to heat up to point where I could fry the onions, peppers, garlic, chilli  and bay leaves until soft and slightly caramelised.

Next add the chopped tomatoes and bring them to the boil.  To bring the content's to the boil over coals is actually quite easy. I just had to increase the air supply to the coals, so I flapped a Tupperware lid close to coals until there was a boil.  Once the mixture had simmered for a bit it was time to add some sliced tomatoes and break each of the 4 eggs into the mixture, then pop on the lid to poach the eggs.

Poaching the eggs only takes 5 minutes to get a slightly runny middle.

The end result is served with cheese in a tortilla wrap. It was fantastic, even if I do say so myself! A flavoursome tomato/egg breakfast with a slight kick; I was full untill lunch time.

Next time I think I will add some choriso sausage to the intial stage of the dish to make a mexican style full english!

It didn't take long to devour the dish which then left the cleaning up. When I first started using dutch ovens I was concerned about how difficult they would  be to clean. It's  actually very simple, the oven gets a quick rinse with warm water (no soap) then back on the coals to burn off any stuck on food remants.

Once all remains have been cremated and whilst the oven is still hot I just give the inside a quick wipe round with vegtable oil.