By Leigh O’Connor.
Australia is one of the world’s premier camping destinations, with native wildlife for company, lush rainforests, beautiful beaches and starry Southern skies to sleep beneath.
What better family adventure than to be gathered around the campfire sharing a meal, after a day spent hiking in the bush, or swimming at pristine coastal spots? There is even the opportunity to catch your dinner and throw a fresh fish on the glowing coals, while enjoying tea brewed in the billy or mulled wine warmed over the fire.
A master of cooking over fire, Firedoor brainchild Lennox Hastie was an ambitious young Chef working at Michelin-star level when he visited a small restaurant in the Basque country that cooked only over charcoal.
Lennox was ready for a change from overwrought/over-thought food and found what he was looking for at Asador Etxebarri.
"I was spellbound by this form of cooking. It was so completely novel, so beautifully complex and yet so simple.”
Now he works his magic at this 16-Hatted Surry Hills dining destination, where the kitchen uses no gas or electricity, instead cooking with two wood-fired ovens, three grills and a wood-burning hearth.
An open kitchen allows guests a clear view of the action that unfolds as Lennox’s fascination and focused approach to cooking with fire results in a daily menu of precision and subtlety.
We’ve put together four of Lennox’s recipes to make your next camping or glamping trip a gastronomic success…
For the easiest of starters to share around the fire, Lennox’s ember-baked cheese takes hardly any effort for the most delicious results. Choose a cheese such as Vacherin Mont d’Or or a similar, creamy, rinded cheese in a cedar box.
Prepare your embers, which are best if they are slowly smouldering, remove all plastic packaging and keep the cheese inside its cedar box. Make five incisions with the point of a small knife, evenly dispersed on the top of the cheese and in each one, insert a rosemary sprig.
Arrange a small bed of embers directly under and around the cheese and bake for 10-12 minutes until the cheese is warm and runny inside – this dish is best eaten with a spoon!
There’s nothing like abalone straight out of the ocean and cooked over a fire! This extremely rich, flavourful and highly prized meat is considered a culinary delicacy and Lennox cooks it simply in this recipe for abalone, black bean and beach herbs.
If you are camping near the coast, forage for beach succulents like karkalla, seablite and Warrigal greens to top the abalone, served in the shell with black bean sauce.
Pipis are the ultimate campfire meal, grilled on a grate over the open flame allowing the live pipis to open, before being topped with garlic scapes, karkalla, lemon, oil, chilli and parsley.
To prepare the pipis, discard any that are chipped, broken or damaged in any way. Tap to check the shells are tightly closed, throwing away any that remain open. Soak in salted water for 30 minutes to purge any remaining impurities, making sure to remove and rinse the pipis in fresh water prior to cooking.
Cooking whole fish over a fire, like this recipe for grilled flathead and broccolini, is an exquisite moment. Lennox treats the fire as an ingredient itself – it's important to get the coals to ember stage for optimum cooking and to make sure the fish is scaled and gutted.
Lennox's pil-pil sauce which accompanies the fish, is made using cooking juices, olive oil and vinegar and comes from his time in Spain's Basque country.
For more recipes to make your next adventure a culinary feast, click here.
