Hungarian Goulash in a Kotlich

COOKED OVER AN OPEN FIRE

I was recently given my first kotlich as an early birthday gift and couldn't wait to get something going in it. A few days camping at Folly Farm in the Cotswolds in the early May bank holiday provided the perfect opportunity.

The kotlich is an eastern European cooking pot (bograc in Hungarian), suspended from a tripod over an open fire. The idea of a goulash seemed a perfect match for my new kotlich's initiation.

I did some digging for traditional goulash recipes and came across some inspiring details on a Budapest tourism website. History, recipes, variations, the lot. The whole thing joined up perfectly when I read that goulash was originally cooked by Hungarian herdsmen in a cast iron pot over an open fire in the fields. With prime quality beef at hand, and a cooking method requiring little attention, it suited (and still does) their life style perfectly.








The recipe I found at the 'Budapest Tourist Guide' is the perfect 'one pot meal', ideal for camping, or even at home on the hob or in a slow cooker. There was a bit of apprehension from my dear wife when I suggested it for our meal as she claimed she had never had a goulash that was flavoursome enough. I dug my heels in and set out to prove otherwise.

RECIPE (serves 4):

- 600g beef shin or shoulder cut into 2-3cm cubes (I could only get brisket)
- 2 tbsp olive oil or lard
- 2 medium onions, chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 1-2 carrots, diced
- 1 parsnip, diced (I couldn't get one)
- 1-2 celery leaves (I used one stalk, chopped)
- 2 medium tomatoes, skinned and chopped (I didn't bother skinning them)
- 2 green peppers, chopped
- 2-3 medium potatoes, sliced or chopped
- 1 (heaped) tbsp of paprika powder (I used more)
- 1 tsp ground caraway seed (I couldn't get any)
- 1 bay leaf (or more)
- Water (I used water and beer)
- Salt and pepper
- (plus I added a tin of chopped tomatoes)

The great thing about this cooking pot is that it is not fussy about the fire, it just needs heat. Flames, embers, doesn't matter a bit, unlike when cooking directly over fire. And also, when camping, unless you are uber organised or super equipped, everything takes longer.

For the fire, I used our X-Grill portable barbeque (see my earlier article and review), as we weren't allowed to light fires directly on the ground. We'd brought along a box of decent hardwood, my favourite hatchet and had gathered I pile of tinder and kindling from around the farm. We were also contending with 20mph winds and occasional severe gusts that routinely tipped over our camping chairs.

METHOD (Allow at least 3-4 hours depending on the cut of meat)

Get a good fire going under the pot and brown the onions in the oil. Then add the paprika, stirring to prevent burning. Add the beef, garlic and caraway, stirring until the beef changes colour. Add the bay leaf and enough water to cover and leave to cook. This is where I also added the tinned tomatoes.

After an hour and a half or so (when the beef is half cooked), add the potatoes, carrots, parsnip and celery, check for seasoning, and add another 2-3 cups of water if needed.

Finally, when the vegetables and meat are almost done, add the fresh tomato and green pepper and cook for a further 5 minutes or so.

Goulash is often served with csipetke, little dumplings cooked in the sauce, which need to be added five minutes before serving. I didn't do them this time.

The sauce should be rich, aromatic and thick, and ours certainly was. My wife was converted and they all loved it and scraped the pot for seconds. Next time, with caraway, parsnip and dumplings, it can only get better.

After the meal, we sat around the warmth of the fire and toasted a load of marshmallows for our dessert.

The kotlich is a must have camping accessory. Lightweight, easy to pack, easy to clean and really good fun to use.

Click here to get your own kotlich from The Glam Camping Company.

Aussie Damper Bread on a Stick - Chapter 4

The end of February looms, and still no fire food opportunities. Thankfully a weekend away staying with family in south Wales saved the day. What could be more perfect than the kids and their cousins cooking their own pudding over an open fire.

I knocked up a batch of dough about an hour before and wrapped it in cling film. 2 cups of self-raising flour, 3/4 a cup of milk and a bit of sea salt is all it takes for five decent sized dampers. I mixed the ingredients together in a bowl first with a knife and then with my hands. It felt a bit sticky, so I just added a sprinkling more flour.

By the time the dough was needed it had already started to grow and felt beautifully light and airy. I went into the garden with a torch and a large cherry tree had kindly left enough decent sized twigs on the lawn so the five kids would have one each. I used my little finger as a guide for the thickness.

Meanwhile my brother-in-law Jared had started a cracking cooking fire in the outdoor brazier with smallish sized wood so it wouldn't take too long to become embers.

I scrubbed the sticks in the sink to get the mud off them, scraped the ends clean (not really necessary) and worked the dough on to the ends. After 15 minutes of rotating the dampers over the embers, they had more than doubled in size and smelled delightful. I was slightly worried that the embers wouldn't last long enough, but Jared's cooking fire proved to be perfect. There was no danger that the dampers would burn and the cooking finished off at a nice gentle temperature.

My niece, Amber, said the smell reminded her of scones. Not surprising really, scones on a stick cooked over an open fire is what they are. The ingredients are the same.

The kids and cousins loaded them up with butter, jam, Nutella, you name it. They loved them and I fulfilled my 'at least monthly' obligation to cook over fire. Everyone's a winner.

All the time our dear Kitty had filmed the experience with her video camera. Once she's done her editing homework you will be able to check it out on YouTube. Fire Food's first...

Aussie Damper Bread on a Stick - Chapter 3

GUY FAWKES WEEKEND

And also our lovely Luca's ninth birthday. After igniting a fair sized box of fireworks in our friends Katie and Cai's garden, I spontaneously decided to make a batch of damper dough for the kids to bake on the fire in the brazier.

The simple mix of self raising flour, milk (or water) and a bit of salt was mixed in a bowl, kneaded to a light dough, and wrapped in foil for a while until the fire subsided to embers.

Cai's son Louis was sent on a mission to find sticks in the garden the thickness of his little finger and about 50cm long. He returned with some bamboo gardening stakes which were just perfect. Cai sawed off the ragged ends and washed the dirt off them before I worked a small ball of dough a bit larger than a golf ball onto the end of each one for the kids to slowly roast over the embers.

The kids took their damper and rotated them constantly and slowly over nice hot spots above the embers for about 15 minutes until the damper expanded to about double the size and was a lightly toasted colour on the outside. For the kids 15 minutes was an eternity, constant cries of 'mine's ready' were countered by me reassuring them that it would be worth the wait.

After being removed from the sticks, the dampers were broken open, buttered and topped with jam, Marmite, whatever. They loved them.

For the recipe look at Aussie Damper Bread on a Stick.

Pork & Paprika Over an Open Fire

SLOW COOKED PORK SHOULDER

Inspired by a gloriously hot weekend in the Cotswolds, this is heart warming, slow cooked camp food at its best. I served this with garlic potatoes cooked in foil over the embers.

The promise of endless sunshine was too hard to resist so we took Roxy, our beloved 1971 VW Dormobile, for a spur of the moment weekend at the camp site at Folly Farm in Gloucestershire, about 20 miles from where we live.

I raided the freezer for some pork shoulder I knew I had, then discovered an unopened spice jar of paprika in the pantry and only had to top up with the remaining ingredients on the day. This was also an opportunity to test our newly aquired X-Grill folding portable barbeque.

INGREDIENTS (4 big serves):

- 1.2kg pork shoulder off the bone

- 2 medium onions, finely chopped

- 2 large capsicums, finely chopped

- 1 large tomato roughly chopped

- 4-5 cloves of garlic, crushed

- 1 small bottle of lager (or stock)

- 20g (4 heaped teaspoons) paprika

- Olive oil

- Salt & pepper to taste

METHOD:

First, cut the pork into large (5cm) chunks and mix in a bowl with a dash of olive oil and half of the paprika to marinate. Then prepare the onions, garlic, tomato and capsicums so everything is ready for when the fire is on.

Prepare a charcoal cooking fire suitable for a paella dish or flame proof pot, and once mature, sear the marinated pork while the heat is high in a dash of olive oil, then take it out and wrap it in foil. Add some more olive oil (I used the rind of the pork for the fat) and cook the onions until soft. Then add the capsicum, garlic and lager (or stock) and simmer it down for a while before returning the pork to the pan. Stir in the remainder of the paprika, cover in foil (or a lid if you have one) and keep an eye on it for a couple of hours until the pork is meltingly tender and the sauce nice and thick.

You may have to add a bit of water, beer or stock from time to time depending on how hot your fire is. The good thing about a charcoal fire is that it starts off hot, and then subsides steadily to give a constantly reducing cooking temperature.

I made a few customisations to the new X-Grill for this one. I kept one end open so I could easily access the fire, and kept the fire to the other end so I could move the pan along if the fire was too hot. This worked a treat and I was well impressed as to how versatile this new piece of cooking kit actually was. For half the price of a 'Go Anywhere Weber' the X-Grill won't last a lifetime (one summer if you are lucky) but it is a very practical and versatile open fire cooker. It also makes a great fire pit once the meal is done and the sun has set.

Paella On The Beach (A Fantasy)

Imagine my horror. I’d been fantasizing about a beach barbeque in the Var for months. When we arrived for our summer holiday in the south of France there was a total fire ban in the whole region.

My sister in law and brother in law (Ali and Jared) were there for some weeks before us and described the view from their elevated campsite. They saw a large section of forest ablaze less than a kilometre away and the fire appeared to have engulfed a house. The whole campsite had to be evacuated and they were lucky that the fire was controlled before it spread across the road.

We witnessed the charred scar on the hillside each time we drove in or out of the campsite. It was a sobering experience, even for a seasoned pyro like me.

I had planned to have at least one beach barbeque during our holiday and deliberated long and hard as to what it might be.

Eventually, I recalled yet another early 90’s Time Life cookbook (Spain this time) where I learned of the origins of paella. Originally cooked on embers in the fields by farm workers in Valencia, it contained simple local ingredients such as rabbit, snails, garlic, vegetables and of course rice and spices. Perfect before a long siesta in the shade during the hottest part of the day.

Enjoy this mixture of fact, fiction and fantasy, made almost real by these written words.

This is what I would have done.


PAELLA ON THE BEACH (A FANTASY)

I arose as usual around 8am, before the sun found its way to our side of the hill. I had become addicted to striding my way to the top each morning to enjoy the view from Gassin down toward St Tropez for a few minutes before running back down to arrive at the shaded campsite almost an hour later and before anyone else was awake.

Back in the coolness of the west side of our hill, I sat at the outside table and began to prepare my list of things to pack for the evening paella on the beach. The internationalised version; seafood, chicken, vegetables, spices and rice.

FOOD to pack

- 2 cups of paella rice
- 5 cups of water (1 litre)
- Some olive oil in a small jar
- 6 chicken pieces (thighs or legs)
- Chorizo sausage
- Bulb of garlic
- 1 large onion
- 2 capsicums
- 2 tomatoes
- Saffron
- Handful of small live mussels
- Handful of raw prawns
- 2 lemons

EQUIPMENT to pack:

- Paella pan (beloved)
- Grease proof paper
- Newspaper
- Kitchen paper
- Lumpwood Charcoal (about 2 litres of large pieces)
- Matches
- Opinel knife
- Small chopping board
- Spoon
- Forks

Each night, the sun was setting around 8:15, and by 8:45 it would be pretty much dark. Any wind, by this time, seemed to just conveniently disappear.

I added to my list:

- 7:15 – Light charcoal
- 7:35 – Add chicken, onions, chorizo and saffron
- 7:40 – Add tomatoes, capsicums, garlic and water
- 7:55 – Stir in rice and cover
- 8:10 - Lift cover to add mussels and prawns, cover again
- 8:20 – Remove cover and serve into grease proof paper cones

We spent the morning at the market at the nearby perched village of Ramatuelle, the perfect place for me to gather up the necessary bits to pack into the cool box back at the campsite before departing to the beach.

I had been waiting for this for so long. I wrapped the paella ingredients in foil parcels and carefully packed them in the cool box with the usual selection of bagettes and salads, a few little beers and a bottle of local rose.

We arrived at the beach at Pardigon at around two and set up camp for the day. While the kids mucked about in the sea and sand, my wife Sara and I lounged beneath the umbrellas with our books.

By six, we would normally be packing up after a 5 o’clock drink at the beach bar, but tonight would be different. We started noticing the usual casual exodus as the evening approached; my cue to set up the little domed barbeque that Ali let us use when we stayed in her caravan. It was about 12 cm in diameter, had tripod legs and a bright pink domed lid. The bowl made a perfect base for my steel paella pan.

I started by placing the charcoal over a pile of sticks and leaves the kids had collected earlier for tinder. The tinder caught instantly and before long the charcoal was crackling gently as it started to turn slowly from black to white.

With my Opinel I cut up the chicken (keeping the bones for the stock), onions, chorizo, garlic and vegetables on the chopping board on my lap while I waited for the charcoal to reach the right temperature.

A charcoal or wood fire is perfect for paella. The embers start off hot so you can cook the meat, onions and spices and prepare the stock. They then slowly die down which allows the other vegetables and the rice to cook more gently until the meal is ready to eat. For paella, it’s important not to use too much charcoal as it burns hot and can take a long time to reduce in temperature.

About 25 minutes later I started browning the chicken, chicken bones and chorizo chunks with the saffron and onions over the hot embers in the olive oil, then added the chopped tomatoes, garlic and capsicum, gradually adding water to prevent the food from sticking and to make the stock. I then removed the bones, added the rice and gave it a good stir.

To prevent the news print being in contact with the paella, I laid a few sheets of wet kitchen paper over the rice before soaking 5 or so sheets of newspaper in sea water and laying them on top, being careful to fold up the corners so they didn’t burn from the heat of the embers below.

The fire subsided gently as I had hoped. About 10 minutes later I lifted the paper cover and laid the mussels and prawns on top of the rice. Some time later I started to see lumps appear in the newspaper cover as the mussels steamed open. I lifted the wet paper cover and voila, perfectly cooked rice, vegetables and seafood. And, there was still enough light to savour both the look and taste of the meal.

I tore the grease proof paper into 30 x 30 cm pieces, folded each in half, and half again and then opened the folded paper into a cone in the same way I remembered making filters in chemistry at high school. A sheet of folded newspaper loosely wrapped around the outside added the necessary insulation before spooning the piping hot paella into each cone and topping off with a couple of slices of fresh lemon.

The smell was incredible. A steamy blend of saffron, chorizo, vegetables and sea food with freshly cut lemon.

I ate with my hands, savouring the texture, aroma and taste of each mouthful with sticky fingers that were later cleansed with the remains of the squeezed lemon slices.