These are the results for lkjdf;lak please note
This year the bush camp was a new arrival at the NFF.
In the days before road-trains drovers moved cattle overland to market. The camp is a replica of a typical droving camp. Old droving songs were sung and bush tucker consumed.
The drovers lived on damper and tea. When a stray sheep wandered by then meat was also on the menu. I include below a recipe for damper for your experimentation.
Damper
Damper can be baked on the open fire or in a regular oven although you are not going to get the authentic smoky bush taste from a regular oven. As is typical of hand-me-down recipes, there are as many versions as there are bush babies. As kids we used to wrap the dough around a stick and cook over an open fire guaranteeing a damper that was black on the outside and raw in the middle. I have tried it again in later years with more caution and it makes a passable way of cooking it.
2 cups self-rising flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tespoons sugar
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup milk
Mix the flour, salt and sugar together in a bowl. Cut in the butter until fine crumbs form. Add milk to make a soft dough. Knead lightly on floured board until smooth. Shape into round loaf, brush with milk, and bake at 375 degrees F. for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the loaf makes a hollow sound when tapped.
Usually served hot with butter and either jam or honey.
Sheep
Find stray sheep, kill, skin and gut it.
Place on steel pole over a pit fire for 4-5 hours turning occasionally
Carve and eat.
Here is a recipe that is sure to please, well please the chef anyway. The result is guaranteed to be delightfully variable from the inedible to the delicious but mostly they tend towards the latter.
They are somewhat like brandy snaps in character, hence the name. They are a derrivative of the ANZAC biscuit which is a classic in Australia.
Ingredients
4 375ml bottles of beer, I prefer Coopers Sparkling but any good quality beer will do.
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup plain flour
1 cup sugar, I like dark brown natural sugar, it has a rich caramel smell even before it is cooked.
3/4 cup shredded coconut
125g butter
1 tablespoon of honey
1 teaspoon of bicarbinate of soda
2 tablespoons of water
Step 1. Switch on the television, sit down and drink the 4 bottles of beer. Next ad break you are ready to continue with the rest of the recipe.
Step 2. Combine oats, sifted flour, sugar and coconut in a large bowl.
Step 3. Combine butter and honey in a pot and stir over a low heat until butter is melted and they are combined.
Step 4. Combine bicarb soda and water then add to the butter mixture. It will froth up, stir it immediately into the dry ingredients.
Step 5. Place dobs of the mixture on greased oven trays. The beers should be kicking in by now so these will be delightfully varied in size and shape.
Step 6. Bake in a slow-moderate oven for about 20 minutes or until golden broad. They will collapse during the cooking but then again you probably will too so there is a bit of synergy there. Just remember to take them out of the oven before falling completely asleep.
Step 7. Allow your biscuits to cool on the trays. You may even like to add another bottle of beer to the chefs stomach at about this time.
Oooh someone has asked The Green Man a question and fortunately it is on one of The Green Man's special subjects - food.
Janet asks
After reading Barbara Pym books my book club is meeting at my house for discussion and lunch. I want to serve ploughman's lunch and summer pudding. Do you have a good recipe for the lunch (or the pudding as well)? What shall we have for a tiny alcoholic beverage before?
Well Janet, a Ploughman’s lunch is a demonstration of the fact that things don't have to be complicated to be exceptional. Ploughman’s lunch is simple, arising from the fact that it was originally made for ploughmen to take into the field with them. It is ideal for an informal lunch and simple to prepare.
It is essentially a collection of cured meat (usually ham or corned beef), cheese (usually a vintage cheddar), pickled vegetables (onions, cucumbers etc) and pickles (Branston made an excellent brand for this purpose). This is accompanied by crusty bread. Normally you would assemble a collection of these on a plate however since you are catering for a group it is probably better to present it buffet style and participants can assemble their own open sandwiches from the ingredients.
Of course no ploughman’s lunch is complete without alcoholic apple cider. For devotees this would be "scrumpy" which is a still cider of exceptional potency. It doesn't taste that great but after a glass or two, strangely, that doesn't seem to matter. For your lunch a sparkling cider is more appropriate. It comes in three basic types, sweet, dry and draught. If your guests are unaccustomed to cider you might like to get one (or more) of each for them to try. Most ciders these days are about the same strength as beer so the same drink driving considerations apply.
Summer Pudding
Finally, here is a recipe for Summer Pudding. The great thing about it, apart from the fact it is delicious, is that it can be made ahead of time cutting down the effort at the time.
Ingredients
white sliced bread (it can be a bit stale it doesn't matter)
a good selection of summer berries, strawberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, stoned cherries and raspberries
sugar to taste depending on fruit
Method
Put fruit and sugar into a heavy saucepan and heat gently until the juice runs. Cool. Line a 2 pint pudding basin with slices of white bread (crust removed). Strain fruit well and reserve juice. Put cool fruit into bread-lined basin and place a bread lid on top. Moisten lid with a little fruit juice. Put a saucer onto the bread lid so that it presses down onto the pudding. Put a weight or full, heavy tin onto the saucer and leave in fridge over night. Turn out onto a plate and serve immediately with reserved juice and double cream.
Well by now you should have had at least one delicious batch of Ginger Beer from the Ginger Beer Recipe posted some time ago. It is a beautiful hot summers day today and there is nothing nicer than a cold ginger beer. (If you are in the northern hemisphere then suffer, it is magnificent here.)
The perfect thing to accompany ginger beer is a ploughmans lunch. For those of you that are ignorant of one of the great gourmet experiences of the old world, it is large chunks of crusty bread, hard cheese like Cheddar, cured meat like ham, Pickles and Pickled Onions. It is consumed in the English countryside outdoors during that pathetic excuse for a summer that they traditionally have. Traditionally it is accompanied by chilled scrumpy apple cider but the problem with that is that, after a pint or two, standing becomes exceptionally difficult. Scrumpy is, afterall, about 35% alcohol so the ginger beer makes an excellent liver saving alternative.
Enough rambling (my pint of scrumpy is almost finished) the purpose of this post is a recipe for pickled onions. I know you can buy them at the supermarket but what fun is that. Here is a chance to pretend that you stand a vague chance of surviving the collapse of civilisation as we know it by pickling your own onions.
The recipe comes courtesy of Peter Shave who prefers to consume his with home brewed beer, that I strongly suspect is as potent as the aforementioned scrumpy, given that I am usually incapable of remembering anything after the first drink or two at his place. Click here for the recipe. Happy pickling.
Boy, how could one breast generate so much internet traffic. The BBC reports that Janet Jackson's breast has has made internet history.
Compared to Janet Jackson, Paris Hilton might seem pale but her drawing power is paler still. There has been 60 times the searches for a single Jackson breast than for a pair of Hilton breasts. And poor old Britney, she might as well hand back her crown as queen of geek desire. The aforementioned breast rated 80 times her pulling power.
Now, as the icing on the cake, literally, Amateur Gourmet has fast tracked years of culinary research to release his Janet Jackson Breast Cupcake.
Naturally, every virile young man will want to turn his attention to the kitchen and acquire this recipe. You can find it here.
Those people who are kind enough to put up with my creative writing in person, rather than over the net, had the additional benefit of a Lumberjack Cake at our last meeting, which was rather nice, even if I say so myself. For those of you who only see my writing via the net, you may drool into your keyboards. Here is a photo
Accordingly requests were made for the recipe, so here it is.
