The Art of Camping – Page 11 – A family in a field

Tent reviews

We went for a stroll around a camping fair held in a field at the back of Middle Farm, near Lewes. Dozens of tents were pitched for the inspection of prospective buyers, from the Vango Dart 200 – a pop-up festival tent – to the enormous Wolf Lake 7, a grand’s worth of polycotton aircraft hanger. middle-farm-tents1

Pitched on long grass, the zipped-in groundsheets were swampy underfoot, and the bigger the tent, the looser and sloppier they felt. I don’t like tents that pretend to be houses. They remind me of vegetarian sausages. Why pretend to be something you are not?

Thirty-three years after Bob Gillis revolutionised the industry by inventing the first geodesic backpacking tent, the Oval Intention, this camping fair seemed intent on taking a big step backward, being more in the spirit of those despised tan-and-orange monsters of Vintage Camping. The Oval Intention used tension to provide integrity to its structure, following the geodesic dome popularised by Buckminster Fuller. Here the design of large tunnel tents like the Outwell Florida 6 owed more to Wisteria Lane – superfluous weight added to make a tent that looks like a suburban terrace, pitched with a rotary clothes drier in the yard to add to the air of domesticity.

I have a strong aversion to tents with windows. A tent is not a house. outwell-wall-to-wall-carpet You should not be sitting in your tent peering out at your neighbours through a thick sheet of plastic. I don’t want a tent with a wardrobe either. Or a carpet. Outwell’s wall-to-wall carpet comes in a box illustrated with a picture of a happy couple laughing sensuously. Because that’s how in-tent wall-to-wall carpet makes you feel. This is campsite as temporary suburb.

We wandered into the camping shop. We are in the market for a table but none of the tables on show survived five minutes with the boy toddler. We are also in the market for less stuff. That’s what camping teaches you – that you don’t need all that stuff. After an hour, I bought a five quid foot pump, ignoring the motorised ones. Let my children inflate an airbed. Let them know what that feels like.

indian-lake-tent The highlight of the fair was Outwell’s Indian Lake tent, a teepee with a porch, erected around a thick central pole. I would have liked to have a crack at pitching it, to test the promise of it being “easy to pitch and pack”. Like the little conical hat atop the Vaude Badawi II, the peak is meant to aid ventilation, although the design of the Indian Lake felt like a pretentious hotch-potch where the Vaude Badawi II is a more elegant evocation of the nomad. Of the others on show, we like the Vango Tigris 800 and 600 tunnels, cheap and very easy to pitch for a family tent, although the extension looked like a right dog’s dinner slung onto the back. How long before some enterprising firm decides to cash-in on the British habit of suburbanising everything they touch by manufacturing a conservatory that attaches to the side of your tent?

Salsa romesco

Prepare this at home before the trip and spoon it into a jar to save you having to pestle and mortar until you are blue in the face outside the tent. If you store this red sauce in a sterilized jar, it can keep for ages. Salsa romesco is mildly spicy and tangy and so great with meat and fish that has been simply cooked over a barbeque or campfire. This should make two small jars worth.
The romesco chilli is traditionally used in Spain, but ancho chillis are more likely obtained in the UK. Failing that, use dried kashmiri chillis with some smoked paprika to add barbecued sweetness. For a milder fruitier sauce, use just the one chilli. You can always add spice, but you can never take it away.

I made this for a barbeque in my back garden in London. It went perfectly with seafood kebabs and Andalusian lamb (marinaded in red wine vinegar and juniper). I recently made this in a pestle and mortar, but you can throw all the ingredients in a blender, just don’t over blend as you want a sauce with some texture to it.

How to sterilize a jar

Clean jars and new lids in hot soapy water. Put the jars in a pre-heated medium oven for ten minutes. Use as soon as they are cool enough to fill.

Ingredients

3 red peppers, roasted, deseeded and skinned, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
3 tomatoes, score the skin in a cross all the way around and roast for a few minutes
80g hazelnuts, roasted in a medium oven for 5-8 minutes until brown, then rub until the skin comes away
2 dried ancho chillis, if not available then 2 dried kashmiri chillies plus a pinch of smoked paprika
2 tbs red wine vinegar
75ml olive oil
Salt to taste
Sugar to taste

Crush the hazelnuts in a pestle and mortar until crumb-like, then add the garlic and ancho chillis (or the kashmiri chillis and paprika), salt, and crush some more. Add tomatoes and peppers, red wine vinegar and a pinch of sugar: you may need to decant to a larger bowl unless you are using a massive mortar. Add the oil in a fine drizzle, stirring each bit in well, otherwise you may end up with a greasy sauce, rather than a velvety one. Taste, season.

The Angry Head

It’s the beginning of Bank Holiday weekend and the traffic into Dorset crawls past accident after accident. On the verge and in the central reservation, the beautiful dandy faces of cars faces have been bashed ugly, as if set upon by jealous brutes. The unlucky participants stand around dazed, compressing bumps and scrapes with wet clothes and staring at the ongoing traffic with disbelief – how can you lot continue blithely on your journeys when this terrible thing has just happened? But it’s nothing, we reply. The damage is purely cosmetic.

On the return journey we pull up behind something far more serious and recent. Just over there, a driver – thoughtfully, mercifully – holds up a blanket behind which a man is dying. A motorcycle lies burnt out. The police move with a terrible and disturbing urgency. Witnesses leave their cars and walk through the traffic. I turn the music down and wait to be told what to do.

I have never driven on a Bank Holiday before. The anger involved is new to me. Anger is the energy men use to force their way through the crowd and up onto the promised freedom of a holiday. Even packing feels angry, stuffing and stuffing the gear into the back of the car and dismissing the bags deemed to be inessential. Later, we hear about an incident at a neighbouring site when a man driving a caravan completely loses himself to anger, screaming and swearing and demanding everyone got out of his effing way. Statistics tells us that Bank Holidays are always rife with accidents but I wonder if the anger is worse this year. Recession anger. Expenses anger. Hapless-sap-in-a-corrupt-sham-of-a-democracy anger. Or perhaps that man was angry because he was driving a caravan in Bank Holiday traffic, which is like trying to put out a fire with petrol.

Cath and I look at one another and wonder if we have made a terrible mistake

The angry head stays with me when it comes to pitching the tent. Anger makes it feel like I am staking and marking out territory. The nearby ball games make me seethe, none more so that when a tennis ball bounces off my head and onto the Trangia so that the boiling water lists. Now a football strikes the barbecue sending hot coals onto the dry grass. The fire attracts the baby’s interest. I burn my fingers flicking the embers away from the galloping approach of my concerned infants. The transition from angry driving into the community spirit of camping is almost too much for me, a gear change from fifth to first and the revs are roaring. Cath and I look at one another and wonder if we have made a terrible mistake.

We didn’t. The rest of the week camping was glorious. Our eldest thrived in the responsibility and freedom of running errands, making friends, building dens. The brains of the two infants lit up with being outdoors all day. Sure, at one point, in the precious hour between finally getting them all to sleep and taking to bed ourselves, Cath asked me if there would come a point in the holiday when we got to enjoy ourselves, but that was just the black parental humour talking.

Time passes, we adjust to tent life. The angry head becomes outdoor head, the expansive inner clarity that comes with spending all day on the land and under the sky. And that’s why we camp: for the perspective.

Beach Barbeque

Math recently acquired a portable barbeque, the Weber Charcoal Go-Anywhere Grill. It has a pleasingly vintage shape, and is solidly constructed. We spent an afternoon at Homebase checking out the other portable barbecues, all of which felt rather neurotic and liable to fall apart in a complete collapse of nerve. The Weber has a vented lid which traps a convective circulating heat, much better for cooking larger boned joints.

We took the Weber out for a test run to Birling Gap, a pebbled beach tucked in amongst the Seven Sisters chalk cliffs. A steep tower of stairs leads down from the eroding cliff edge to the beach itself. It was late afternoon and the surf was lively. High tide was at six o’clock.

Math began cooking. The grill does not have separate settings, you cannot raise or lower it in relation to the heat. Once his pyramid of coals were lit, he arranged the heat into thirds, with two hot patches either side of an empty middle section. Having a section of the grill that is not over any coals works on a lidded barbecue because the circulating heat will be sufficient for slow cooking.

“Don’t make the mistake of presuming that we know what we are doing,” he warned

Some chefs prefer arranging the coals in a gradually declined slope from left to right, but the portable barbecues lack the depth necessary for this arrangement. The trick is to create the variety of temperatures required to cook a variety of meats – in this case, boned chicken thighs, venison kebabs and sausages, all with a light coating of oil so that they would not stick to the grill.

The tide battled its way up the beach, making for an anxious moment in which we wondered if we would have to strike camp and break for the stairs. Another family arrived with their barbecue, took a doubtful look at the churning rising waters, but were reassured by the sight of us blithely cooking. Math went over to speak to them;

“Don’t make the mistake of presuming that we know what we are doing,” he warned. They set up as far the encroaching waves as was possible on the narrow strip of beach, and started cooking. Fortune favours the brave.

Here are my barbecue recipes

Orange and carrot salad

This goes really well with spicy kebabs, tucked up beside a small pile of warm pitta breads.

Ingredients
200g carrots, peeled and grated
Juice of half an orange
1 tbs white wine vinegar or juice of half a lemon
Salt and pepper
Pinch of cinnamon
5 dried dates, stoned and chopped
1 tsp honey
1 tbs olive oil

Equipment
Grater (slice the carrots very finely if not available)
Chopping board
Sharp knife
Bowl
Spoons

Method
Mix all ingredients in a bowl and leave to rest for ten to twenty minutes to let the flavours mingle. Serve.

Tangy squashy tomato relish

This relish virtually makes itself and is a vibrant alternative to ketchup.

Ingredients
8 tasty tomatoes, cut in half horizontally
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 red chilli, sliced in half lengthways or 1 tsp of paprika
1 tbs red wine or red wine vinegar
1 tbs olive oil
Salt

Equipment
Barbeque/campfire
Tin foil
Bowl
Sharp knife

Method
Once you have the barbeque going, wrap all the tomatoes, garlic, chilli and vinegar or wine in a double layer of tin foil and place on the grill.
After ten to twenty minutes of cooking, carefully tip the contents of the foil into a bowl -watch the steam doesn’t burn you as you open your parcel. Bash the garlic and if you want extra spice then scrape out the flesh of the chilli with a sharp knife. Mix all ingredients together, add the oil, season and taste. Serve with your burgers instead of ketchup.

Fennel coleslaw

Serves 4

My daughter and her little friends dare one another to eat the school coleslaw, so ingrained is the revulsion toward this traditional side salad. But a freshly made coleslaw with fennel is delicious with barbequed chicken or fish.

Ingredients
1 bulb of fennel, outer layer and stem removed and finely sliced, save any soft fronds
1 tsb flat leaf parsley (optional)
1 large carrot, cut into batons
¼ to ½ onion, white salad one if possible, finely sliced
1 pickled gherkin or 6 cornichon, chopped small
2 tsps mayonnaise
1 tsp lemon juice or white wine vinegar
Salt and pepper

Equipment
Bowl
Sharp knife
Chopping board
Mixing spoon

Method
Mix all the ingredients together at least ten minutes before needed to allow the flavours to mingle. Add the fennel fronds if you have them, chopped parsley if you don’t.

Feta and mint salad

Serves 4

If you can get fresh peas in their pod and a decent crumbly feta cheese, then this is great for lunch served with hearty chunks of brown bread.

Ingredients
1 x 200g packet of feta cheese
100-150g (about one bag) tasty leaves like watercress, lamb’s lettuce, rocket or a mixture
100g fresh peas, shelled (if they are quite big peas, then boil for a couple of minutes and drain)
1 courgette, cut into batons or sliced thinly using a vegetable peeler
4 tbs olive oil
1 tbs lemon juice
1/2 clove of garlic, crushed with salt using a knife
A couple of sprigs worth of fresh mint leaves, sliced finely
Salt and pepper

Equipment
Chopping board
Large bowl
Sharp knife
Fork
Vegetable peeler (optional)
Pan and stove (optional)

Method
Make the dressing in the bowl with the garlic, oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Whisk it in the bowl until it emulsifies, then season and taste. Add the leaves courgettes and mint, then toss the salad. Crumble the feta on top and the peas last as otherwise they will sink to the bottom of the bowl.

Salade nicoise

Serves 4

A classic salad easily prepared outside a tent on a warm evening.

Ingredients
300g salad potatoes, Jersey Royals if you’re feeling flash
100g green beans, topped and tailed
4 eggs
1 tbsp herbs such as tarragon, chervil and/or chives, chopped
4 tbs olive oil
Juice of half a lemon
1 clove garlic crushed with a pinch of salt
Salt and black pepper
½ tin of anchovies, drained
2 tins or jars of good quality tuna, drained
½ red onion, finely sliced
1 tsp Dijon mustard (optional)
2 little gems or 1 romaine lettuce, leaves separated

Equipment
Chopping board
Sharp knife
One ring cooker
Small bowl
Fork and spoons

Method
Boil the potatoes in salted water until cooked, drain and set aside. Cook the green beans for a couple of minutes, drain and set aside. Put the whole eggs into a pan of cold water, bring to the boil and then count three minutes, they will be soft boiled and hopefully not cracked. Drain and leave the eggs to cool.
For the dressing, put the garlic and salt with olive oil, lemon juice, pepper and mustard into a small bowl and whisk with a fork until it emulsifies. Taste, adjust the seasoning if you need to.
Dress the leaves. Shell and quarter the eggs. Assemble your salad: put your leaves into bowls, cut the potatoes in half and add those, arrange the beans, tuna, anchovies and tuna and shelled quartered eggs. Sprinkle the herbs on top.