From Kenya to the Cairngorms: Cooking over fire

GHILLIE BASAN has been on remarkable food journeys around the world. Fire cooking crosses continents, evoking all the senses. But always remember there are people and cultures who rely on a fire to survive.

When I was growing up in East Africa, the preparation of an open fire was a vital part of setting up camp in the bush, not just for cooking on but for keeping mosquitos and wild predators at bay.

Those who chose to sleep under the stars, rather than under canvas, would keep the fire going all night. When it came to cooking though, there were several bush tricks to ensure good eating.

Every Land Rover and Toyota Land Cruiser was equipped with shovels strapped to the back, at hand to dig the vehicles out of deep mud or potholes. But, they were also useful for digging the hole for the camp toilet; for gripping onto tightly in the presence of a predator; for gouging out the heart of a vacated termite mound to use as an oven for bread; and, when placed over the fire, the shovel head served as a hot, flat pan for cooking cuts of meat and eggs for breakfast.

Aged around six or seven, I liked to be in charge of cooking eggs this way and would delight in cracking as many as I could onto the face of the shovel head.

If there was a whole goat or antelope to cook we would gather dead branches from the forest, or dry bits of wood from the scrubland, to make a spit. And the next day, the cleaned intestines of the animal would be stuffed with the chopped offal and leftover meat and coiled in a circle like a snake to cook over the fire.

Most people know this type of coiled sausage as Boerewors – the sausage of the Boer, the Dutch farmers who settled in South Africa. But we called them puff adders and ate them with the eggs we cooked on the shovel.

Aside from meat, there were times we might camp near a river and catch tilapia, trout or catfish, which we would impale on sharpened sticks and cook over the fire.

On one occasion, at Lake Turkana (Lake Rudolf back then) in Kenya my mother caught a Nile perch weighing 110lb, narrowly missing an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

She didn’t have the strength to haul the fish in herself and was worried about the boat tipping her into the choppy, crocodile-infested water, so she had help to land the perch onto the boat and bring it back to the camp. As the merciless hot sun baked the rocky landscape around the lake, the whole fish was cooked in a natural rock oven covered in dampened hessian sacks to create steam, a method similar to the traditional Māori hāngī in New Zealand.

Years later, I was reminded of all the fire making skills I learned growing up when I walked from Venice to Istanbul with a wok strapped to my backpack. I had been working as a teacher and ski instructor in the north of Italy but was in hot pursuit of my mission to become a journalist and, in my mind, all roads led to Istanbul.

I headed down through former Yugoslavia with a detour that took me back across to the heel of Italy and over to Corfu because Albania was still under Communist rule and closed to foreign visitors. Once on an island with fabulous food and warm sea, I couldn’t resist circumnavigating mainland Greece by hopping on boats around some of the other islands, sleeping on flat roof tops and gorging on honey-sweet grapes, with my wok serving as a most useful piece of kit.

Over a simple fire on a beach, I used it for boiling water to wash my face and
clothes, for cooking pasta or fresh fish, and I would turn it upside down to cook flat breads over the dome, before placing washed clothes on top to dry.

Arriving in Istanbul by train, I tramped around the old city and found work four hours south. A teaching job in the ancient city of Bursa, the original seat of the Ottoman Empire, from where you could take a cable car to a ski resort on Uludağ (Great Mountain) seemed like the perfect place to start.

The location was thought to rival the glory of Lebanon back in its heyday, as you could ski on Great Mountain in the morning and sail in the Sea of Marmara in the afternoon. And, whether you rode in the cable car, or drove up the forested road in a dolmuş – a taxi stuffed with people, luggage, and chickens – the journey to the ski slopes was one of gastronomic torment as the smoky and spicy aromas drifted teasingly in the cold air from the portable road-side grills with a busy trade of seared cumin-cured sausage, sucuk, and butterflied quail marinated in garlic, thyme and sumac, both slapped between the two halves of a toasted loaf with onions and fresh parsley.

Arriving on the slopes with my mouth drooling, I would be greeted with relief by the wealthy women from Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, zipped into their fur-lined all-in-one yellow, pink and blue ski suits.

At the end of my day ski instructing, I would be hit by the alluring smell of the chargrilled lambs’ liver, ingeniously dressed with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, which would lure hungry wolves from the shelter of the forest to get the scraps dropped in the snow, or those still stuck to the smouldering grill. I had to teach those ladies to ski fast!

From the makeshift grills high up in the quiet mountains, I found myself immersed for the next few years in the noise of impatient honking of car horns, the slow chug of boat engines, and the haggling chatter of market crowds as I enjoyed the theatrics of street food over fire in Istanbul,  Marrakesh, Delhi, Singapore, and Saigon.

Every smell and sound hit my senses – the warmth of the fire as the nuts and seeds roasted and popped in a pan; the smoke of the hot oil as the snake beans, chilli and galangal were pushed quickly around the wok over a leaping flame; the dribbling juices of kebabs, or their tikka and satay cousins, momentarily sizzling on the gleaming coals; the stinging chilli heat of charring stingray wings bringing tears to my eyes; and the gingery sweetness of the caramelised pork smoked in the hollow of a bamboo stem.

It is these images and tastes that I bring to the experiences I run today at our home in the Cairngorms in the Scottish Highlands where I use local and wild produce but draw from the flavours and inspiration of travels in different cultures.

I do remind myself, though, that for those of us who are lucky enough to have plenty of food and time to prepare a fire and watch the flames in a trance-like state, while romancing about the experience, the aroma, and the deliciousness, it is a privilege: there are people in the world for who rely on a fire to survive.

It is the survival side of fires and fire-cooking that my son, Zeki, specialises in by teaching the old Highland outdoor crafts and skills that were once a part of everyday life but are now disappearing.

These survival skills, which give us a greater understanding of nature and a
connection to the land, might involve foraging, basketry, shelter-building, trapping and stalking and teaching how to make use of every part of the animal or fish, such as the skin for leather, the sinews for cordage, the antlers for tools, and the organs for a good Highland haggis, but they all begin with fire-craft.

The people who come on our experiences and courses learn to gather seasonal tinder to light a fire using flint and steel, or with the physical effort and skill of a hand, or bow, drill.

They might collect sticks to sharpen and impale whole fish to cook over the fire they have made; they might help to dig a hole, gather the rocks to heat in the hole and make a reed mat to cover the leg of deer that will cook in the heat of the natural oven; or they might place a whole side of salmon on a sheet of foil, dot it with butter, juniper berries and a drizzle of whisky, wrap it up and bake it gently in the embers so that it remains melt-in-the-mouth moist.

And while a group is standing around enjoying a dram, there are big pans of
chanterelles to toss over the fires, aubergines that are charring and need to be turned, whole beetroot baking in the embers, mackerel to hot smoke, and perhaps a venison or wild boar loin to be retrieved from the whisky barrel cold smoker constructed by Zeki.

We try to keep the fires simple and traditional – less theatrics than some chefs might opt for – so that our guests can get involved in the cooking but can also gather around them safely to keep warm.