Camp oven: pork belly
Start a fire using slow burning wood. The aim is to create some major coal action that will cook a whole pig’s stomach, so keep it robust. You will need to start the fire before 5pm, or you won’t be eating until 8.30, which is WAY past bedtime and by that stage your stomach will start to consume itself and you will get cranky and throw snaky remarks at people you love.
When the coals are firing, place the oven on top and cram that stomach in.
With abandon, add some stock cubes, a cinnamon stick, star anise, cloves, chai tea leaves, bay leaves, some carrots and water to almost cover the meat. When it comes to amounts, you’re pretty much free-balling here, so don’t be asking. If you have anything else in the camp box, hurl that in too.
Put the lid on, half fill a couple of porcelain cups with shiraz, and pull your camp chairs up to the fire. Avoid resting your feet in the highway of meat ants, they have good choppers and an adventurous palette.
Speaking of fire, watch the wind. Big gusts will whip up embers and set the surrounding grass alight. This will lead to a little fight about taking precautions. You will wildly deny being paranoid and remind your friend that it was only last Easter that you set up a camp quite similar to this, and then burnt it down.
‘We were lucky to get out with the car!’, you’ll say.
‘Why do you continue to carry that around, Alex?’
‘I carry the lesson around, Adam.’
There will be silence for a bit. Use this time to lift the lid off the oven and check the liquid level. Top it up if it’s fallen below ¾ full.
Pour another wine.
Lighten the conversation up, talk about a nice thing that happened to you. It doesn’t have to be from this particular day, it can be from childhood… just something to dilute any bitter taste.
‘When I was five, I was a bluebell flower in a play. I didn’t go to the toilet before I went on stage. By the time I started flitting about under the stage lights, doing bluebell things, I was busting. I remember, very clearly, the moment I resigned myself to nature and just let it go. I was wearing thick ribbed tights and ballet shoes. The tights became very scratchy and every time I had to dance about the princess, one shoe made squelching noises.’
You will both laugh furiously.
When you have sucked all the laughter out of that scenario, add some potatoes to the oven.
Spuds will take around 40 minutes, so you’ll have time to slip in a quick quiz:
What colour is the sky in Bronwyn Bishops’s world?
Name the eastern block country that threatens it’s own health professionals with jail time for speaking up about human rights.
Name the fifty chronic conditions caused by wind.
‘Fuck! The pig!’
Remove the oven from the coals. You needn’t stress out so much though, that pig can sit in there for hours, it will only taste better for it.
Use tongs to remove the pork from the juices. Keep those juices! For the next two nights you will be using them in your pork belly risotto. The flavours will become richer at each sitting.
Cut huge slices from the pig guts and serve on tin plates with the carrot and potatoes. I mention the plates because the sound of forks scratching up a meal off metal is key.
You will be tempted not to wash up after eating, until you spy all those meat ants hiding behind trees, waiting to pounce.
Before you do though, turn all lights off and look into the sky. Hold hands. Don’t say anything.
Crawl under two toasty doonas and close your eyes. Before you know it, digestion will suck all the oxygen from your brain and you will become unconscious.