CAMPERTRAILER GATHERING 

We arrived about 10 a.m. to find there were already about six here, Mary-Anne and Allan greeted us on arrival..  It was a perfect day and its a lovely green area with a large toilet block.  During the day quite a few arrived.  I had cooked Toni at Dutchovenmadness' Choc Chip Banana Bread at Lake Conjola and everyone seemed to enjoy it.  We had planned to eat at the club which is adjoins us but had been told a dinner at the club had been arranged for Saturday night so we swopped our meals around.

Most gathered for Happy Hour but we didnt need a large fire as the temperature was just perfect.

This morning its again beautiful, not at all cold and the birds here are delightful to wake up with.    This is just one section of the campers.

Sand fly proof
Sparky

Some have gone for a paddle up the creek.  A breeze has sprung up but its still sunny and 24C












I cooked some Gozleme for lunch, using a HBin5 Wholemeal and Olive Oil no knead bread dough.  The filling was Lamb Feta Baby Spinach onion and spices.

I

Our last Happy Hour  before most of us went to the nearby club for dinner and

entertainment - we had prawns, chicken, ham, corn beef, various salads, dessert and wine and best of all - no washing up

Some celebrated an early Halloween's Night

Thanks to our hosts Mary Anne and Allan for another great camper trailer group weekend.

TABBOULEH BREAD 

WITH PARSLEY, GARLIC, BULGUR & LEMON ZEST

I am away camping and decided rather than pull out the camp oven and risk not being able to use it due to a "No Fires" ban I would use the camp kitchen gas oven available.  I have never cooked on a home type gas stove so at first had some problem even getting it to fire up. Gas and me just dont mix.

This recipe is part of the next bread braid on page 152 of the Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day book and a half quantity.  I presoaked the bulgur for three hours, let the first mix rise for 2 hours (it was a warm day and rose well).  I shaped a very soft dough and left it for 45 minutes while I preheated the oven.  (Normally I would leave it in the refrigerator overnight prior to shaping).

If I ever cooked on this stove again I would lower the shelves.  I used an aluminium foil tray as the tin and it was not quite big enough to hold the shape.  The top browned far more than the sides, I went to remove the foil at 2/3rds of the cooking time and ended up putting the foil over the top to stop further browning.

The end result was a nice soft bread with a good crust.  I doubt I would make it again as the garlic and parsley didnt seem to come through much.  The faint lemon zest did which went well with the seafood I ate with it.

A Week In Melbourne during the

Arts Festival

If you enjoy the music on this as much as I do it and other CDs are available at http://www.petepascoe.com/music.html

CAMP COOKING CLUB INC

AT ILLAWARRA LIGHT RAIL MUSEUM
ALBION PARK

I had a great day on my first visit to this club and of course it was in October not November, I had a lot of trouble uploading this and once I saw the mistake I wasnt game to start over as I am getting close to my limit for the month.  It was nice to just help a bit and not be responsible for the lunch.  I havent been in this environment before and I thoroughly enjoyed my day.  It was a 90 minute train ride along some nice eastern coast south of Sydney Australia.  The trains were offering rides, a car club pulled in and a jazz band was playing.  The weather stayed good although rain had been threatened.  Good company, good food and the outdoors you couldnt ask for more.

NO KNEAD WHOLE WHEAT BREAD WITH OLIVE OIL FROM THE HBIN5 BOOK

I will be away again and so  I decided to get on with the next bread braid.  All of the items to be cooked intrigued me. I had my older grandchildren for the day and they helped both cook and eat the finished products.

Zoe couldnt believe the strips she brushed with oil and sprinkled with rosemary would turn into anything edible and was even more horrified when as they were too long for my baking tin I twisted and snaked them. 

I have a grinder of chili, garlic and salt and put that on some as well as the rosemary and salt.  They baked in 5 minutes, much less than recommended time.

The rolls came out cute and I havent eaten them yet so I dont know if the garlic permeated the dough on baking.

I found it easier to brush and sprinkle the bread sticks before separating them and putting onto the baking tray.

Kurtis wanted chicken and mince as well as salami and ham on his pizza so he precooked those adding his own choice of spices to the chicken and a small amount of gravox to the meat so it wasnt too dry.

I didnt grill the pizza but instead blind baked them in the oven for 5 minutes then everyone put their own choices of filling on and we put them back in the oven for another five minutes. They were nice and crispy which was what we wanted.  We could have made  8 from the amount of dough we had.

We thought of lots of ideas for the bread sticks in different shapes another time as the dough cut to the recommended 1/8" was very pliable.

A fun braid to do.

CAMP OVEN PUMPKIN PIE MASCARPONE CHEESECAKE BARS

I didnt read the instructions for the last Bread Braid properly and didnt realise I had a choice of the Pumpkin Pie Brioche.  I decided to make up half a quantity after seeing this on someone else's braid.  I try to cook mine mostly in the camp oven, so that makes it a slightly different challenge.  Pumpkins always remind me of Halloween and last year I picked up the ladies at an Op Shop on my way home from camping (of course wearing a red and purple hat added to the appeal.  

As soon as I put the dough in the alfoil I realised I was going to have too much filling so I simply made two.  

With the other third of the dough I made up these crescent shapes.  I simply rolled out a circle as I had seen someone else do, brushed butter on it and then sprinkles brown sugar and cinnamon.  I cut it into triangles, rolled it up and then brush it with more butter and sprinkled raw sugar on top.  They were very nice.  

The bars cut neatly, they are nice but a little sweet for me.  

Caramel Sticky Nut Buns  
Whole Wheat Brioche from HBin5

I had typed up my recipe rather than take the book camping and risk any damage to it.  I made up the mixture and it seemed very stiff and the recipe warned it might be very loose. I looked at the % of eggs, honey and butter and felt that was still short on my rough estimate that most of these no knead doughs seem to have approximately half the liquid as dried ingredients.  I couldnt see warm water listed and thought that very strange and I had carefully checked them all when typing.  I decided to add l cup of warm water. It did rise a bit over night left out in the thermal pot.

In the morning I googled around and found it should have had 2 1/4 cups of warm water.  What to do!!!!! I decided to just go ahead with it as the ingredients were good and at the worst it would be more like biscuit than bread.  I baked it in the camp oven and it came out very nice, I had some people talking to me about my cooking at the time and they were happy to taste test it.  Not a crumb was left :) 

The recipe has been published and details can be found at Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day



Thursday and its our last day, I decided to use all the left over Brioche and make the Indian Spice donuts and not worry about the Pear Tart which was part of the challenge.  The dough was exceedingly stiff after yet another night of 0C in the Thermal Pot but I managed to roll it out and cut up about 36 donuts.  I used a Aussie Camp Oven made from Spun Steel.  The dough rested for the time it took for the heat beads to turn white and the oil to reach the right temperature about an hour.  I didnt have any trouble finding taste testers.


Check out what everyone else did with the dough at Big Black Dogs.

This afternoon its my turn to give my first talk about "my things" and what I cook when camping.  I am very pleased that I managed to cook all but one of the recipes I had put into a pdf format to share.  I did a couple that weren't on the list as well.  Its most rewarding when fellow campers get inspired and take on cooking something they hadnt tried before.  We have had a great week and will look forward to meeting up with our neighbours at another gathering.