Yabbie Cocktails

What you need

• Tomato Sauce
• Mayonnaise
• Yabby tails
• Lemon

What you do

Mix tomato sauce and mayonnaise in equal amounts, add to yabby tails in a bowl and sprinkle lemon juice over the whole show.

Tricks & Tips

Good to eat with a crisp cold beer like Crown Lager

Rating

Moorish. That is the yabbies not the Lager

Mexican Yabbie Barbs

Don’t let any Mexicans in on this recipe, or we’ll have to start thinking of something that rhymes with enchilada and hombre. And we don’t want to be the ones who send ‘Akubra’ broke because everybody wants a sombrero all of a sudden.

What you need

• Tomato Sauce
• Chilli Sauce
• Yabby tails
• Lemon

What you do:

Mix tomato sauce and Chilli sauce in equal amounts, add lemon juice and stir. Pour over yabby tails and leave for an hour. Then chuck the lot onto the barby or the camp oven floor and cook till they are a bit crispy.

Tricks & Tips:

Use a toothpick to eat with. King prawns also go well like this. As with any sort of marinade, it can get a bit messy. The marinade often burns before the meat is cooked, so a fairly low heat is preferable.

If you want to hook straight into your yabbies without worrying about the ‘pooh shute’ (you big girl) then pull it out before you cook them. Grab the yabby by either side of the head, just behind the claws. There are five ‘fins’ at the end of the tail, give the middle one a twist each way and the ‘pooh shute’ will come away with it.

Rating:

Top Tucker.

Bardie Grub Au Natural

Aboriginal peoples in this country have eaten Bardi Grubs and the more widely known Witchety Grubs since time began. Our modern day palettes have been educated to be repulsed at the thought of this, however, we can assure you that once the squeamishness is overcome you will find a food source that is not only delicious but extraordinarily high in protein. A relatively small amount can go along way energy wise. 

The Bardie Grub

If you use more energy collecting food than you gain in nutritional value by eating it, then I’m afraid you are going to starve to death. This happened to a few of the earlier explorers.

The best way to find Bardi’s is to find a local who knows what he is talking about. No doubt he will be in the local pub, so you will obviously have to do quite a bit of research in the pub on this matter. Basically catching them, though simple enough, is a bit of a bush art and is best learnt by demonstration.

Once a “Bardi Tree” has been found, chip away at the ground surface below until you find the holes. These could be a meter or more in length and will have a fat grub at the bottom. Thread a bit of wire with a little ball of wool tied to the end down the hole until you feel a bit of resistance at the end. This is the grub, just dangle the wool around his face until he gets cranky and grabs it, then in one smooth motion slip him up his tunnel and over your shoulder in one careful pull. It is really impressive to watch some of the old timers doing this, and you will have respect for the craft yourself after you have ripped the heads of half a dozen perfectly good Bardi’s

What you need

• As many live grubs as you want to eat.
• A clear path to the nearest tree (in case of involuntary rejection)

What you do

Grip by head with your fore finger and thumb, close your eyes and bite, chew, swallow, 
and hope for the best. Ron loves them, but has to admit that they are better cooked 
than eaten live.

Tricks & Tips:

Its not for everyone, in fact, Ron has cleared a few pubs proving to a disbeliever’s that he actually eats them.
They also are used for Murray Cod bait, though Ron’s tend not to make it to the river without already being eaten. He has often been in trouble for eating the bait.

Rating:

An acquired taste

Bush Prawns (Bardi Grubs)

There are two schools of thought about going to the trouble of cooking Bardi Grubs. On one hand, five Bardi grubs makes a delicious appetiser before a meal in the bush. On the other hand it doesn’t take a genius to realise that five Bardi grubs can be converted into two hundred pounds of cod and feed you for a month.

What you need:

• Bardi Grubs
• Olive oil preferably or any other cooking oil
• A nice chilled Australian white wine

What you do:

Cover the floor of the camp oven with just enough oil to cover the surface, heat it until the oil is simmering but not burning hot. Drop in the fat, juicy, live Bardi Grubs and fry gently. Thirty or so seconds on one side then roll them over and over until they are nice and golden in colour and slightly crispy on the outside.
You will see that the grubs will upon cooking stretch themselves right out so that they are thinner and longer than when you started.

Tricks & Tips:

Surprise your mates and serve this up as an entree with some chilled white wine. 
The texture is that of a delicate prawn, while the flavour will remind you of roasted nuts.

They are really delicious.

Rating:

Get on the Bush Telegraph about this one where ever you are, because it is probably the best kept secret in the bush.

Sulky Stew

We have all heard about the so-called “Hairs of the Dog” recipe’s for morning after cures of alcoholic indulgences. How some blokes rave on about raw eggs with Worcestershire sauce and tomato juice and vodka, well this is one that has been perfected over the years by Hully and may come in handy.

What you need:

• Hangover
• Swag
• Dog

What you do:

Wake up well after sunrise, in fact wake up when the sun is high and has been blasting down on your swag for a couple of hours so that when you finally “come to” you have lost a gallon of sweat, and your throat is as dry as the Strezlecki Track. The cockatoo’s will no doubt choose this moment to gather and screech with laughter at your pain, while the wedge tails will be circling you way up high in the sky, sensing another desert dehydration victim is imminent.

Stagger blindly to the nearest leaning post and get a good grip on it with one hand while you empty even more precious liquid from your bladder. Ponder how it could be at all possible to be so dry this morning when you drank so much liquid last night.

Attack the esky in search of any non-alcoholic liquid, barring vinegar, (a lethal mistake once made by Ron, to the amusement of the whole camp), take a long hard swig then head for the nearest dog and give him a kick for good measure.

Then drag your swag back under the nearest shady tree cursing all the while your so called mates, who in your belief are totally responsible for your present state. Swear off all further communication with them for life and then crawl back into the swag where you spend the rest of the day dozing, waking only briefly to sulk a bit more before slipping back into a death like sleep.

Tricks & Tips:

Always work out where the shade is going to be in the morning and plant your swag there before crashing. Also remember to keep an esky with cold water no more than an arms length from your swag. Make sure you kick someone else’s dog.

Rating:

Death could be a serious alternative and should be contemplated

Bush Tucker Recipes

After eating a hearty camp oven meal, we’ve watched many a campfire burn down to embers as we tossed verses to and fro under a blanket of outback stars. It was around one of these campfires that it was decided to put together a collection of bush tucker recipes that could be used by campers throughout Australia and assist them to step into the world of a couple of modern day Bushmen, Bush Poets from the Back of Bourke.

The bush tucker recipes can be cooked with basic tucker box ingredients to a standard that may have other wise been a bit ordinary. After your meal, you can turn the page and recite some original Bush Poetry and in so doing live out a lifestyle that has been idealised throughout history as being “Truly Australian”.

The recipes have been written to be “yarns” in their own right, making the book readable even from the comfort of the lounge chair at home. The most important ingredient is typically Australian. It’s a “no worries” approach to food and cooking. If you haven’t got the exact ingredients, substitute. If you haven’t got a substitute, use the exact ingredients. With any luck, you are enjoying a few beers or a nice Australian red anyway, so it probably won’t make that much difference. The idea is to make the recipes your own.

So whether you are camping somewhere in the bush or at home, dreaming that you are, read on and enjoy.

Back ‘o’ Bourke Tails And How To Cook ’em

A collection of original campfire meals and bush poetry written by Ron Wilson and Andrew Hull.

Originally intended to be published in book format it has now been provided in an interactive format for the web. The authors hope to have this book published in the future.

We hope you get a good laugh from this book and hopefully a good feed from the outback food recipees provided.

How to Use a Camp Oven

What you need

Camp oven

Shovel

Fire with heaps of coals

A bit of wire or steel doubled over at one end for a handle and bent at 90 degrees at the other to pick the lid up with

Something for lifting the oven on and off the coals if it has no handle, a hat for instance

A big rock or a couple of bricks or anything at all that you can sit the lid on and keep the bottom of it clean

Patience

 

Burning In
When you buy a new oven, “burn it in”. What you do is build a big fire and put your oven on top and get it hot. When you think it is hot enough it probably isn’t, cause we’re talking bloody hot. Rip it off the fire and drop a good lump of fat (not oil) in it. Then put on a leather glove and rub round and round the entire surface of the oven with a couple of sheets of rolled up newspaper. If it catches on fire just throw the lid on for a second or two, and be pleased with your self because you have probably nearly got it hot enough.

Keep rubbing the fat into your oven and it will burn itself into the porous surface of the metal, until eventually you can see that you have made a new surface, similar to what a BBQ plate looks like. That means you might be getting close so throw it back on the fire, get it hot and do it all over again. Make sure you do under the lid as well.

Repeat this until the surface of your oven is jet black and then keep rubbing with clean pieces of newspaper until there is not a drop of fat left in the oven. It should have a dull black hard surface and this will protect your oven for life. It will never rust.

Burning in an oven may take a while but it is important. We recommend you have a mate on stand-by to help keep the fluids up to you during this arduous task. The next thing to do with a new oven is cook “baked dinners” in it for a week. This will seal all those areas you are sure you covered but didn’t and will also ‘load’ your oven wall with flavour. Of course you don’t have to cook a baked dinner every day of the week, just make sure that your first few uses involve roasting meat and veggies and you’ll be right.

Ronnie Wilson

Camp Oven Temperatures

Assuming you already have a healthy campfire blazing, rather than try to balance your camp oven in the middle, shovel coals out of the fire to a cooking area and place the camp oven on them. The further you move from the fire, the more control you have over the heat and the more comfortable you will be while cooking. However, if you start making little piles of coals all through your campsite the one thing you will be sure to cook is the bottom of your feet. Coals will stay hot long after they stop glowing.

Do not put coals on the lid unless you are trying to brown the top of something or unless you only have access to really sad timber that only burns to ash and not coals and you just cant get any heat out of it. Some timber burns ‘hot and fast’, some burns ‘cool and long’, we recommend the stuff that burns ‘hot and long’, Gidgee wood being the ultimate in “Camp Oven Wood”.

In camp oven cooking, even the best cooks are at the mercy of raw materials. Peter,another good camp oven man, came out from the coast and was watching us prepare the evening meal, which was a big leg roast. He watched us sprinkle a shovel full of coals onto the ground and then throw the oven full of meat on it.

All this was well and good until we sat down to have a beer and recite some new poetry. Peter nearly had a fit. He thought we were going to be there all night unless we got coals packed around that oven like an anthill.

We then proceeded to have a polite discussion about the pros and cons of our different cooking styles and whose bloody place it is anyway. All became clear to Peter an hour later as he marveled over the quality of the “Gidgee” coals. They burn slow at a high, even heat, and take the guesswork out of camp oven cooking.

The shoe was on the other foot a few months later when we dropped in to sample Peter’s fine home brew. We were astounded at the amount of coals and mainly ash that he had to use on his camp oven to get anywhere. He actually has to completely bury his oven in ash and coals and replace this regularly so as to get any heat at all. The obvious problem with this is not only the amount of drinking time you miss out on while shoveling coals, but all the risk you run of getting ash and coal in your food.

So there you go, we can assure you that before long you will become an expert in judging the coal value of timber in different areas of Australia. That is why we will only describe the hotness of the oven and not the amount of coals to use in this book. You will just have to experiment.

Ronnie Wilson

« Previous Page