Underground Mutton Maryland (Rabbit)

Rabbits turn fodder into protein that can be consumed by humans, faster and more efficiently than any other animal on the planet. They also breed fast and can adapt to extraordinary climatic changes. They are also bloody good to eat.

What you need

  • One rabbit per man
  • Or you can just buy some chicken Maryland pieces from the butchers
  • Tin of tomatoes, or preferably some nice ripe fresh ones
  • A couple of onions, sliced
  • A couple of Zucchinis, chopped
  • Garlic cloves, crushed
  • Chilli Powder or chilli sauce
  • Couple of tablespoons of oil
  • Australian red wine
  • Water or tomato juice

What you do

Cut rabbits into four pieces. Drop garlic, chilli, onions and rabbit pieces into a hot camp oven and stir while it browns a little. Splash in some red wine when nice and hot, chuck in all of the rest of the ingredients along with a cup of water, or better still tomato juice, and throw on the lid. For this one you want all of the juices to stay in the pot and boil out, so keep the lid lifting to a minimum and use your ear to keep the oven simmering at a nice steady pace.
When half cooked have a sip of the juice to make sure it is spicy enough, if not add more chilli.
It’s ready when the meat is falling off the bone, usually takes a sixpack or so to get this affect.

Tricks & Tips

The trick with rabbits is getting a good one. Make sure it has nice clear eyes and generally looks young and healthy and it usually will be. 
Don’t be frightened to let it all marinate for a day before cooking, it will only make it even better.

Rating

A great feed, bursting with spicy flavours.

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Burnt Duck

On the big jobs in the bush, tempers can be measured in direct correlation to temperature and hours of work. The longer and hotter it is, the shorter the tempers become. Usually there is no problems, everyone is doing it as tough as the man beside him, but there is one thing that can bring total anarchy in a bush camp, and that is a bad cook.

Where a good camp cook will have a tired but nourished and happy crew, a bad one will have the whole crew plotting cruel and slow methods of murdering him during the entire working day. It some how seems to work out that the worse the cook the better the bloody fighter he is.

Sometimes a small riot can be started simply from a poor old honest cook making a simple mistake and stuffing up the main meal for a camp full of tired hungry tough bushies.

What you need

  • A camp full of tired hungry tough bushies
  • A big heap of fat juicy black ducks
  • A fire
  • A camp oven 
  • A pub near by

What you do

Go to great lengths to prepare the duck, arrange them into the camp ovens, shovel heaps of coals around them and “duck in” (no pun intended) to the local pub for a “quick one” before the men knock off.

On arrival at the pub, promptly forget the time and get plastered. Arrive home two and a half hours late and lift the camp oven lids to find what resembles bush fire victims where the ducks used to be.
Then run like hell and don’t go back, ever!

Tricks & Tips

When you first realise how late you are, stay in the pub, don’t even go back for your pay, just look for another job and be thankful your still alive and not nailed to a tree with your skinning knifes.

Rating

Better to do ten rounds with Tyson.

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Curried Duck Tits

Wood Ducks are the most common of your wild duck varieties and are often discarded as being too tough and not having enough meat on them to worry about plucking them. But you don’t have to pluck them anyway, just make a quick incision with a sharp knife on the breast, stick your fingers in and rip the skin back exposing the breast meat. The skin is not worth worrying about and neither are the drumsticks or wings. So all you are after is its breast meat. Just slice each breast off the breastbone and throw the rest of the duck away.

What you need

  • A pair of breasts per man (sliced)
  • Plain Flour or Corn Flour
  • Onions chopped one per man
  • Spuds diced one per man
  • Can of peas
  • Any other veggies you have in the tucker box
  • Curry Powder
  • Worcestershire Sauce
  • Tomato Sauce
  • Cooking Oil
  • Water

What you do

In a hot oven add half a cup of cooking oil then when it is hot throw in the breasts and the onion. Toss it around in the oven browning it all up on the outside then throw in a good couple of tablespoons of curry and mix that in for another couple of minutes.

Then just through in all of your veggies, add a couple of tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce the same with the tomato sauce, then add just enough water to not quite cover the mixture. Make sure you bring the oven temperature back up so that it is simmering evenly and not boiling flat out then throw the lid on and head for the esky.

As usual the longer it cooks for the better the outcome, so sit back and enjoy a few beers and the sunset.

Tricks & Tips

Always cook enough so that you have plenty left over. Then re-heat it for lunch the following day, it will be twice as good as the first time around.

Rating

Nothing like a good pair of breasts we always say.

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Stuffed Pigeon

Pigeon is something that us bush cooks put on the menu now and again just to show that we can do fancy recipes just as well as our five star restaurant chef buddies in the city. But in true bushy style we don’t go to anywhere near the lengths that a chef does to make something edible.

Now lets face it, there is basically no meat on a pigeon to speak of. To get a decent feed you would have to eat about twenty of them and I think by the time you plucked and prepared them you would use more energy than what you gained from eating them. So as far as we’re concerned pigeons can get stuffed.

What you need

  • Pigeons, about two per man is good
  • Sausages
  • Finely chopped onions
  • Sage
  • Cooking oil
  • Water
  • Australian red wine

What you do

Shoot as many pigeons as you need then sit down and pluck them and clean them. Then shoot some sausages and gut them as well, they should be easy enough to catch.

Mix the finely chopped onions with plenty of sage and then add it to the sausage meat. Add a splash of red wine to the mix and stir it all together for a couple of minutes. If you can, let the mixture mature for a couple of hours in the esky. If you cant, carry on. Now just stuff each pigeon with the sausage meat mixture then arrange them in rows on the bottom of the camp oven. Splash a bit of the good old Australian red wine over the top of the pigeons, then sprinkle a little oil over them as well.

Add a very small amount of water, just to give a bit of steam while cooking, then place oven on the coals and sprinkle a few on the lid to brown as they cook.

They should be ready in about twenty minutes, enough time to sit down and enjoy that red wine. After all it has already been corked.

Tricks & Tips

Why not have a romantic firelight dinner using this recipe with just the Missus, the sound of summer crickets and the moon silently watching over head. Imagine the firelight flickering on the old river gums, illuminating the little white table cloth with its setting for two. She would gaze lovingly into your eyes, completely overwhelmed by romance, who knows, maybe she will let you go on that fishing trip with your mates next week after all?

Rating

Bloody good for something that is stuffed, which is what you will be if you mention that fishing trip at the table and ruin the atmosphere. How many times have you wished you had paid that little bit extra attention at school, or tried that little bit harder at university? Perhaps the smartest of us all don’t have any diplomas or certificates, just the nose for a good deal.

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Murray Cod Cutlets

Murray Cod are a gigantic inland fish leftover from ancient times. They live in the very veins of outback NSW and Victoria in the mighty Murray and Darling rivers and tributaries. If you haven’t camped by the banks of one of these rivers yet, then you simply haven’t lived.

The fish can grow to enormous proportions compared to their environment, growing well in excess of 100 pounds, which is old money for ‘bloody huge’. These days, a 20 to 30 pound fish will readily take a lure and make for some good sport fishing, and give you an esky full of meat to go home with. Anything bigger than this, just take its photo and return it, as we need fish like this in our rivers to catch and kill the rabbits of the river system, the European Carp. The big buggers aren’t much good for eating anyway and a photo and the satisfaction of doing the right thing are far better than a moth riddled trophy with plastic eyes hanging on the wall.

Murray Cod have another almost supernatural power, and that is they somehow tend to grow longer and get heavier in pubs after they have been caught. It’s a wonder more fishermen aren’t killed by these monsters flopping about the floors of inland pubs.

What you need

  • A Murray Cod too big to fillet. (Lucky bugger for catching it) 
  • Sharp knife 
  • Flour 
  • Lemons 
  • Black fresh ground pepper 
  • Lift to the pub

What you do

Rush to the pub and spend an hour or so bragging about the monster you winched up the bank with your Landcruisers power winch earlier on, buy a slab of beer and head back to camp before the fish gets to big kill.

When you catch your fish, kill him with a pointy sharp knife stabbed directly into his brain. He will die instantly and painlessly and the meat will be remarkably better. We use this method now with all fish that we catch and some restaurants will only buy fish they know have been killed in this way.

Simply slice fish cross ways over his back, dust in flour and drop into a simmering camp oven with half an inch of olive oil simmering away in it.

Cook until golden brown on each side and serve with lemon slices and black pepper.

Tricks & Tips

Hang the fish up by his nose end and make a cut through his tail for an inch or so up into his flesh. Let him bleed for an hour. During this time you can scale him and give him a good wash. Dry with plenty of scrunched up newspapers to remove all traces of sticky slime, this will taint the flavour if you don’t do it.

I often get told about Murray cod and Yellowbelly being muddy to taste, mostly this is because of bad preparation. The other part which is best removed is the fat line on either side of the backbone. It is quiet prominent and will give the fish a strong oily taste that is not liked by some people.

Rating

Barramundi doesn’t hold a candle to it.

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Yellowbelly Surprise

For when you want to impress that special someone.

What you need

  • 1 tin of seafood bisque (its a can of soup) and the same amount of water
  • A couple of thinly diced carrots
  • A sprinkling of peas
  • Any type of fish at all except Yellowbelly
  • Bread crumbs

What you do

Lay fish on bottom of pot, combine everything else except for the bread crumbs and pour over fish. Simmer very gently for ten minutes and then sprinkle breadcrumbs over the whole show. Remove all heat from bottom of oven and place on lid for long enough to brown the breadcrumbs a golden brown.

Tricks & Tips

When during the meal someone asks you why it is called Yellowbelly Surprise which they always do you say SURPRISE its not Yellowbelly. 
I usually use a dish to put the ingredients in and cook it dish and all inside the camp oven.

Rating

A real Show Pony. Very rich

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Kellogg’s Yellowbelly

Yellowbelly is without doubt a far better fish than any traditional seafood. It has a tender white flesh and delicate flavour. And you will not eat a better crumbed fish prepared in this manner. Thanks again go to a friend and legendary camp oven cook, John, for this recipe which cannot, under any circumstances, fall into the hands of a fish and chip shop-owner.

What you need

  • Yellowbelly fillets
  • Corn crumbs (There on the same shelf as the breadcrumbs mate)
  • Cornflour (Its on the same shelf as the flour mate)
  • Egg and milk beaten up
  • 2 Sheets of newspaper
  • Olive oil

What you do

Sprinkle corn flour onto a sheet of newspaper and do the same to the corn crumbs. Place fillet onto flour and roll the edges of the newspaper around till it is covered all over. Dip into the beaten up egg and make wet. Then repeat step one on the corn crumbs. Place in a quarter of an inch of olive oil that is simmering not bubbling and cook until golden brown.

Tricks & Tips

We all know out here at the back of Bourke that the Darling River Yellowbelly is far superior to your common variety. It is safer to have your oil too hot than too cold. The fish does not require much cooking, but the crumb coating may go soggy if the oil is not hot enough.

Rating

Gone Fishing…

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