I always mange to eat well, even when camping.
I have just spent 12 day a camper van visiting remote places mainly on the West, North and North-east coast of Tasmania.
I have been to Tasmania on a number of occasions but was not very familiar with the number of lakes in the centre of the island, the west coast – Queenstown, Cape Sorell, Macquarie Harbour and Strahan, The Tarkine forests, Corinna, Arthur River and West Point, then along the north coast to the east…Lake William National Park, Binalong Bay, Bay of Fires (just to name some places).
My partner and I (and sometimes with a couple of friends) ate oysters, fish and excellent beef and chicken, fabulous potatoes, excellent cheeses, eggs, wine, apples and all sorts of vegetables.
The photo below shows red lentils and carrots (cooked with a curry the previous night) and braised red cabbage with apples and caraway seeds from two nights before.
I cannot resist foraging and managed to find pine mushrooms, blackberries and wild fennel – not difficult.
I did not take photos of all the food, but here are a couple.
I always cook pulses, even when I am away. These are mashed white beans with rosemary and olive oil drizzled on top.
And there was fish, but often hard to buy…plenty of fishermen but no shops to sell it.
Tasmania….
How beautiful….
…and varied.
The chicken cooked on the BBQ is a version of pollo alla diavola. Most of the time this chicken is cooked with a weight on top and usually called pollo al mattone (chicken cooked under a brick). . They were small chickens so this may have made them more pliable. I have written a post about Pollo alla Diavola in an earlier post. I did not use a brick on this occasion but we made sure that the chickens were quite flat
Use a small chicken (younger and small in size – approx 1 k). Once butterflied, marinade it for at least an hour in oregano, black pepper, salt, extra virgin olive oil and grated lemon peel. Alla diavola means ‘as the devil cooks it’, therefore add plenty of pepper and use a moderately hot flame. Press the chicken quite flat. Turn once after about 20 minutes. Cook for about 40-50 minutes, remove chicken from the fire, cover with foil and a tea towel on top and allow it to rest for about 10 minutes to finish cooking. it will be quite coloured on the outside but it will taste great.
What a beautiful wilderness! I can imagine you had a wonderful time! We always butterfly our chicken — it really is so easy to do and then it makes it cook so much better. In fact, we’ve done a tutorial on it. When we did a pollo al mattone we used a cast iron skillet for the mattone and then roasted potatoes in the skillet while we bbq’d the chicken. It certainly doesn’t look like you went hungry while you were “roughing” it. :-)
My photos do not do it (Tasmanai) justice. Yes, I too have a cast iron skillet I use to hold the chicken down. The tutorial on how to do it sounds interesting!
Marisa Raniolo Wilkins