Barbecue great fresh food – Cornwall Style

Cook your Cornish Cream Tea on a Camp Fire!

Barbecues make summer memories, whether it’s on the beach with a camp fire or back by your tent on a little disposable barbecue. Why not make your food part of the memory too? Forget those supermarket burgers that you can get back home, try to rustle up a proper Cornish feast. Here’s some of our favourite barbecue and camp fire food to get your taste buds tingling.

Barbecue experts listen up – you can have a barbecue cream tea! Think we’re joking? We’re not. Read on…Barbecue fish –it has to be mackerel.

Blue striped silver and straight from the sea, line caught from the fishermen if you can get up early enough, or maybe you can catch your own. You can get fresh fish from fishmongers in Cornwall, who provide the best that the sea has to offer.  Mackerel is an oily, firm fish which stands up well to outdoor cooking and eating. Opinion is split in the Cornish Horizon offices, but here are our two favourite ways to cook mackerel.Long sunset

A wine glass view of sunset

Barbecue or flame cook your mackerel fillets, add nothing. Don’t let them dry out, then douse with Worcestershire Sauce, peel off the skin and slap between buttered ciabatta bread that’s been warming on the coals, add salt to taste if you must – but the sauce is already salty. Sink your teeth into the warm white flesh, with the brown dorsal meat running with juice and enjoy. Barbecue Cornish style doesn’t get simpler than that. Best enjoyed with a chilled glass of white and a long beach sunset. Long beach sunsets are when the tide is out and the water is a long way away, but the wet pools on the sand are lit up in gold. Perfect. Best viewed through your wine glass!Barbecue mackerel with horseradish.

Take your mackerel, and marinade with red chilli and lemon. It is a firm fish and it’ll hold up to this. Cook as above, but add just a dab of horseradish – yes –horseradish, before serving on a bed of green salad with a simple seasoned dressing – no more flavours to compete with the marinade. For easy barbecue eating you can always slap the dripping fish into hunks of warm bread, dipped in a spare marinade. To cool the chilli fish slake thirst with cold beer or chilled white wine.Local meat for your Cornwall barbecue

For a meat course, use local cuts of whatever takes your fancy and fits your budget. Stack the barbecue high and create a peppery marinade to smother the meat. Your goal is to get everyone on the beach or campground wishing they were eating with you tonight. Try boiling potatoes, wrapping them in silver foil and giving them ten minutes in the coals. Turn them out into a dish and add ridiculous amounts of salt, pepper and butter.  Break up slightly with a fork and add spoonfuls to your meat laden plates. You could have salads too –but do you really want them?Barbecuing for veggies is easy with local produce.

Fresh vegetables, grilled with a simple marinade partner hard, full fat cheeses, grilled until they bubble, or skewered and held over flames until they turn golden brown. A special mention here for Cornish cheese. We have some of the best cheese in the world and plenty of local shops where you can try before you buy.  For example, Cornish Cheese, Lynher Dairies, Newlyn Cheese Shop, The Cheese Shop in Truro As with all food in these parts, if you can, please taste and try local rather than heading for the big shed supermarkets. There are many farmers markets in Cornwall, where you can shop around for barbecue ingredients.Barbecued Cream Tea Recipe

Veggies catered for, what else is left to barbecue? Oh yes, dessert. A barbecue or camp fire Cornish cream tea. This is easy and we’ve saved the best ‘til last. It’s simple, tasty and great fun for grown-ups and children too.

Mix plain flour and water until you have a firm dough that is sticky to touch but holds its shape when patted into rough dough balls. Don’t add salt. Then, get a green stick, that’s a stick that is still living by the way, so it lasts longer in the fire. Your barbecue stick needs to be about one and a half cm in diameter and long enough to hold over the heat without your fingers burning. Peel the bark off from one end – about 15cm. Twist a generous handful of “scone” dough around the peeled bit of stick. You want to completely cover the peeled end with dough about an inch thick – like a sock. Toast over coals or flames until the dough goes golden brown and comes away from the stick easily when you ease it off. Careful, it will be hot!Camp Fire Cream Tea

Cooking your own “scone” is easy, just take care with the flames!

Fill with jam. Top with clotted cream which will melt if hot. Eat. Get messy. Then do it again. There you have it – barbecue Cornish Cream Tea.Barbecued Cream Tea. Charred around the edges, hot jam and melting clotted cream. Yum.

Barbecued Cream Tea. Charred around the edges, hot jam and melting clotted cream. Eat it fast and cook another. Yum.