A wilder way to cook

In line with this month’s cover feature, Jude Kereama, Head Chef and owner of Porthleven’s Kota and Kota Kai, discusses the joys of wild cooking.

Growing up in New Zealand was all about the great outdoors. All our family holidays were spent either camping in the most beautiful spots in New Zealand on beaches and lakes or trekking to a cabin on one of the various bush tracks with family friends. Endless summer days were full of adventure and along the way we would make lots of new friends with other families. I absolutely loved camping and there were always games of camp cricket, rugby, baseball and volleyball to keep us entertained when we weren’t adventuring in the water. The days would last for ever and the cricket game would only end because of fading daylight. We would all then sit around the fire and have our dinner and after all the exercise, we were all mighty hungry!

Back then, we always seemed to be the best fed kids and we would often share our food with others in the camp who were curious to see what we had cooking. Dad always had something to forage for and he and his friends would go off fishing and come back with some fish to barbeque. The best things to forage for were all the shellfish that were abundant. Green lipped mussels, cockles, surf clams, crayfish (crawfish or spiny lobster they call it here), sea weeds. But one favourite thing that we used to forage for were Blue Swimmer crabs. They are a medium-size crab with a much softer shell than its Cornish cousin. They are super sweet and perfect for my mum’s Singapore Chilli Crab recipe. My mother never knew how to pack lightly and our food bags were always full of her favourite ingredients to cook with! That meant there was definitely a lot of Asian ingredients that travelled with us on our epic long holidays. Mum’s Singapore Chilli Crab is one of my favourite dishes of all time. Sweet, spicy, and punchy with ginger, garlic, and coriander, I would pick up the crab, pick the meat and suck on the bodies to get every last morsel I could find! We would then mop up the delicious sauce with loaves of white bread smeared thick with butter. Oh, it was like heaven to me – albeit a sticky, messy one! After tea we could run and have a sundowner swim and come back and warm up beside the fire and if we were lucky, maybe a marshmallow to roast before a well-needed sleep. I loved that crab dish so much that I had to replicate a dish in honour of it on my menu at Kota Kai. I have used a whole soft shell crab with a crisp spiced batter, mango slaw, seaweed mayo, Singapore chilli crab sauce, coriander, and all popped into a bao bun. Homage to my mum’s dish. It is still one of the most popular dishes on the menu.

I love wild cooking. It can produce the best meals as you sit somewhere beautiful outdoors and cook on a camp stove, portable barbeque or an open fire. Living in Porthleven and having the beach down the road is perfect for cooking barbeques. A typical one for me would be fresh mackerel fillets, scallops, and a bit of marinated beef, all cooked in courses. It is so much nicer to cook in courses; to a lot of people it seems a bit crazy, as most tend to throw everything on at once. I have a portable Japanese Konro grill, which is like a small barbeque that I use. It is perfect for cooking food over hot coals for a few hours. It has so much control over how hot the coals are, so you don’t end up burning your food to a crisp while it is still raw in the middle.

During the recent pandemic, many of us found new ways to make the most of the outdoors. I personally spent lockdown with my best friends as they were my support bubble. We spent days in the woods beside their house, wild cooking. We had a fire pit that we cooked everything on, from barbeques, flat breads and baked potatoes in foil, to cast-iron pot stews (Croatian Peka), dauphinoise potatoes, smoked flamed caponata, whole chickens, leg of lamb, beef steaks with chimichurri, and anything we could possibly heat! It was so much fun sitting around the fire sharing great food and stories with my best mates, my son, and my godchildren. The children were also in charge of lighting the fires and gathering wood, which is an invaluable lesson to learn. It was also great for them to learn how to cook on the fire and to know when to turn the food. As well as cooking, we went foraging and came back with sacks full of wild garlic that we put into everything from soups and pesto, to salsa verde, pizza, even as a side dish. It was so joyous to cook over fire in the wild.

To anybody who loves the outdoors, I would say give wild cooking a go and enjoy the freedom of it. A few tips are to make sure you look after your fire properly and to have a shovel nearby to push embers away, or to push them closer to the food depending on how much heat you need. Be prepared, and bring everything you need in one go so you’re not traipsing back and forth for extra equipment. Use cast iron pots as they are the most fire proof and are great conductors of heat. Also, use a wire mesh over the fire; chuck mussels straight onto it and use tongs to take them as they open. Delicious!

Kota Kai
Celtic House, Harbour Head, Porthleven TR13 9JY
01326 727707
info@kotakai.co.uk
www.kotakai.co.uk