Desert island kitchen

What do chefs cook when you take them away from their commercial grills and make them go Bear Grylls? They get resourceful. Alexandra Carlton finds out how they cook in the wild.

- By Alexandra Carlton

Christine Manfield, Arkaba Homestead, SA and Kittawa Lodge, TAS

I save used tea bags for fire starters. You dry them out, dip in liquid candle wax to coat and dry again, I learnt this trick from the team at Arkaba Homestead when I was staying there last year. Three or four is all you need for a big fire and away you go. We always do a cook over the fire as one of the dinners on those trips – Spencer Gulf southern calamari, whole fish, quail, kangaroo. Auntie Pauline, a local Adnyamathanha Elder, stays with us and does some yarning round the campfire. I remember the first time I cooked kangaroo for her – rare, as I do it – and she said, “Oh, darl. Too bloody for me. I like it really well done.” That’s a bit of a funny inside joke between us.

Manuel Diaz, Nativo, NSW

You can slow-cook inside a pineapple instead of a cooking pot. I usually do this with pork as it provides a lot of flavour. You simply remove the pineapple top and then cut the insides of the pineapple, and use the pineapple pulp later for cooking or eating. Add meat, some veggies like onions, tomato, capsicum and garlic, drizzle with olive oil, salt, and add a bit of water to the bottom. Cover with the pineapple top, put it on the grill and let it cook slowly; the juices will combine with the meat and you’ll end up with a great meal.

A few years ago, my partner and I went on a trip to Zapotengo, an isolated beach near Puerto Escondido in Oaxaca, where we stayed in tents with a few friends. We wanted to boil some eggs for breakfast but we had no water. On the way to the campsite I remember seeing a lagoon, connected to the beach. I walked for about 20 minutes as it started to get darker.