[Sca-cooks] A Question of Spit Roasting....

[Susan Laing]

Hi ho Everybody!

One day left of work until I'm on a months leave <yaayyy!!!> and one week
more until I head off to Yass, New South Wales (Australia) for Rowany
Festival (think Pennsic but no golf carts, or unceasing drums or uber-huge
crowds :-p)

I'll be acting as second camp cook (Big YAYYY! - feeding lots of hungry
people is my idea of fun!) and have been faced with a cooking challenge - to
wit - roasting some legs of lambs a-la-spit-roasting over the fire coals.

I must admit that I'm somewhat of a wuss (Australian coll. translation
afraid... scaredy-cat...) about cooking over a fire. Luckily we'll have gas
burners for 90% of the cooking or I'd be doing a "Drakey" a day in humourous
near-death by fire adventures :-p.

I've looked up some of the various web articles on Fire- spit roasting but
am still a bit confused.

Can anyone advise me on -
*how to gauge & maintain the fire coals heat
*how long the roasts are likely to need cooking (they're for serving at
dinner at about 6-7 pm)
*what type of basting sauce is best (recipes anyone??)
*and does using a long sprig of rosemary to bast on the sauce help add to
the flavour or is it just something that looked good on the recently
screened "dining with Henry the 8th"??

Any input gladly accepted

Marion de Paxford
(the currently-unscorched! :-p)