[Sca-cooks] Camp Kitchen Tips Needed

[David Friedman]

>Also, if anyone has the goods on the best 'camp oven', either 
>commercial or make-shift, I'd love
>to hear about it.  We are currently limited to grilled and 
>sauteed/stewed items.  Of course, we do
>have a trailer mounted Grill (compliments of our catering company) 
>so we can do up the BBQ for
>about 400 people.  That's not a problem.  What we want are fresh 
>baked breads and pastries for our
>brave fighters, and fresh roasted meats for my belly.  I am pushing 
>more and more for period
>foods, but we'll need to get a bit more organized first :)

I'm afraid I don't have experience of camp cooking on the scale you 
describe. I did want to suggest, however, that you look into period 
recipes for producing breads and pastries without an oven. 
Possibilities include:

Murakaba--known in our family as "stack of pancakes." You make a very 
sticky semolina sourdough. You fry a pancake of it, turn it over, 
smear the cooked side with a bit more of the sticky dough, turn it 
over, smear the cooked side ...   . Continue until it is as thick as 
you want. All of it was at some point near the surface, so all of it 
is cooked, even though you only have a frying pan.

When done, turn it on its edge, roll around the frying pan just to be 
sure you got the edge parts, then punch holes in it with the handle 
of a wooden spoon and pour in hot honey and melted butter.

Indian flat breads. There's a 16th century recipe for one in the Ain i Akbari.

Oat cakes. For that I have only a conjectural recipe, partly based on 
Froissart's comment.

All of these are in the Miscellany, on my web site.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com