Thread: NZ Forest Service Cook Book

What a good addition to the resource section.
I notice so many of the modern day hunters will sit around the hut nibbling on noodles, lentils and scroggin and stuff until you turn out a bloody great camp oven feed. It seems they have never learnt to cook. What a pity. Good food plays an important part in the enjoyment we get out of our hunting trips. The camp oven goes everywhere with us. In the days of Internal Affairs and NZFS a poor cook was a lowly sort of creature. I have seen a man sacked for turning out a poor bread. I thought it was wrong at the time the guy had the makings of a good hunter but as the headman explained. If the guy could not take his turn at cooking and produce satisfactory meals to feed a hut full of hunters, track cutters or hut builders he was a liability. This is one of the reason this cookbook was written to help the average cook produce really good food.
These are great recipes..The bread recipe in particular is great. Holding your hand under the camp oven and counting is an amazingly accurate method of judging temperatures . We still turn out loaves of camp oven bread at reunions cooked to this same recipe.

The baking and pudding section is particularly good. In one hut I remember (Ruahine Corner)we had a sock, a bloody big football sock blue and yellow ( I often wonder whose team colours it represented) it hung up above the fire and was not to be worn under the penalty of death. In this sock we made some of the best steamed and boiled plum puddings you ever tasted. We played cards or drew straws for the toe.