The first two are camp-fire styles:

• 1.   DROVER’S STYLE CAMP-FIRE COOKERY
• 2.   ABORIGINAL CAMP-FIRE COOKERY
  The third style could be done in the camp-fire or in the kitchen.
• 3.   SETTLER and CONVICT RECIPES
  The last  two would be done largely in the kitchen:
• 4.  The FARMLAND & Country Women's Authority STYLE.
• 5. BUSH FOOD GOURMET.

A rustic Australian Cookery Experience
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 The “COOK-HOUSE” MENU System
C o p y r i g h t, TDC, 2000
 A Uniquely Australian Bistro Format
The dining style you have waited 200 years for
by “Bluey” Quilty

WHAT ARE THE FUNDAMENTALS of the “COOK-HOUSE” Menu System?

The “COOK-HOUSE” menu system is based broadly on FIVE PRINCIPAL AUSTRALIAN MENU Systems:
The first two are camp-fire styles

• 1. DROVER’S STYLE CAMP-FIRE COOKERY
• 2. ABORIGINAL CAMP-FIRE COOKERY

• 3. SETTLER and CONVICT RECIPES
• The last  two would be done largely in the kitchen:

• 4.  The FARMLAND & CWA STYLE
• 5. BUSH FOOD GOURMET

The Drover’s Cook Incorporated expects that, when placed together in an active environment with both rustic cooks and professional chefs, these menus, with their techniques and recipes, will spark off streams of fusion within that style.

It is the author’s intention that both authentic original versions and new versions be served side by side in the menu.

The dream is that, as a consequence, a true cuisine nationale shall emerge.
 

-"Kissin’ don’t last, cookery do.." - Old Australian shearer’s sayin’.

The induction of CAMP OVENS (known in the USA as "Dutch Ovens") into restauranting is the chief innovation of the Drover' Cook Project's Cook-House development program.
IN a letter to Mr Roger Furphy of Furphy Finery, camp oven manufacturer of Shepparton, Victoria, Australia dated 8th of April, 2000, I said:

“My major aim is to induct Australia's most unique ethnic cookery technique, Camp Oven work using wood-fired coal ash and flame, into household entertaining and restaurating.  This will push the demand for campware to unprecedented limits.  I am warning you that you will need to consider increasing your capacity from about 8 months from now.  Your following will increase at least 20% and will not return to its previous level ever.
Cook-House Association:
“I intend to form a newsletter forum on Australian menu systems with the name "The Australian Cook-House Association".  Chefs will focus on black iron cookery in a way you could not have imagined before.  The Cook-House idea will take the Australianisation interest far beyond Bush Food.  It will create an authentic national menu and a beautifully rustic service system.  The central experience, the use of coal ash and flame stoked camp-ware, will take the international audience by storm during the Olympic period immediately coming up.

“The virtue of camp-ware is that it can create a 2 & 3 star menu in highly novel, bulk recipes for service in the traditional file-up manner of camp-fires.  IN a dining system involving 1/5th gourmet bush-food items, the first 3/5th will be much more accessibly priced. The gourmet aspect will  - generate reputation; - permit chefs to use the camp-ware and the camp-fire kitchen to creatively fuse gourmet and camp-fire methods.
 

I concluded:

 “I say that we can only imagine where this will end.  The  Cook-House system will unbolt the gate for camp-ware manufacturers unto an unknown horizon.  Prudent management of  the campaign nationally and internationally will mean that Furphy Finery can expect to become a leader in a new field of commercial cook-ware, world-wide.  You can expect that:
 - The camper use of camp-ware will expand  BUT
 -  A home entertaining camp oven system  and
  - The Cook-House restaurating system  will mean that a new hemisphere will emerge, meaning that such expanding camping use will be matched by a surge in use out of the bush.  “
“Keep the coals a-burnin’”
yers

 

for

• DROVER’S STYLE CAMP-FIRE COOKERY
• ABORIGINAL CAMP-FIRE COOKERY

The Cook-House bistro or dining house shall feature  a camp-fire  or a Camp Oven stove.  The former will be bricked or stoned-in and covered with a cowling which will draught all smoke.  The latter will be invented in such a manner as to permit coal-ash cookery to be executed efficiently.

The aspect of the Cook-House in which the Drover’s Style is worked will be called The Camp-fire Kitchen.  In this area, the cook for this section will be called The Drover’s Cook.  In practise, a series of guest cooks may be enlisted, since there are many professionals acting as entertainers in this unique field.  Ultimately, the Chef who shall control the kitchen shall also become an aficionado of the Camp-fire Kitchen.  The facilities and techniques of the camp-fire shall be an integral part of his or her artistic development, and a truly Australian 4-star standard shall emerge and it shall be called Cook-House.

Boiler Grates:  Steel grates places over the flames to permit flame cookery in items such as boiler work and flame grilling.  May be cast iron.

Coal drum barrows:  Split drums welded onto steel-wheeled barrows will be used to cultivate loads of coal ash and to off-load cold ash.

“Devil’s Bath”: an ingenious invention designed to hold food or to slow cook food in camp ovens.  Two shelves of cast iron pillars and steel trays will hold trays of coal ash.  Camp ovens are to be placed in the coals.

Butcher’s block or a clean-up stump:  The Drover’s Cook may appreciate a working surface for any preparation necessary at the fireplace which cannot be done in the kitchen.

Camp-ware:  Camp Ovens, camp-fire griller, handling irons, stakes, tripods,  camp kettle, camp boiler,

Stainless steel Rabbit Shovel:  To effect the Rabbit on a Shovel  menu item from the recipe book of that same name, a clinical equivalent of the bushman’s shovel.

Some features which the Author expects will create a stir amongst the clientele:

The Aboriginal Camp Cookery System:
Equipment: Cookery in the Aboriginal style can be effected with exactly the same equipment as the Drover’s style.  Some materials, such as bark,  sand and particular woods are used to effect this style.
  Coolamons and grinding stones might be appreciated by a cook to effect this style in the original manner.  Aboriginal cooks will be invited to work out front in the camp-fire.

HOT SAND COOKERY:   Trays used for holding hot coals in the Devil’s Bath will be useful for hot sand cookery.  With hot sand cookery in aboriginal camps, shellfish foods are submerged in hot sand and baked off.  To avoid any prospect of burns in hot sand, to permit a modern clinically clean version of the same method, I will use iron trays from the Devil’s Bath holding bay, filled with sand which will be heated over the flames.

This approach will permit the same tactic in a Camp Oven Stove in future.

FIRE ROASTING:  .  Originally, the fresh-killed beast was gutted and applied with fur and skin still on.  In the COOK-HOUSE,  whole sides of butchered meats will be plunged into the fire and roasted. The cut will then be cleaned and carved.

Bush Flour dampers:
The aboriginal camp style is where the peak menu,  Bush Food Gourmet, is bound to work hand in glove with the camp fire.

Bunya nuts and wattle are two sources of starch which were turned into flour and made into doughs for bread.  Johnny cakes made of these were done in the coals.

The third style could be done in the camp-fire or in the kitchen

The history of Australian menu development demands that the  COOK-HOUSE menu includes some reflection of the experience of our penal colony and of the settlers who followed them.

The Convict recipes will be extremely simple, (such as Brown beef, mash and a crusty roll) and therefore will present us with a chance to offer robust meals at low prices - as with the Drover’s style.

The Settler recipes will add a wonderful dimension of comfort and reflection of the domestic dining preferences of the British Isles from which they came.

Service and preparation system:
 The kitchen and the camp-fire will be places where the Convict and Settler aspects of the menu can be prepared and finished.   Most kitchens will be highly adequate for each.  It  may be of vocational interest for a chef and his/her cooks to have early-style equipment, materials and methods.

Of the Cook-House menu’s Five Aspects
The fourth aspect is

From settlement on the land all over this vast continent to the emergence of the Country Women’s Authority (or CWA, which sprang up during World War I), the farmer’s wives and their female family members and male and female staff upheld the historically crucial support role of victualler to the men who held fast to the unpredictable wide brown land of Australia.

Several governing factors gave rise to unique consequences for provendore, its storage and the methods used to prepare and cook it for the dining table, the stock camp and the travelling hamper.

These governing factors were remoteness, the historic peer pressure of Victorian society in Mother England,  techniques of preserving,  and advancing wealth, generally speaking of the squatters in particular.
 The Country Women’s Authority emerged as a body to advise women whose role became almost nationalized in the effort to produce food for the nation and to export to troops in the Middle East, Turkey and France during World War I.   District chapters of the CWA convened to enhance the way of life of farming women.  The unique access of  these women to produce gave rise to strong focus on cookery.
 This was particularly so in the shadow of English parentage and in contexts of advancing wealth.  Women whose mothers  - or more-so, mothers-in-law - lived well in the Victorian age expected a lot of their female descendants.  These peers expected that the younger generation will be ladies and hosts.

 In contexts of squattocracy, - i.e., where squatting, the practice of assuming control of vast acres of land, existed despite land having often been the native land of aboriginals for millennia - wives were expected to emulate the very best the Empire had to offer in hosting.  Whilst Escoffier and Cesar Ritz wowed the hotel attending public of London and Paris, this standard was bound to be extra-ordinarily high.
 It is in fact on homesteads of cattle and sheep stations of the squatting era that the term “Cook-house” emerged.  The cook-house was a separate kitchen where all the stoves and ovens were kept.  This was away from the main kitchen.  Necessarily, because the existing heat in the house kitchen was already enough in the warm months to cook a householder’s temper.

Real genius was required to preserve foods in the wilting conditions of most of Australia.

 A fashion had emerged at the height of the chef-originated nouvelle
cuisine  movement.  Bush Food cuisine, for being reliant on highly
expensive native ingredients, is a classic gourmet style.  The Drover’s
Cook Incorporated will include it in the menu because it is a true chef’s
style.  It is my aim to place a highly competent chef cuisiniere at the head
of the Cook-House, and Bush Food work will be largely that chef’s
domain.  I believe that, as a consequence of the growing alliance between
the Chef’s kitchen and the Camp-fire kitchen, new things will emerge. 
For one thing, with the additional facility of the Camp-fire kitchen and
the full range of camp ovens, the Chef will undoubtedly find rustic
interpolations of the Bush Food menu and Camp-fire kitchen which will
spark off historic results.

 In foreseeing as much, I believe a true style is bound to be born.