Wild cooking

About Fuego

Fire is the most powerful element. It creates warmth, lights our way and it gives us hope. It can burn us and bond us. Above all, it provides the possibility to cook our meals. We are the only species which cooks and that's what makes us human.

Mankind has built entire civilizations around fire, but often that’s the very thing we want to run away from. Sometimes it’s too much, it’s too overwhelming. Project Fuego has been created to help exactly with that – to forget about city life for a bit and go back to the roots. To set your mind right. And is there a better way to do it than in beautiful nature, by the fire and with lots of amazing food?

Fuego is a wild cooking school. Nature is our kitchen. We don’t need professional ovens or induction stoves. We cook over an open fire, do the prep work with the blue sky above our heads and feast in a yurt tent with Persian rugs and furs on the floor.

The visual aspects are as important as the character of the food we cook - everything is perfect yet wild.

Apple, pear and celery salad

serves 2

2 apples
1 pear
1 celery stalk
1 small shallot
Lemon juice
Dijon mustard
Flat leaf parsley
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Pepper

This salad is a great dish by itself, when you are feeling guilty from eating too much meat, or as a mental detox – let's be honest it does sound pretty healthy. It can also be used a side dish to whatever poultry or pork.

It goes like this. Julienne the apples, pear and celery stalk. Cut the shallot and pick off the parsley leaves from the stalks. Mix it all together. Combine 3 parts olive oil and one part lemon juice, add mustard and season with salt and pepper. Use the Vinaigrette to finish the salad and you can serve.

Pear, figs, kohlrabi and blue cheese salad

serves 2

2 pears
1 ripe fig
1/2 kohlrabi, without the skin
chervil
blue cheese (Gorgonzola, Blue Stilton, Roquefort, … make your pick)
Vinaigrette dressing with whole grain mustard (same as in the previous recipe, but whole grain instead of Dijon mustard)

Salad really can be a satisfying dish especially when it contains cheese. Where there is a cheese, there is happiness. Soft pears with crunchy kohlrabi and intense blue cheese are a perfect combo.

Cut pears and kohlrabi into similar sized pieces. Cut figs to quarters. Pick some chervil leaves and mix everything with the dressing. Tear some blue cheese in your hands on top the salad and mix it gently so it looks nice and isn’t all mushy.

Burnt Pumpkin with pickled red onions and goat cheese

serves 2-4 people

1 Hokkaido pumpkin
1 handful of walnuts
1 picked red onion (pickling juice: water, vinegar, wild spices, salt, sugar)
300g goat cheese
flat leaf parsley
olive oil
salt
pepper
sugar

Put pumpkin gently to the fire where there are a lot of hot coals. The pumpkin will slowly turn black but will be cooked beautifully inside. It can take anything between 20 to 40 minutes according the size of the pumpkin. To be sure, put a thin knife through the pumpkin. Little resistance is ok, but it mustn’t be tough.

Put some sugar into a cast iron skillet and wait till it melts. Add walnuts and coat them in caramel. Set aside and chop it when it is cold. We recommend cleaning the skillet soon, because it’s hard to take out the caramel when cooled down.

Open up warm pumpkin on a wooden board, get rid of the seeds, spread the flash, and season with olive oil, salt and pepper. Put some goat cheese on top, add picked onions, parsley and those amazing walnuts. Eat everything except the black skin.

Slow cooked beef in red wine with pumpkin mash

serves 4

700 beef heel of round
1 big onion
2 carrots
1 parsley root
1/4 small celery
0.7l dry red wine
2 twigs of rosemary
wild spices
salt, pepper
extra virgin olive oil
Hokkaido pumpkin
2 spoons of butter
flat leaf parsley
0.5l stock/water

Clean the beef if needed and cut into semi big chunks. Just good enough to eat. Rough cut the onion and dice the carrot, celery and parsley root.

Heat some oil in a pot and add the meat. Don’t take too much meat into the pot, otherwise you will braise the meat, not sear it. You want to sear the meat to get nice colour on it, and build the proper flavour. So if you don’t have a big enough pot, just sear the meat in few batches. Each meat batch set after searing aside.

To the same pot, put all the root vegetables and cook until it has nice brown colour, then add onion. Add oil if needed. (The onion can be burnt much faster so do not take onion into the pot before roasting of root vegetables!)

When everything is golden brown, put meat back in the pot, add two glasses of wine and stock (or water). (The rest wine you can drink). Use beef, chicken or vegetable stock preferably than water. Add wild spices and put the lid on.

To arrange slow fire, rearrange the coals. Check what is going on in the pot from time to time, not boil the meat too quickly. It is better be careful than sorry. Cooking time can differ, it can take anything from one and half hour to two or more, so what you are looking for is nice soft meat, but not too much soft.

Serve with mash from pumpkin cooked in coals. Open up warm pumpkin on a wooden board, get rid of the seeds. For pumpkin mash separate the flash, season it with salt, pepper and mix with butter.