On a beautifully warm (if windy) day at the end of April, eleven of us gathered to create a multi-course tasting menu cooked with the minimum of utensils over an open wood fire.

Whilst waiting for the cooking fire to be ready, collecting very small kindling was the order of the day – learning that the best dry wood is found not on the ground but still on the tree. Having got a suitably hot fire ready, we started with breakfast kebabs (sausages, bacon, tomatoes and mushrooms) and coffee before getting down to the serious business of fire-lighting without matches.

Using a flint and steel and charcloth everyone succeeded in getting an ember which, with the addition of some hay and a bit of firm but gentle blowing caught into a flame which some managed to grow into a small but sustainable fire.

Sea bass and cod were wrapped in newspaper, soaked in cold water and cooked in the embers followed by pitta pizzas and lamb stuffed onions – both wrapped in foil and placed in the hot embers.

Our cheese course was a baked camembert with damper bread and then chocolate orange cake (oranges stuffed with chocolate cake mix) again cooked in foil in the embers and s’mores (slightly melted marshmallows sandwiched between two chocolate digestives) rounded off our meal.

Whilst the food was cooking we also found time to admire Eric’s Kelly Kettle and to discover how to make a water filter. The theory that smoke will follow you if you try to avoid it was definitely proved!

We went home feeling rather smug, well fed and in need of a hot shower and complete change of clothes.