THE ART OF FRIDAY NIGHT DINNER

This warming, one-pot dish is just the thing for warming your cockles – campfire or not

In principle, camping sounds great. Sleeping under the stars, getting “back to basics”, building a fire and sitting around it into the night, talking rubbish while you drink hot chocolate (preferably with a nip of rum). In practice, as I discovered on holiday in Scotland last week, camping treads a very fine line between being a total joy and an almighty faff. Precariously balanced on an Orkney clifftop while it was blowing a hooley, we were seriously questioning our decision to camp in October. A bottle of local Highland Park whisky (delicious, amber, caramely goodness) helped, as did the dinner we made in the little outdoor kitchen on the farm after failing to light a fire.

I love all those cowboy recipes for beans and bacon, simmered in Dutch ovens in the middle of a prairie, but confess the only thing I’ve ever cooked on a campfire is pasta during a Duke of Edinburgh challenge.

That afternoon, we’d stopped at a well-stocked deli (the Brig Larder, should you ever find your way to Orkney) and picked up a small bag of local scallops. A warming, one-pot affair seemed in order, and this risotto was born, helped along by an onion from the farm, local smoked butter, a slosh of wine and plenty of lemon. We piled everything into the same pan, but if you’re in a proper kitchen it’s even nicer to fry off the scallops separately. This is the dish at its most simple, but fennel, parsley or saffron would make lovely additions. I can’t vouch for how successful it would have been on a real fire, but it certainly kept the North Sea winds at bay.