The ultimate haute cuisine: outdoor cooking on the Lake District’s fells

16.11.2023 - 17:51 / theguardian.com

The amber, auburn and crimson colours of autumn cosy up on top of one another, each layer dotted with patches of green, waving gently in the wind. This description is not one of the Lake District landscape before me, though it does match those views. Rather, it’s of the cabbage and butternut squash sabzi that’s just been handed to me by Harrison Ward on the summit of Black Fell – cooked on a camping stove with red onion, diced garlic and ginger, ½ teaspoon nutmeg, ½ teaspoon turmeric, accompanied by a freshly made flatbread and topped with coriander.

Better known to many as Fell Foodie, Harrison is an Ambleside local who has acquired a substantial Instagram following for cooking up extravagant meals on the fells. “I’ve always loved that mindful experience of crafting a meal and sharing food with people,” he says. “Food plays a huge part in my own life, so why go outdoors and leave that passion behind?”

Harrison has just released his debut book Cook Out, and the sabzi is one of 85 recipes included.

It’s not a common sight on a mountain summit: someone whipping out a chopping board and a hefty kitchen knife, cutting up cabbage, cubing squash, stirring in turmeric and cooking it all to a gentle simmer, but it certainly makes the meal more memorable than some dehydrated noodles.

“I get the convenience of dehydrated meals, but they’re actually quite expensive – and I’ve never really enjoyed that side of food,” says Harrison, chopping through a red onion. “It feels like we’ve lost that connection with our food, and to the conversations it can bring about.”

He laughs, adding: “I’m certainly now inundated with offers to join me on the hillside.”

I don’t doubt it. We’d set off a couple of hours earlier from our lakeside pitches at Low Wray campsite on Windermere, and hiked up a muddy trail weaving through the wobbly dry stone walls that dissect the countryside here, rising gradually up Black Fell.

Harrison’s backpack looked weighty enough, but it wasn’t cartoonishly large, as you’d perhaps expect for someone hauling half a kitchen up a fell top. “The challenge, the humour and, at times, the ridiculousness of it is not lost on me at all,” he says. “When you’re grating nutmeg on top of a fell or using a pestle and mortar to make your own curry paste, there’s a bit of that.

“Some might say it’s pointless but ultimately, I suppose, so is going up the hill in the first place.”

On the contrary, few people have found such meaning in both endeavours as Harrison, whose cooking and hiking is also intrinsically linked to his mental health. Harrison is seven years sober, and speaks regularly about his struggles with alcoholism and depression.

“I was quite extroverted and happy-go-lucky from a young age, but internally I