Once a year, the entity of golf course owners in our club – we are talking about some 600 people – are invited to participate in a tournament just for them. It’s called Shareholder Cup and we accept a maximum of 120 participants on a first enrolled, first accepted principle. Consisting of roughly 100 players plus the odd elderly one or non-golfing spouse in the evening for reception, price giving and dinner.

On these occasions, we, the CEO, his wife and I serve the players in person on the course. I cook the lunch, the CEO handles the drinks and his wife serves the food. This Saturday, it’s open air cooking for me, again.

This year I decided to offer a fresh, mixed salad with roasted chanterelles on top. To come with a skewer of roast scampi on toasted bread and a choice of garlic butter or fresh cheese with peppercress spreading . All to end with lemon curd cream and sliced pineapples. For a mere 100 players, as I know since yesterday, when the lists for enrollment were finally closed.

To cook on site, one has to have stoves, which always proofed a tad difficult. The heat, my own mobile cooker or the induction field cooker give off, sometimes was not really enough to enable me to have everything fresh and ready for eight players arriving in ten to fifteen minute intervalls halfway through their round on the way from green nine to tee ten for their break.

But last night, one of our members invited his golfing pals to a Spanish paella he cooked for them. To that end, he brought his own paella dish in. It is a huge iron pan, measuring some 1.5 meters in diameter. All complete with a gas cooker to heat the big pan surface evenly, fuelled by gas fire. I saw this and immediately knew, this cooker would be just great to use for my purposes come Saturday. So I asked him for it. No problem, he said.

It shall be interesting, to fry with this new gadget. Adventure to come…getting all excited already.