A Mud Oven in the Philippines

Unlucky or lucky. I don't pay council tax any more, TV licence, or other crappy taxes that add up to a whole lot per month, but I am staying in a house near a town called Antipolo in the Philippines. Cooking here is done on a gas-fired range with two rings, which means that everything is either boiled or fried. Which makes for some tedious cooking. And the Philippines is not renowned for its cooking. When was the last time you went to a Filipino restaurant in the UK? Right. Indian, Italian, Greek, even Ethiopian cuisines are distinguished. The Philippines is not. Probably a result of colonisation by the Americans. And a gas oven available in a local store is really rather expensive, as it has to be imported. So. After digging the garden and discovering a rather clay soil, the solution was to turn the clock back a few centuries and create a wood or charcoal fired oven in order to make things like bread, pizzas, roast chicken, roast (imported) lamb, basically: a decent meal. Here's what I did.

Firstly, I checked out the available information. There are two good sites which provide advice on creating mud ovens. http://handyprojects.blogspot.com/2005/04/mud-oven-project-part-2.html is where I started and the basis for my design. Additional advice was found at http://clayoven.wordpress.com/ although this is a bit advanced. I.e. it includes innovations such as a chimney. But is rather helpful on materials and general encouragement.

I used stuff I found around the place. The only thing paid for was sand, and I needed more than I originally budgeted for. The base was made out of breeze blocks or hollow blocks they call them here, basically concrete I found around the yard. Found some fugly frogs using them as a home as well when I dug them up. There were about five of these, which provided a base. Some were broken.

On top of this, I built the sand dome. This was more or less shaped like the rough end of an egg, and took about 6-7 bags of sand to construct. The sand here is grey. Its builders (sharp) sand.