Amuse-bouche Keeping it classy while camping — or picnicking in style
IN THE BACKCOUN TRY
Wit h t he onset of warm weather, as visions of campfire flames dance in my head, I always recall one Proustian meal cooked over a fire sometime in the early 1990s. After a summer day spent paddling around in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, my family sat down to a dinner of freshly caught pan-fried walleye, its buttery flesh sweetly snow-white and flaky. Our blue enamel plates were rounded out by castiron-cooked red-potato home fries, lightly seasoned with salt and garlic powder, and a side of syrupy macerated wild strawberries. Every element was elegant in its simplicity, with flavors that sang louder than the sinister buzz of the Minnesota mosquitoes.
Food just tastes better in the wilderness. Divorced from a kitchen context, snacks and meals are more satisfying out of doors, our gratitude for their nourishment having been ratcheted up by hours of hiking, swimming, fishing, or camp setup. In Marnie Hanel and Jen Stevenson’s newly published The Campout Cookbook: Inspired Recipes for Cooking Around the Fire and Under the Stars (Artisan), the two Portland, Oregon, food writers focus on elevating the car camping experience to delicious new heights. The authors write t hat, much l i ke Santa Feans, “Portlanders think nothing of bringing into the woods a cutting board piled high with charcuterie, a twelve-component salad for every guest, and a bounty of grillables. It’s a function of both culture and geography; when you live in a town where the farmers’ market and natural wonder are equally accessible, there’s no need to sacrifice on either front.”
The book embraces t he unpredictable nature of cooking in the wild, encouraging a reliance on sensory intuition. “When your efforts are successful, the output of your inexact alchemy will feel like pure magic,” they crow. For the novice camp cook, or even the first-time camper, the tone of The Campout
Cookbook will feel like advice from a pair of comforting, if sassy, big sisters. Hanel and Stevensen ply the reader with solid camp-kitchen checklists, directions for camp-stove prep, and instructions for packing the cooler in layers (tightly wrapped raw
meats and fish go in first; then frozen dairy, deli meats, bread, and eggs in a hard-plastic carrier; then delicate fruits, veggies, and plastic-bagged s’mores chocolate bars on top). Many of these practical tips may strike even lifelong campers as inspired — for instance, when cooking foil packets of vegetables over a thick bed of coals, they recommend layering cabbage leaves on the top and bottom of the packets to serve as insulation from unpredictable temps. Their foil- pouch f lavor combinations are what summer dreams are made of: shishito peppers, miso paste, butter, and mint; or apricots, honey, rosemary, and St- Germain elderflower liqueur.
The Campout Cookbook embraces the unpredictable nature of cooking in the wild, encouraging a reliance on sensory intuition.
Many of the recipes require some home prep before heading off to the woods, which is somehow more reassuring than making us do it all at the campsite. Hasselbackpack Potatoes take a quick bake in the oven before their slats are stuffed with blue- cheese crumbles. Tightly wrapped in foil and transported in a cooler to the wilderness, they are cooked until soft and melty over a bed of hardwood charcoal for a half-hour. The dill buttermilk dressing for a salad of grilled Little Gem lettuce with corn, cherry tomatoes, and nectarines is prepared at home, then the tomatoes are blistered in a skillet over the fire, the lettuces grilled on the campfire grate until slightly singed. Wood-fired skillet pizzas need only an easy dough from the cooler, brought up to room — er, campsite — temperature, before it is spread out over cast-iron and topped with mozzarella, squash blossoms, and pesto, or fennel sausage, chiles, onion, and olives, and crisped over hot coals. More traditional recipes are skillet-fried rainbow trout with lemon and dill, chuckwagon chili, and beef stew. A creative list of travel-friendly cocktails, virgin and non, includes a cucumber-mint cooler and vanilla- bourbon hot apple cider.
IFyou prefer to limit alfresco dining to the daytime, the duo’s 2015 book, written with Andrea Slonecker, is more your speed. In The Picnic: Recipes and Inspiration from Basket to Blanket (Artisan), the authors detail the book’s backstory — after beginning a successful monthly picnic practice in Oregon’s hipster-filled parks, the women formed the Portland Picnic Society. And i f you t hought t heir camping recipes were rather bougie, these picnic recipes are Santa Fe Opera-tailgate-worthy, from how to build attractive charcuterie boards to chicken-liver mousse with Lillet gelée or Japanese jarred salad with mizuna, orange, green onion, and snap peas.
Picnicking, for the authors, is all about packing and presentation. The book recommends eye- catching storage options like tiffins (good for separating items) and bento boxes, in which you can artfully arrange food pre-transportation. Extensive packing lists are included, too, along with picnic-party primers with portioning and blanket-buying suggestions.
Ideally, picnics are whimsical affairs. The themed menus that appear throughout the book can serve as inspiration for your own fey woodland feasts. A sumptuous Spanish luncheon spotlights deviled eggs with chorizo, figs with feta and honey, rainbow carrots in paprika vinaigrette, tortilla española with fava beans and romesco, hazelnut orange cake, and sourcherry sangria. The suggested menu for a lavish Mezzepalooza approximates the flavors of a souk with Greek salad on a stick, beet hummus; watermelon, feta, and black-olive salad; za’atar lamb meatball pitas, brick-roasted chicken with zucchini and apricot couscous, pistachio pomegranate soda floats, and triple mint tea.
Finally, the effervescence of the outdoors demands, well, a spritzer or two. Along with details for elderflower Pimm’s Cup, the authors give us five bottled bubblers, including one for Lillet Blanc, orange bitters and zest, and champagne — as well as a classic Aperol Spritz and an Americano (Campari, vermouth, club soda, lemon zest). ’ Tis the season to unwind, preferably in environs that are mosquito- free — though Hanel and Stevenson have a camp-friendly solution for that, too. Just throw some sage and rosemary on the bonfire, and follow the smoke into a starry night.