Cucumber and Feta Couscous

Couscous is a staple for a campfire cook. I have to admit that normally I’m a much bigger fan of the Israeli variety, and as such the tiny-grained regular couscous rarely makes an appearance in our kitchen at home; but when we’re camping, it becomes an essential ingredient. There are a number of good reasons for this. First, it requires little prep work and it’s fast. Boil water, dump in couscous, cover and remove from heat, wait a few minutes. That right there is exactly the kind of recipe you want to be cooking over a fire. It’s really hard to screw up. Second, it takes on the flavors of whatever you mix it with, making the grain component of your meal that much tastier. Third, if whatever you’re making seems horribly runny, you can throw in some couscous to thicken it up and add texture. This results in many happy accidents, which is exactly what happened with our Mission Hill salmon and asparagus. Finally, it’s great for dinners, but it can just as easily be used in breakfasts and lunches as well. When packing is an issue (and lets face it, even when you’re car camping you still face limitations on exactly how much food you can bring), having a multi-use food item such as couscous can be a lifesaver. Incidentally, though, if space, time, and ease is not an issue for you, I would still recommend Israeli couscous - it’s just that awesome.

Couscous salad is great for a sit-down camp lunch (I wouldn’t recommend it so much for a picnic or lunch on the trail: it’s best eaten fresh and it’s messy - especially for kids). The recipe below adapted from The Camping Cookbook, by Annie Bell.

Cucumber and Feta Couscous

Tools you need:

-pot or kettle 

-bowl 

-cutting board

-knife 

-cup or mug

Ingredients:

-1 1/2 cups or mugs of water

-1 cup or mug of couscous

-extra virgin olive oil

-sea salt

-cucumber, however much you want and sliced however you like (Annie recommends 1/2 a cucumber, quartered and thinly sliced. If you have other plans for the cucumber, such as in sandwiches or as a snack later or whatever, then that’s great. If you don’t, either plan to bring only 1/2 a cucumber on your trip, or else just throw the whole thing in)

-handful of cherry tomatoes or one medium sized tomato, chopped

-a few small fresh mint leaves, torn 

-1 or 2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely (I use one of these to chop it)

-juice of 1/4 to 1/2 lemon, whatever your preference (if you’re not using the rest of the lemon in meals, it’s great to add to your drinking water before you go out hiking or exploring)

-a couple handfuls of olives (Annie recommends pitted green olives, which are great, but black olives work well, too. I find one of those small cans of chopped black olives is just about the perfect amount)

-feta cheese, coarsely crumbled (how much is up to you, but as with the cucumber: if you don’t have other plans for the cheese, then only pack as much as you’re going to use)

Directions:

1. Start water boiling
2. Mix couscous with a tablespoon or two of olive oil and a pinch of salt
3. Pour boiling water into couscous. Mix and set aside.
4. Prepare cucumbers, tomatoes, garlic, mint, and olives.
5. Once couscous has cooled, mix in the ingredients from step 4, along with the lemon juice and feta.
6. Drizzle on some more olive oil and serve.

***If you haven’t done so already, I’d recommend taking a look at my camp-cooking hints and suggestions page so that you don’t have to make all the same mistakes I did when I started campfire cooking.

Campfire Cooking Tips

-Premake and prepackage as much as you can. If you can do most of the prep-work at home, you’ll have an easier time out at camp. 

-One pot cooking isn’t just for ease. It’s also because washing dishes in camp is dirty, difficult, and thankless work.

-For casserole type dishes such as lasagna, or if you are trying to bake something, line the ENTIRE dutch oven with tinfoil. Whoever is doing the dishes will thank you.

-These recipes are mainly meant for car-camping scenarios, but they CAN be altered, and wherever possible I’ve tried to point out how. That being said, my version of car camping is to get as far out into the woods as your vehicle will take you. I still rely on building a decent campfire and cooking over it. While these recipes will work wonderfully on a campstove (I try them out at home as well as in camp, so I say this with at least some authority), I am usually writing them with the assumption that the food is being made over the fire and using cast iron pots and pans whenever possible.

-Cast iron helps you make good food on a campfire. Trust me. Stainless steel (not aluminum) pots and pans can work well for soupier foods, and in a pinch you can use them for whatever you happen to make and it CAN work, but cast iron is the best if you can pack it.

-Some veggies are great to prep before you leave - peppers, carrots, and zucchini are examples. Onions, shallots, and garlic are NOT okay to prep before you leave, unless you don’t mind the overpowering stench of onion every single time you open your cooler. This smell will seep through Rubbermaid containers. It will seep through Ziploc bags. It will seep through Rubbermaid containers enclosed in 3 layers of Ziploc heavy duty freezer bags. Cut your onions onsite.

-It is worth the extra cost to buy things like shredded cheese if you’re like me and don’t have a buttload of time to prep your food before you leave because you didn’t actually decide to go camping until the day before you’ve scheduled yourself to go. Grating cheese might not seem like a difficult task, but when you’re out in the woods and cooking over a fire, ANYTHING you can do to make your job easier is worth it in the end. That being said: grated cheese almost always contains cellulose. If you’re cooking out in the woods, you’ll probably be ingesting enough wood fibers, thanks very much. It’s really up to you. In the case of cheese, the trade off is time and quality.

-Either repackage your meat in something you can wash, or break out the contractor bags. Make sure you’ve brought sturdy garbage bags or containers, regardless of whether or not you remembered to repackage your food, though. If you forgot, it’s not good to be burning your plastic or styrofoam containers in the campfire. You know better. Don’t do it. It’s also not good to leave your meat wrappers and things in a container which a bear would be able to smell through. Garbage bags and ziploc bags in all sizes are camping essentials, especially if you’re camping with kids. Don’t forget them.

-Remember to bring containers to wash dishes in. I use four litre ice cream buckets. They work well. Bring biodegradable dishsoap as well. 

-Cleaning wipes (Method makes nice ones) are great for cleaning off tables at the end of the evening. 

-Remember hand sanitizer and/or antibacterial wipes. And I say this as someone who is most definitely NOT a germaphobe.

-Forgetting important tools and equipment really, really, really sucks. I got out to a campsite once with a bunch of recipes that used canned foods only to discover I had forgotten to bring a can opener. Make a checklist before you go camping, even if you aren’t a list-making type of person, or there WILL be an occasion where you will regret it.

-When making said list, don’t be vague. For instance, don’t say this:

*Sleeping Bags

Say this:

*Spork’s sleeping bag

*Bork’s sleeping bag

*Mork’s sleeping bag

*Gork’s sleeping bag

Include everything individually, or you may end up packing Bork and Mork’s sleeping bags, but not Gork’s. Trust me, Gork will not be impressed. If Gork is a child, Gork will whine pitifully and refuse to make any sort of compromises. Gork will insist you don’t love him, or that you love him less than Mork and Bork. Gork will ruin your trip.

-Don't be scared to cook real meals over a campfire. Even if it's a failure it usually still tastes okay, just because you're out there in the woods and it's an adventure and it's all okay, even when it isn't. Good food and camping make an incredible pair. There's a real sense of satisfaction to the work that accompanies a camping trip, and that includes meals. People will be thankful. A good camp cook is indispensable. And when the zombie apocalypse happens, people are gonna have a vested interest in keeping you alive. 

Dutch Oven Pesto Lasagne

Some things are worth waiting until midnight for.

We don't always plan our camping trips well enough in advance. Honestly, we pretty much never plan our camping trips well enough in advance. We're always scrambling wildly and there are always at least a dozen or so things that go wrong. This trip had been in the back of my mind for a couple of weeks, but the final decision - resting as it did upon the weather - didn't happen until the night before. This meant I didn't make my final decision as to foodstuffs until about 10 and I was online ordering groceries at midnight. No worries, I'd pick everything up in the morning and spend all day prepping and baking, and we'd DEFINITELY be out the door by 4:30, 5 at the latest.

At 7:00, we were finally ready. We got out of town at 7:30. By the time we'd reached our campsite, it was dark. The kids were exhausted. They could barely keep themselves awake long enough to set up the tent, and they stumbled into bed without dinner. Not so for Josh and I. We were starving. Food purist that I try to be, I didn't bring much in the way of instant meals - no hot dogs over the fire for us. I'd planned lasagne.

Casserole dishes can work really well on the campfire, provided you've got a heavy duty cast-iron dutch oven. The secret is to nestle the dutch oven in the fire pit and build your fire around it. And then you wait. And wait. And wait.

It's almost always worth it in the end, especially when it's lasagne.

There are a few suggestions I want to make before I go any further:
1. I sometimes like to mix ingredients in ziplock bags because it makes for fewer dishes, but the choice is up to you. It's definitely not the most environmentally friendly option.
2. You can prepare the noodles and the sausage ahead of time, which I would recommend if expediency is important to you. Actually, the smartest thing for this lasagne would be to buy the no-boil noodles or fresh pasta.
3. Remember that you should do whatever you want with this recipe. Experiment. Have fun. Also remember that 'cup' is whatever mug you have available. Don't bother bringing out measuring cups, please! These are all recipes that will be just fine even if the measurements aren't precise. Cooking is always about experimentation and making the best with what you have available to you.
4. Finally, this - like most (but not all!!!) recipes I share - is designed for people who are car camping. With three young kids and two dogs, we're a little limited in how far out we can trek. We head as far out as we can, but we always have a cooler at the ready. I replace the joy of roaming the remote wilderness with celebrating with family and fine food. I truly believe an exasperating camping trip, just like a hard day at home, can be saved by a fantastic dinner. I also think that the satisfaction of creating a great meal over a campfire is substantial enough to make the added complexity more than worth it.

Dutch Oven Pesto Lasagne

Yield: 4 servings for hungry people (as long as they have garlic bread, too)

Ingredients:
2 cups ricotta
1/2 cup Parmesan
1/2 cup mozzarella or fontina or whatever (we used an Italian cheese blend - I think it had Romano, Parmesan, Mozzarella, and Provolone)
1 egg
1/3 to 1/2 cup pesto (we made our own, but there are plenty of decent brands out there)
2 or 3 links of Italian sausage (or ground beef, or ground turky, or cut up veggies, or whatever meat you like - we used chorizo since we had plans for it in other meals)
1 jar of your favorite tomato sauce (it's roughly 700 mL)
9 lasagna noodles (I boiled mine before leaving to go camping, but no-cook noodles will work better and take up less space)
Roughly 2 cups of grated mozza, fontina, or whatever blend suits your fancy (again, we used an Italian four-cheese blend)

Preparation:
1. Make your campfire - make sure you've got a good coal base!
2. If you didn't do this at home, now is the time to cook your sausages/saute veggies/brown ground beef/etc. Use a campfire grill and cook them in a cast-iron frying pan.
3. Line your dutch oven with tinfoil.
4. In a ziplock bag (or not), mix together the ricotta, parmesan, mozzarella, and pesto.
5. Cut up your sausages, if you're using them. Mix it into the tomato sauce (alternatively, you can just sprinkle the meat or veggies over top of the tomato sauce - this saves you either one ziplock baggy or one bowl to clean).
6. Pour 1/3 of the tomato sauce over bottom of the dutch oven, add meat if needed.
7. Line three noodles over top (you'll have to fold them over unless you have a gigantor dutch oven - this is okay).
8. Put 1/2 of the ricotta mixture on top of the noodles.
9. Another 1/3 tomato sauce, another three noodles, and the other half of the ricotta go on next, in that order.
10. Put on the final layer of noodles, then the final 1/3 tomato sauce, and top with cheese. Put the lid on the dutch oven.
11. Prepare the fire - clear the middle out a bit and put the dutch oven in the cleared space. Keep the fire maintained around the oven. It doesn't have to be perfect, but do pay attention.
12. This is where it's up to you. Keep an eye on it. It's done when the cheese is golden. You can do this!

As a side note:

Garlic Bread

Ingredients:
Ciabatta buns
butter
garlic salt (we used McCormick's roasted garlic and sea salt grinder, which I highly recommend - especially for this)

Preparation:
1. Butter the buns generously
2. Grind on the garlic salt generously (you might want to be more sparing if you're using actual garlic salt)
3. Wrap each bun individually in aluminum foil.
4. Place on rocks near the fire or on top of dutch oven and bake for a good 15-20 minutes (unless they start smelling burned, in which case get them the heck off the fire).