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.
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).
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