Yetta 'Nother Mountain Pie

We are getting ready to do a training on the "Hill" at camp.  That is our adventure site.  The Boy Scouts are camping up there and we are going to do a dutch oven inservice and then a mountain pie inservice.  We want to give the boys a novelty idea for their camping trip.

Now, the mountain pies they will make will be simple ones with blueberry pie filling between two pieces of buttered bread and then slapped in a mountain pie iron and left to the coals for a minute on each side...and then another minute on each side again.  That is four flips and four minutes.

However, I want you to think higher-end on the pies for a moment.  Using a nice 9 grain bread, olive oil and some fine cheeses and smoked meats can add a nice twist to the simple campfire meal/snack.  Smoked turkey with provolone, asparagus and a basil-garlic-olive-oil-drizzle is sensational.  Smoked salmon, capers, and feta woul make a fine pie.  Of course cheesesteak meat and mozerella, fried onions and mushrooms is a must.  A grilled veggie and feta pie would be good too.

The experience is limited only by your lack of creativity.  Look for some of Brother Peter Reinhart's artisan bread recipes and get a nice heavy grained bread going and use some yummy innards.  There is no reason to make a horror pie in this day and age.  You can regulate what goes in it and produce something nice to go with your Cabernet.

Ciao!

Tom+

Cookbooks + Technique

Camp Cooking is a lot different than other forms of cooking.  You have got to be really creative.  Creative, patient, and able to eat ash - or, as we call it here at the Plateau "Hill Spice" or "Mountain Spice".

The fluctuating heat that comes from an open fire - or even a deep bed of coals (which is the preferred heat - but kids don't often - nor hungry dads - wait long enough to get good coals) is tough to work with.  Caste-iron pans cook differently than the usual kitchenware.  They hold heat - which is great if you remember to factor that in to your cooking.

On of the things that is a really important in camp cooking (as in any kitchen cooking) is getting some robust resources at your fingertips.  We have collected some of them at our camp kitchen website:

Kitchen Staff Resource Page.

We have tried to pull together a few cookbook resources, some chef links (you have got to check out Chef Jacob Burton's podcasts and website, Molly Katzen's site with videos and sensational veggie recipes, and Peter Reinhart's blog on baking).  But you'll need more than this.

Search the shelves to have some good technique books and a few recipe/cookbooks in your cadre of resources.  Build some good files on your computer, too.  I would recommend opening a google docs and spreadsheet site.  It is free and you can upload tons of resources to a digital e-file that you can access anytime, from anywhere.  It'll sync to your computer, so you can access it even when your server is down.

You should look into some good camping books like BIG BOOK OF CAMP COOKING, ROUGHING IT EASY, and COOKING THE DUTCH OVEN WAY.  You can use the amazon search at the bottom of the blog pages to search.  Make something SUMPTUOUS to eat today - over a fire, or over a stove.

Resources are the backbone of any path you choose to grow in.

Ciao!

Tom +

used with permission of David Lance Goines