Ready, set, ferment.

I have to admit that even I find my enthusiasm for salted, fermented cabbage a little curious. I guess that five-plus years of intense bread explorations have only increased my fascination with the transformation that fermenting works on humble ingredients to make them delicious and distinctive. Flour and water into marvelous bread and grapes into wine are a little more dramatic than cabbage into...salty, smelly, tangy cabbage; nevertheless, it is a transformation, and one that opens all sorts of culinary opportunities.

Without sauerkraut, which the French call choucroute, we wouldn't have that wonderful, emblematic Alsatian dish, choucroute garnie, braised sauerkraut with smoked meats and sausages (you can do a fish or a game rendition, as well; we have done both). And you wouldn't have the simple, savory, satisfying Choucroute Bread Pudding that I wrote about last spring/late winter. There you'll also find the recipe for Sauerkraut Made in Jars. (After it was shredded and salted, that cabbage in the first photo--over three pounds--very nearly fit into the quart jar. The recipe says five pounds of cabbage makes two quarts, so that's pretty accurate.)

The combination of 'kraut and smoked meats in choucroute garnie is fitting and well as delicious, I think. Smoking and fermenting are both age-old methods for preserving food; turning the resulting products from a mere means of survival into a gastronomic tour de force is, of course, quintessentially French. The current interest in these atavistic methods is part of the reaction against processed food, fast food, faux foods; it's part of the renewed appreciation for local, seasonal eating, and a recognition that great food doesn't have to be fancy, expensive, imported. Some will say that la nouvelle cuisine is dead, but what was at the heart of that movement is what's behind the local and seasonal credo; it's only the overly fussy, effete wing of nouvelle cuisine that went out of fashion (which is not to say that it's extinct, by far).

There are lots of variations on standard sauerkraut, though I mainly make the unadorned version. Some people add herbs or spices to the fermenting cabbage; I figure I'll add extra flavors when I come to cooking with it. But this time, just for fun, I made one jar that combined the cabbage with a few beets and carrots, julienned on the Benriner . And in another jar I combined cabbage and apples, just because, with this sort of orchard we've come to own, we now have a wicked lot of apples.... I'll let you know how that turns out. You can ferment lots of different vegetables this way. Following the guidance of Sandor Katz in Wild Fermentation I made fermented beets and turnips last fall. The beets were great, the turnips, not so much.

The 'kraut in jars recipe comes from The Country Gourmet , a book well-worth owning if you come across it. I see you can get a copy for a penny, plus shipping at Amazon. That's, um, just pretty amazing.

I set those jars to fermenting on Monday. Today's Wednesday, and when I checked on them today, I could hear them fizzing away, especially the one with the beets. Within a week or so they should be nice and sour. We'll revisit this tangy topic, with recipes, in a few weeks' time

Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw

Eat Local: We Dare Ya...

It's that time of year once again when those "Eat Local Challenge" promotions start to appear. Local and seasonal is what we're all about, of course; that's the Trout Caviar credo. It's the "challenge" part we don't care for. It used to seem that our Upper Midwest summers lasted about two months, if we were lucky. You had your fill of green beans, sweet corn, and tomatoes from late June 'til Labor Day, and then it was canned peas and frozen broccoli for the rest of the long, dismal fall, winter, and spring.

That is no longer the case. With growing awareness of the vast variety of vegetables we can grow here, with expanding tastes and knowledge of delicious ways to preserve food, with farmers' markets where we can shop for fresh produce up to Thanksgiving and sometimes beyond, it is truly a brave new world of local eating, even here in the frozen North.

And so here is what I suggest we do with it: Celebrate. If we can't meet the "challenge" of local eating at this time of year, if we even have to promote the idea in those terms, I fear the cause is lost.

But I know it's not a lost cause, not at all. So celebrate, rejoice, exult, and dig in. There isn't a better time of year for great local food, nor, in my humble opinion, a better place for it than right here. But, I may be biased....

(The photo is our friend Melinda's birthday "diorama," as she puts it. She likes food and she doesn't like things, so each August we put together a bounteous basket of good things to eat from garden, woods, and stream (I haven't gotten out to the stream much this year, so no fish in this one). This is actually a rather restrained example.)

Text and photo copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw

Black/Gold

Not, indeed, that Texas tea, the bubblin' crude that Jed Clampett came upon while shootin' at some food. Rather, the morning and afternoon of a fortunate forager.



When we purchased our Wisconsin land we knew we were getting several dozen long-neglected apple trees, and maybe a couple of plums. We didn't know quite how generally fruitful the land would turn out to be. The raspberries and black caps were delicious though not especially abundant. We're watching grapes slowly ripen on the vine, lots of those. There's a nannyberry bush (also called "wild raisin" and black haw) which will provide a new wild treat next month--if the birds don't get to them first. The birds are welcome to whatever they can find: they are one of the great delights of the land, and they consume a lot of potentially troublesome bugs, as well.


But what we have in spades right now (befitting their inky hue), is blackberries. Big, fat, juicy, sweet blackberries. One morning this week, in the midst of preparing to return to the city, I discovered a burgeoning patch just down the hill from where our new cabin sits. They'd been hiding in plain sight, and we had walked right past them, somehow, on our way to pick berries on another hillside, berries that went into a breakfast of french toast and apple syrup.

I planned to stop at a favorite foraging spot on the way home (that's where the gold comes in) so I didn't want to let the morning slip by in the berry patch. I set the timer on my watch for fifteen minutes, and I made my leisurely way through a section of the patch, plucking the biggest berries from the tops of the canes, enjoying a few in the process. When I got home I found that my fifteen minute harvest was nearly a pound-and-a-half of berries.


I closed up the cabin and drove to my favorite mushroom woods. This is chanterelle time, if the mushrooms decide to cooperate. Two years ago I found pounds of chanterelles in these woods; last year I found not a one. I was a little late to the woods this year, and found quite a few mushrooms a bit dried, mud-splashed, or bug-bit. I pick them all, regardless, and make the best of them. If we get some much-needed rain there may be another burst of them--I've found them into October in past years.


Chanterelles are my favorite mushroom, and one of my favorite foods, period. Part of it goes back to my sheer joy and amazement at first discovering them in a local woods, four years ago, I think it was. Seeing those glimpes of gold in the leaf duff induces a sort of "forager's high," an exhilaration hard to describe. And then the hunt is on, and you rarely find just one chanterelle, their habits being generally "gregarious," as mycologists put it, which makes them seem not just abundant but fun and sociable, as well.


And part of it is the aroma of freshly picked chanterelles, which is often described as being like that of apricots, but which also reminds me of raw squash or pumpkin, of sweet corn meal, of berries, a bit. But what they really smell like is chanterelles, an aroma I find so enticing that I have to lift each and every chanterelle I pick up to my nose, to take in that scent at its most potent. For this reason, and others, it takes a long time to pick a modest portion of chanterelles.


And part of it, of course, is that they are delicious. Better than morels, to me, more subtle and yet more potent at the same time. I've tasted truffles and fresh cepes, but I would take chanterelles over either of those esteemed, expensive fungi. Simple is best in preparing them (though in that abundant year I recall a dish of lobster and chanterelles in espelette cream sauce that went down pretty nicely). Saute gently in butter and serve with a plain omelet of good fresh eggs. A splash of cream at the end won't hurt them, and then you nap that over toast points and indulge. A nice light burgundy like a mercurey, or another pinot noir wine on the fruity side, that would be my choice to accompany them. In a white I might go for a dry vouvray, a pouilly-fume, or a pinot gris. That's a little academic: the 'shrooms are the thing.

I love foraging. I have always loved just wandering around in the woods, and when one is able to bring home rare and exquisite things to eat in the process, I wonder why everyone isn't doing it. At the same time, it can be really hard work, and until you're lucky enough to find a chanterelle woods, or a haunt of morels, or a stand of hen-of-the-woods-harboring oaks, you need to enjoy walking around in the woods finding nothing whatever of note or delectation.

Even the blackberries, obvious and abundant as they are, extract a price. Their thorns are the most wicked of all the brambly berries, like pointy razors, and no matter how careful you are, you are going to get a little torn up picking blackberries. My dogs are wirehaired hunters built for just this sort of terrain--grouse and woodcock favor thick and thorny coverts--and I have heard them yelp in pain when a blackberry thorn caught a nose or ear.

And as for the mushrooms: It would take any number of plates of lobster and chanterelles in cream sauce to replace the calories I burn off trudging up and down the hills of my favorite chanterelle woods. I'm in long pants and long sleeves for this outing, as well, since I have to go through thorn bushes and nettles on the way, and it's August. I am sweating profusely, and twisting my ankles on steep and rocky terrain, straining my foggy eyes for a glimpe of yellow in the oak leaves. There is a lake down below me, and I can hear the slap-slap-slap of motorboats bouncing over the waves. From the swimming beach I hear splashing and laughing; the voices of the children sound like happy geese from this distance. I stop on the rocky slope and think: What is wrong with you, slogging around this dismal dark woods, drenched in sweat, exhausted, looking for bizarre organisms that live underground and feed on decaying leaves and wood? Why can't you be a sane and normal person, out there enjoying the sun and breeze and water on a beautiful summer's day, getting a tan, taking a cool dip when you please?

Then looking up the hill I see something glimmer gold: could be a leaf, or just a trick of the light, but no, that tone, that density of yellow is unmistakable. Who needs beaches when you've got chanterelles?

Text and photos copyright Brett Laidlaw 2008

Impromptu Orchard Forage

This was not a serious outing to fill the larder or explore new territory. I had some business to attend to out near the orchard, so I stopped by our land to let the dogs run, pick a few berries, see how the apples were coming along. Down by The Troll Bridge (it's a big broken limb of a box elder tree that forms a sort of tunnel tall enough to walk under), I had dug a hole a few weeks back, to see if any water would seep in; hoping to be able to build a little pond there. I didn't strike water, but I did create a broken-ankle hazard, as Mary found out while berry-picking last weekend (no broken ankle, just a slight strain, thank you, trolls).

So I took the shovel over to fill in the hole. While I was there I gathered just about the last of the raspberries. Since I had the shovel, I decided to dig some burdock root. I've never tried burdock root. Burdock is in the rhubarb-sorrel-buckwheat family. Its leaves look very rhubarb-like. It's a biennial, and you dig the root from the first year plant, not the second-year, flowering plant that produces the titular burrs that are the bane of dogs and their people. The plants are tall, and the burrs grow all the way up. Just the slightest brush is enough for them to adhere to anything (hunting dogs a favorite target), and then the round burrs break into a million tiny seeds at a touch when you try to remove them. It's because of burdock that we always carry a comb when we go afield with the dogs in late summer and autumn--I have seen Annabel's head so covered in burdock burrs, it looked like she was wearing a mask. She did not like it.

Thus, digging a few burdock roots served the dual purpose of ridding our land of some nasty burrs and trying a new wild edible. According to books I've consulted, the Japanese use burdock in stews and such. You can also eat it raw. It has a mild carrot- or parsnip-ish flavor. I haven't tried cooking it yet. Based on a few tastes of it raw, I'm not won over. Maybe its flavor will be better after a frost, as with carrots.

I gathered me berries while I might, I filled the ankle-breaker hole, I dug some burdock. As I made my way back up the meadow I noticed some tall yellow flowers on a hill to my right, which I thought might be jerusalem artichokes, aka, sunchokes. Hello, I had a shovel in my hand. Might as well check it out. The yellow flowers were growing in a thick patch of blackberries. I was wearing shorts. I turned back at the first encounter with the canes, yet today I look like I got into a leg-wrasslin' match with a barbed-wire monster. I found one of the tall yellow flowers at the edge of the bramble patch, and dug it up. There was a bit of a swelling to the root, but nothing very substantial. It was a smallish plant, and I didn't persevere with other, larger ones, so the jury's still out.

But while I was there, I noticed on the steep slope above me the distinctive, delightful shape of green hazelnuts in their husks. Here they are, on the right, with a better look at the burdock, as well.I will have to be extremely vigilant in order to harvest any ripe nuts--all manner of woodland creatures find them as delicious as we do. Inside those husks you find fully formed hazelnuts, their shells pale green, and you can crack them open to extract a green nut, which is tasty but small.


The last thing in my forager's harvest wasn't wild fruit, but sour apples. We have a lot of these, and I'm trying to find uses for them. So far I've made sour apple juice which, sweetened with some honey from "neighbor" Talking Oak Farm (Sandy and Rich Hall), has made the base for some excellent cocktails and aperitifs. I'm also thinking about chutney or a similar relish. Any ideas are most welcome. In a couple of weeks, when sweet apples are readily available, I'll show you how to make small batches of fresh apple cider at home, without a juicer. It's incredibly easy and gratifying.

Twenty acres isn't a lot of land by some standards, but it's more than 200 times as big as our lot in Saint Paul, which is usually a mess. Fortunately, no one expects 20 acres of woodland and meadow to be tidy.... Twenty acres is a universe when you start to explore it in fine. For a forager there's remarkable abundance in every acre. So far this year I've identified these edible plants: fiddleheads, nettles, dandelions, wintercress, wild ginger, garlic mustard, wood sorrel, lamb's-quarters, milkweed, raspberries, black cap raspberries, gooseberries, black currants, nannyberries, burdock, hazel nuts, plums, grapes, apples (!), crab apples. The oaks will yield nutritious acorns; we could get syrup from the maples and birches. I've found a few boletus mushrooms, but all either slug-or-bug-eaten or attacked by white fungus. Puffball mushrooms lie ahead, perhaps sulfur shelf and hen of the woods.

All that in due time. This impromptu forage report is just an early indication of the adundance ahead.

Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw

Berry Berry Good to Me

While we wait for the apples to ripen at our Wisconsin "orchard," there are other fruits to enjoy in the meantime. In a shady low spot by the falling-down big old willow, near a charming feature we call "The Troll Bridge," we found a nice patch of raspberries, both black and red. We came out to camp for the weekend last month, planning on pancakes for breakfast, with maple syrup and a garnish of fresh berries picked before the dew was dry.

We weren't even across the river from Minnesota into Wisconsin when we realized we had forgotten to pack the maple syrup. We had to stop for gas and ice en route, so we picked a gas station/convenience store that I knew stocked a certain amount of local products (mainly beer). But when I asked the friendly man behind the counter if they had maple syrup, he wasn't sure. He asked a young woman who was stocking shelves about it, and she said, yes, they sure did, and she pointed out a shelf where proudly there stood the rotund, iconic figure of...Aunt Jemima. In plastic.

It only took me a second to realize how insulated one can become in the world of real, local foods, that I could almost forget that that sort of product still exists--forget that for many, many people, maple syrup and "pancake syrup" are synonymous. From Auntie J's own website , here are the ingredients of her syrup: CORN SYRUP, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, WATER, CELLULOSE GUM, CARAMEL COLOR, SALT, SODIUM BENZOATE AND SORBIC ACID (PRESERVATIVES), ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL FLAVORS, SODIUM HEXAMETAPHOSPHATE. (I have to say, that's even worse than I expected.)

So I don't really think I was being awfully snobby when I decided to skip the Aunt Jemima's and think of another way to sweeten and moisten our 'cakes. (Oh, and by the way, the ingredients of maple syrup are...never mind.)

About as quickly as the Aunt Jemima anti-epiphany occurred to me, I also knew how to save our breakfast. So after a kind of a crazy Saturday night, during which our normally quiet neighbors down the valley enlivened the evening with a family reunion that included a full-on fireworks display and all-night volleyball tournament (no kidding), we arose in the still and quiet morning, had a quick cup of coffee and went a-berrying.

The red raspberries were at their peak, but not terribly abundant. The more prolific "black caps" were just starting to come in, but we managed to pick a pint or so, and then it was back to camp to make syrup. I had never made berry syrup before, but from past jam-making experience I knew how to make berry juice, which I figured we could boil down to not-quite-jam and have a lovely syrup. With no strainer on hand, dealing with the seeds presented the only major obstacle, but Mary came up with the solution--a sturdy paper-towel-like product that made an ideal jelly bag.

So we took a little more than a cup of berries, I suppose, added water just to cover, and cooked it over low heat until the berries were broken down, around eight minutes, I imagine. We poured the cooked berries into the cloth and squeezed out the juice--ouch, it was hot, I should have let it cool a while, but we were hungry. To that juice I added a couple of tablespoons of sugar and cooked that gently until it started to thicken and coated the back of a spoon.

If you wanted to do a little backwoods tattooing or tie-dying, you could do worse than raspberry juice.

We were able to resurrect the fire from the previous night's ashes, and we sliced up some of our home-smoked bacon and cooked it slowly in the cast-iron skillet. Mary made up her excellent pancake batter. We were ravenous by the time the first batch of pancakes came out of the skillet, so no food styling here, just good food as local as it gets.





The red raspberries were tart but incredibly fragrant, the black caps sweeter but less intense; together they made a beautiful, delicious syrup. The ingredients of our raspberry syrup: Raspberries, water, sugar. That's a little more complicated than maple syrup, but less time-consuming to make. We're don't usually tend to repeat meals, but we had the same thing for breakfast the next morning. It was just as good, even without an all-night volleyball match as prelude.

Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw

South Shore Idyll

When it comes to fish, freshness is all, and it doesn't get much fresher than this. And I don't know many commercial fisherfolk, but I can't imagine they come much more charming than Jessica Resac, who has just stepped off the good ship "Flowerpot" in the port of Cornucopia, Wisconsin, with buckets full of whitefish, lake trout, and the odd herring. Jessica fishes the waters off the south shore of Lake Superior for Halvorson Fisheries . Six years ago she was working toward a master's degree in biology in Marquette, Michigan when she was asked to come to Cornucopia (Corny, for short) to "drive a boat," as she puts it. She accepted that invitation, and six years later, here she is. The master's degree can wait. (I don't think it's required that south shore fisherfolks' nail polish match their slickers, but it's a nice touch, don't you think?)

Mary and I were down on the Corny waterfront looking for some fresh fish for dinner, wouldn't you know it, as Jessica was unloading the morning's catch and hosing down Flowerpot. Inside the Halvorson retail shop we had already picked up a fillet each of whitefish and lake trout for dinner, and some of the smoked version of each, as well. I've been to Corny many times over the years, and never even knew that Halvorson had a retail shop. They're open seasonally, mainly June to September according to their website. The shop carries the fresh and smoked fish, as well as local delicacies like whitefish livers (surprisingly good; read on), trout cheeks, and "poor man's lobster," which is actually burbot, a freshwater cod also known as lawyer in some parts. I only regret that, since we were headed back to the orchard campground after our Corny sojourn, we couldn't load up on south shore treats.

While we were there, we got our share. We'd come up from the orchard to spend a night at one of our favorite spots on the big lake, O'Bryon's Village Inn . It's been more than 20 years since I first ate at the Village Inn, when I was staying in a friend's cabin for a month in the spring of 1988 to finish a novel (didn't manage to finish it then; did eventually). It hasn't really changed that much in the interim. It has always had that classic Midwestern supper club vibe--your cocktail comes with a ramekin of cheese spread and a plate of plastic-wrapped bread sticks and crackers, the menu offers standbys like Chicken Kiev, Ribs & Chicken or Ribs & Shrimp combos, Caesar salad, mozzerella sticks, and the like.

But there's a difference here from your standard small-town country club fare, and it's what Jessica Resac is holding in that photo above. The Village Inn features, as "Specialties of the Inn," superbly fresh and simply prepared whitefish and lake trout which travel all of about three blocks from port to kitchen. Someday I would actually like to try their char-broiled pork chops with sweet chili dipping sauce, or those ribs. A new menu also listed a pork shank with dumplings, which caught my eye.

But I don't know how I could pass up a starter of those whitefish livers, sauteed with garlic, sweet onions and green pepper (I pick around the peppers, can't stand green peppers). I know that many people are going to recoil just thinking about fish and liver in one mouthful, and frankly, I can't blame you if you do. But the thing about whitefish livers, at least these whitefish livers, is that they don't taste like either fish or liver. Well, more like liver than fish, to me, but it's a very mild, sweet sort of chicken liver flavor, not strong or off-putting at all. They're just delicious, and if you're someone who bothers to read a "blog" like this one, how could you pass up something like whitefish livers? Maybe you're living vicariously; that's okay, too.

So, yes, it must be whitefish livers to start with, and when asked if I'd like soup or salad I always have to have a cup of the inn's fish chowder, made with lake trout and whitefish, potatoes, onions, sweet corn, butter and cream. And the main course, of course, is fish: broiled lake trout or whitefish--and, no, we have not gotten sick of fish yet, because it's so fresh, and variously presented, and so well and respectfully cooked. You get a side of starch, which is mainly plate-filler, because everything up to this point has been rich and filling, and the fish portions are also generous.

The O'Bryons, Wade and Cheryl, took over the Village Inn two years ago, and I give them enormous credit for:

1) Not messing up a good thing. Many new owners of an institution like this would fall prey to the urge to "bring the place up to date." This place didn't need it. They've added new touches like Wader's Tiki Bar, a screened-in bar with a very Margaritaville sort of feel to it, but they're dedicated to

2) Preserving local food traditions like the Lake Superior fish boil:

There was a private party having a fish boil the night we stayed there. I've actually never tasted fish boil fare, but I love the idea of it. We need a bunch of people; who's up for signing up for one at the Village Inn later this summer? What happens here is that the master of the boil builds a roaring big fire under a big black cauldron, and into boiling water he drops fish, potatoes, corn, etc. When everything is cooked, he throws some kerosene on the flames, which causes the pot to boil over, expelling the fish oils that have accumulated on the top. And I imagine you enjoy it with melted butter. Those of you with first-hand fish boil experience, please report.

Mainly I give the O'Bryons credit for

3) Their wonderfully warm and thoughtful hospitality. When we stopped there two years ago, we were on the run from an absolutely dreadful cabin that we had booked sight-unseen, figuring, Well, it's right on the lake, how bad can it be...? Think equal parts Bates Motel and National Lampoon Summer Vacation. We walked in, took one look at the place (and one smell), and said, Nope, not staying here.

So there we were, Friday evening in July, south shore of Lake Superior, two dogs--did I mention that? No place to stay. We figured we'd stop in at the Village Inn and ask if they could direct us somewhere, and we'd make a dinner reservation while we were at it. I'd forgotten that the Village Inn is, you know, an inn. With rooms. Where you can sleep. Or if we knew that, we maybe assumed they wouldn't allow two dogs in the smallish rooms above the restaurant. But it turned out to be a case of can't hurt to ask, and they sized up our dogs (Lily was just a puppy) and said, Sure, make yourselves at home. We were as stunned as we were grateful. We stayed just one night, then moved along the shore to Bayfield. Should have stayed in Corny.

I wrote in a Real Bread email a couple of years ago that the Village Inn was just about the closest thing we've found around here to a French country restaurant-hotel. I wrote that just a tiny bit facetiously, I think, not wanting to overstate its merits. I take back any facetiousness that might have crept into that previous description. I hereby declare the Village Inn of Cornucopia, Wisconsin a pure delight, which does not need to stand comparison to French anything.

What it does share with those small auberges scattered throughout the French countryside is its unpretentious charm, its authenticity, its wonderful local foods, its warm hospitality--what the French would call l'accueil chaleureux (I know I said leave the French to themselves, but I just really like that phrase; it sounds warmer than "warm welcome," which is what it means).

What it also shares with such places is that, since you're sleeping right upstairs, you can enjoy your wine with dinner knowing that you only have to toddle upstairs to bed after dinner. We had two dogs with us again (everyone there was so nice to our dogs; we would go back just because of that), so we toddled out to the stunningly gorgeous, and inexplicably empty, Corny beach.

I had a swim, so did Lily. Mary and Annabel remained mostly on dry land. We had spent the last couple of nights at the orchard watching evening come on, and exclaiming about how beautiful the sky was there, because the hills on our land seem to frame the sky in particularly attractive ways; and we have lots of time to contemplate that sky. But we walked down to the Corny beach after dinner, and with one glance out over the lake I said to Mary: "Dear, we have just had our ass handed us, sky-wise." I did mention the wine, didn't I?

We were the only ones staying at the inn, this Wednesday night, and as we made our way through the lovely little breakfast room/sitting area (fireplace, balcony, help-yourself coffee, tea, juice, etc.), we saw a note on the breakfast counter, instructing us to look in the fridge for a "special treat." Two pieces of strawberry shortcake, from local strawberries. We thought we were still full from dinner till we took a bite, and then we devoured the cake, and from there to sweet dreams.

Now, who's up for that fish boil? We need ten people....

A couple more pictures from the trip:

Tying up Flowerpot.

The Village Inn dining room.

We missed the Corny farmers' market. Maybe next time.

Some local wine--more on this in a future post.

Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw

Iron on the Fire

You can keep your Calphalon pans and your tricked-out Wolf range, your All-Clad and Viking, all your high-tech non-stick dual-fuel convection-roasted induction-grilled modern nonsense.

Give me a campfire and a cast iron skillet. And I will not make you wieners and beans. And I will not heat up a can of Dinty Moore. If I make pancakes...well, I'd let Mary do that.

What I will make with that most basic of kitchens is my very most favorite kind of food, dishes possessed of...what would I call it? Primordial elegance and savor. That says it pretty well.

We've been enjoying lots of campfire skillet meals this summer while camping on the land we purchased in Wisconsin last winter. "Leap Day Folly," "Le Val d'Hiver," "Woodtick Acres"--the land has tried on quite a few titles since we closed the deal on February 29. Now we just call it "The Orchard," for the 60-plus neglected, but still producing, apple trees scattered over the land in a not-very-orchard-like arrangement (we keep finding new apple trees back in the bush, with brambles, thorn trees, birch and poplar grown up around them). But even at home, with all the modern conveniences and some pretty nice equipment (All-Clad and Magna-Lite; Dacor), we still cook this way quite often.

Here's our outdoor kitchen, dining room, and cocktail lounge:

What I particularly like about this method is that the meat, seared directly over the coals, has all the smoky campfire char you want, but it finishes cooking in the pan, so the juices that would be lost to the coals annoint the vegetables, and everything comingles with the herbs and spices, the garlic and onion, etc.. In the end it's a one-dish meal cooked all or mostly outdoors--an excellent thing for a warm summer evening.

For the meal pictured here we used these vegetables, all from the market or our garden:

Baby turnips

New potatoes

Young kale, mustard, and turnip greens

Green garlic

Spring onions

Thyme

We halved and blanched the turnips and potatoes for maybe five minutes in boiling water, 'til they're barely tender. We put the skillet on the grill and added some oil, then the onion and garlic, the turnips and potatoes, then the greens. When the greens were wilted and the roots starting to brown, we set the skillet aside and turned to the meat.

These are lamb sirloin chops that were marinated in a little olive oil, thyme, green garlic, salt and pepper. We grilled them for four or five minutes a side, to brown them nicely but not cook them through. Then we nestled them into the pan with the vegetables and let it all cook together, turning the meat and stirring the vegetables a couple of times, for another ten minutes. We plated it up, deglazed the pan with a slosh of red wine and swirled in a little butter for a very simple pan sauce. Voila:

Just because you're eating outdoors, there's no reason to be deprived of all that civilization has given us.

A wood fire is the ideal heat source for cooking in cast iron, which is great at holding heat but doesn't conduct it all that evenly. With the coals spread out beneath the skillet you get really even heat and great browning with little danger of burning.

On the second night of this particular outing we seared some country-style pork ribs over the coals and finished cooking them with a white bean and vegetable stew we made mostly at home.

We do fish this way, as well (WARNING! Very non-local--for Minnesota or Wisconsin--ingredients ahead): Sear a piece of salmon, halibut, or striped bass over the coals, add to the cast iron skillet where, with some lardons of good bacon, onions or leeks and garlic have been sweating, and where a few clams and/or mussels have opened in a splash of white wine. Grill some asparagus, some chard or summer squash, chop up the veg and toss them in at the last. Of course you could use a local fish like walleye, whitefish, or lake trout, and we certainly have. But edible shellfish are not so common in our local waters.

This is also THE WAY to make paella. I'll devote a whole post to that later. Right now Mary is packing the car and we're trying to get out of town, headed for the orchard, of course. The cast iron skillet is seasoned, packed, and ready to cook.

Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw