Tuesday, January 24, 2012

It is easy to be cheesy.

I recently had the opportunity to cook for a large group in a cabin with no running water, a slow to turn on heating system, and a dubious stove-top. It is a good thing I have a few good camp-stove recipes. It is a great thing that cheesy rice is among them. I had a piping hot pot of cheesy rice ready while the air in the cabin was still cold, so beside being almost camping food*, it was hot food on a cold day. Those are two HUGE advantages, and it is always a good idea to give your food an unfair advantage when you can. One person hiked 30 minutes through knee deep snow to go down to his car to get lactase so he could have some. Vegetarians broke from their diets in order to partake. It is just that good. It might not have been had I made it at home, but we'll never know, will we?

Camping recipes have two phases: Prep and assembly. When you prepare, you should be certain that everything is watertight, and that you have everything you need for the assembly, because you aren't going to find a spatula or a chef's knife growing in the wild.

Ingredients/Prep:
2 leeks (chopped, placed in a small bag)
4 - 6 Tomatoes (chopped, salted, placed in watertight bag with some extra virgin olive oil)
1 lb MINIMUM cheddar cheese (grated, in a bag)(probably 1.5 lbs is as much as you should consider using, but who am I to judge)
1/3 lb pecorino romano (grated, in bag with cheddar)
1 lb chicken sausage (bagged)
1 lb pork sausage (bagged with chicken) (I don't always include this)
maybe some flavor greens like arugula, spinach, or basil, in a bag.
small jar of peanut or olive oil for the bottom of the pan (maybe 3 or 4 tablespoons)
salt/pepper/garlic (in jar with olive oil)
3 cups cooked rice (in Tupperware (useful for storing leftovers in case you want to use the pot for something else. if you expect to eat all of it, you can use a bag instead to save a few ounces..))
large deep pot (fill with other ingredients to save room in pack. Most of them should fit, if they don't, it might be an indication that your pot is too small)
spatula
hot-pad/rag
eating tools (bowls are also nice, if you don't want to all just eat straight from the pot)
camp-stove or an assurance that there will be a stove-top where you are going. It would be really hard to cook this over a fire, don't try that.

Assembly:
This is the easy part. get everything out. dump the oil jar in the bottom of the pot. Throw in the sausage and let it cook through, until you can easily cut it up with the end of the spatula. Dump the leeks in once the sausages start draining grease into the bottom of the pan. From now until finished, you will need to stir fairly constantly to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. When the leeks are starting to brown around the edges, start adding the rice. Fend off the hungry campers with the spatula. Throw the tomatoes in. Now the cheese. Yeah, right now! Let it all melt, and make sure everything is mixed up all good. Oh wait, did you have some greens? You picked arugula? Good choice. Add that before you forget. Mix it up again so there are not clumps of arugula. Oh DAMN it smells so GOOD! Okay eat it.

Serves everybody. If you have less than 8 people, it probably will serve everybody twice. Seriously, you just made like 5 or 6 pounds of serious business.

Variations: You can omit the sausage entirely and go with mushrooms and eggs, for vegetarians. Eggs are not recommended for winter camping, and if you are backpacking be sure to open them beforehand and put them in a watertight container (1 empty peanut butter jar holds exactly a dozen cracked eggs). Add the eggs and mushrooms simultaneously, immediately after the leeks start to brown. You can also throw in some jalapenos.

*camping food tastes great no matter what. we were "almost camping" so it still had a significant advantage.