June 2014 – BackCountry Cuisine

Backcountry-Kitchen-4

Meal of the Week: Pesto Knots

Basic Yeast Dough

1/2 package active dry yeast

1/2 cup warm water

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

1 tsp olive oil

1 1/2 cups flour

When you are about 30 minutes from your campsite, take a break on the trail and mix up your dough. Add the water to the yeast and sugar in a zip lock bag and let sit for about 5 minutes. Ideally, you have a sunny rock you can put the starter on to warm up. After the five minutes you should notice some foam in the bag. That is the yeast getting going. Add the flour into the ziplock bag and kneed carefully so you don’t break the bag. Once the dough has started to form and it is pulling away from the bag, take the dough out of the ziplock and kneed a little longer in your hands or on another larger plastic bag. Once it seems that all the flour has been well combined, put it back into the ziplock bag and throw it in your pack for the remainder of the hike.

Once back in camp, you can take out your dough, and divide the dough into about 6 pieces. Each piece should be flattened into a small round pancake about 3-4 inches in diameter. Put about a teaspoon of pesto in the middle and wrap it up, pinching the dough together to make a ball.

Place all 6 pesto knots in the pan and set up your oven. If you are patient, it is best to let the knots rise for 20 more minutes before baking. I am usually not patient, and they still turn out great, though a little more dense. Bake for about 30 minutes. You should start to smell the bread baking after about 20 minutes. If you have left over pesto, I spread a little on top of the hot knots. Enjoy!

Gear Corner

I have been baking for years in the back country. By far the best baking system I have ever used is called the Outback Oven by Backpackers Pantry. While it certainly does not fit in to the Ultralight system(9.5oz in addition to the rest of your pot and stove kit), it is very light weight and works very well. I am currently working on a lighter version of the Outback Oven

Backing with three tea light candles, just did not work. It got hot enough to create a great environment to rise the dough, but not hot enough to bake. I switched over to a tea light alcohol stove with only 1/4 oz of alcohol. I burned that off, then let the whole set up sit for 5 minutes to keep baking. Then I pulled everything apart and put another 1/4 oz of fuel in the stove and cooked again. In the end it did work, but the stove still got too hot and started burning the “oven” a bit. I have some modifications in mind to try and make this system work, so I will report back in a few weeks and let you know what progress I made.

Tip of the Week

Often you want small ziplock bags for yeast or sugar or spices. To make small ziplock bags at home, take a snack size ziplock and cut it in half. I use packing tape to seal up the cut end and now I have a small ziplock!

Enjoy your time out on the trail!

Dustin

We may be creating World peas, but if your not careful, you may lose some knuckle hair in the process! I certainly did this week when lighting my new alcohol stove. Those mini bic lighters get you close to the action!

I made a youtube video showing how the new stove system works.

Meal of the Week

The featured meal of the week is World Peas with Chicken TVP (textured vegetable protein) and veggies. This meal comes from “Recipies for Adventure” by Glenn Mcallister. I added medium salsa to the recipe, so it had a great bite to it. The recipe is really simple. You blend peas, salsa, spices, bouillon and water until creamy, then dehydrate until it is completely dry. See Glenn’s website for more information about making bark. Then you add whatever type of protein and some veggies and you are ready to go! It rehydrated very easily and tasted fantastic. Give it a try! I get all my TVP from Harmony House Foods.

In the Gear Corner

I have been playing around a lot this weekend with different alcohol stove set ups. The tea light stove is crazy simple, but in order to boil 3 cups of water, I would have to refill it in the middle of cooking. It also takes a long time to get that little stove to boil the water. I made a Super Cat stove from a fancy feast can in the past, but that was way too hot for my little compact system. I decided to try the slower cooking Simmer Cat design with only one row of holes and it worked perfect! It takes about 9 minutes to boil 3 cups of water. This gives the food a long slow cook time. The stove only weighs 0.25 oz. Twice that of the tea light stove, but still so light that you barely notice the thing. The whole stove system with pot support, reflector, stove, windscreen and cozy weighs in at only 3.3 oz! If I add my pot and ultralight lid I get up to 9oz. Not bad at all for 2 people cooking dinner. You still need to add fuel of course, but that will depend on how long you are out for. It burned really well for my meal this week and was super easy to use.

Tips and Tricks

For my tip and trick this week I am going to save some of the knuckle hair you love so dearly. When lighting an alcohol stove with a small lighter, you end up putting your hand right over the stove. To keep your hand at a distance, use your lighter to light an eight inch long stick that is 1/16 inch in diameter and use that to light your stove. We all know how attractive that knuckle hair is, so be careful!

Have a great week everyone and remember to keep cook’n!

Dustin

Baking with Tea lights – Fail!

World peas, a new stove and some lost knuckle hair!

Archives for June 2014