Campfire cooking offers unique flavors

CAMPFIRE CUISINE By Eric Poor There is a certain joy to be found in cooking over an open fire. Just watch a kid wielding a jackknife-sharpened green stick to toast a marshmallow or hot dog and you recognize this. It's primal. It's probably why so many people enjoy cooking on the charcoal grill, an imitation of the real thing — cooking with fire. The art of campfire cooking starts with the fire itself. Cooking with an open flame doesn't work — ask any kid with a black cinder of a what was once a marshmallow. The cooking needs to wait for the fire to mature and burn itself down to a bed of glowing red coal. Firewood selection has a lot to do with this process. Softwoods like pine won't produce those cooking coals. It must be hardwood. And because smoke becomes part of the flavor of the cooked food, some woods, like maple, are preferred over others. Don't attempt this with your mother's pots and pans. Iron cooking implements are the tradition and what works the best — kettles, skillets, grills, skewers, and Dutch ovens. Tinfoil, the heavy-duty kind, is a great addition to those cooking implements. Foil-wrapped potatoes will bake well when buried in those hot coals. Trout, seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and slices of lemon can be nicely done atop those coals when wrapped in foil. A mixture of sliced potatoes, summer squash and onion can be cooked the same way in individual packets of foil. Sometimes you can just skip the foil. For instance, corn on the cob with the silk removed can be soaked in water and roasted in their own wet leaves to achieve that exotic caramelized flavor you can't quite get with the kitchen stove. Nothing quite compliments campfire cooking like wild food — true paleo diet stuff like fresh fish or game. The best wild turkey I've ever eaten were breasts threaded onto green maple sticks propped before a campfire. This is where a grill comes in handy because right about the time the meat is done the sticks burn through and a grill will catch the meat before it lands in ash. Speaking of paleo diets, some friends introduced me to a Native American "nutting stone," a well-polished depression in a boulder that was once used to grind mast like acorns or chestnuts to a flour-like texture that could be used to thicken stews. I wish I had those ancient stew recipes. I imagine they differed depending on what was in season or available. Stews are best cooked in a hanging kettle, in which case an iron or green wood tripod is a good tool. Stews can also be simmered in a Dutch oven. Dutch oven cooking generally involves digging a hole, lining it with those hot coals and covering the lid with another layer of coals. Just talking about it I can almost taste those warm biscuits. If you're seeking more information about recipes for campfire cooking look no further than the internet. Campfire cooking recipes abound online — German Apple Pancakes for breakfast; Cast Iron Chicken Biscuit Pot Pie for lunch; Chicken Kebabs or Grilled Steak and Shrimp for supper. Or find a cookbook like the one by local author Allyson Szabo titled: "The Reenactor's Cookbook."