Camping, Princess Style

[Smithy]

We've changed the scenery and the trailer orientation. It's much greener here in western Arizona, a couple thousand feet higher and a couple hundred miles east of where we've spent the last few months. The sunrise has to be viewed out our back windows now.

 

 

It's strange to see city lights again: still distant, but close enough to be distinct. I was disoriented when I got up last night and looked out my window and saw lights where the railyard some miles away has been for the last few months. "Why all those lights at this hour?" I wondered, "was there a derailment?" Then I remembered that we'd moved.

 

Breaking camp was a bit of an adventure. After staying in one place for so long, we'd forgotten exactly where things go and how to fit them together. An observer would have been amused to see us puzzling over how to fold a camp chair enough to go back into its sleeve: with a Ph.D. and M.S. between us, it still took 15 minutes to get it right! At least we could laugh about it.

 

With all that going on, we didn't take time for the usual breakfast. I made sandwiches for our breakfast and lunch, and we ate as the fit took us.

 

 

After we got settled into our new digs we walked, visited with the camp host, and struggled to stay up past sunset. Neither of us was interested in elaborate dinner preparations: too tired, and not interested in a fuss or much cleanup. This is where the precooked, frozen dinners we make in batches come into play. "Chili it is!" we said.

 

We had found his last batch lacking something -- exactly what, we weren't sure (I blame the tomatoes) but had decided to buy a bunch of fresh spices during this shopping expedition. Among the spices we purchased were a package of "mild chili powder" and a bottle of Gebhardt chili powder. We'd never heard of that brand before, and had decided to try it out.

 

 

Both chili powders were good. We thought the Tampico blend might be slightly sweeter; I think it's also saltier but can't read the label well enough to be sure. For me, sour cream was the final touch to bring out the good flavors of the chili and the spices.

 

Lesson learned: get rid of the old chili powders in my cabinet! I know the stuff goes stale; I just don't know how quickly.

Edited March 26, 2023 by Smithy
Corrected location. We aren't in eastern Arizona as originally written. (log)

[C. sapidus]

Very nice! We were surprised to see how elevation noticeably greened up the landscape in the desert southwest. I suppose higher elevation squeezes a smidge more rain out of that arid atmosphere.

 

Guessing that neither of your advanced degrees involved folding camp chairs.

[NadyaDuke]

Gebhardt is one of the original, if not the original,  Tex Mex brands, and did their part to bring chili to the rest of America. Somewhere in my collection of contage cooking pamphlets I have one of theirs, explaining what chili and enchiladas and so forth. A kind of like this. Or did you mean you hadn’t heard of Tampico in which case, never mind ;).

[Smithy]

46 minutes ago, NadyaDuke said:

Gebhardt is one of the original, if not the original,  Tex Mex brands, and did their part to bring chili to the rest of America. Somewhere in my collection of contage cooking pamphlets I have one of theirs, explaining what chili and enchiladas and so forth. A kind of like this. Or did you mean you hadn’t heard of Tampico in which case, never mind ;).

 

Thanks for that information! I kinda thought Gebhardt sounded familiar, but couldn't place it. I've probably seen some of their offerings in Texas. For sure, now that I'm aware of it, I'll see it jumping off the shelves at me. (Yes, I was speaking of Gebhardt. Tampico is all over the place where we live and shop.)

[Dave the Cook]

I'm not sure anyone here needs a pictorial lesson, but I'm generally in favor of photos, and there seemed to be some lingering questions about the batters we use. So what follows is a more or less step-by-step  illustration of making the first (more delicate) batter, this time for fried shrimp tacos.

 

First, the mise. Ingredients: a/p flour, fine salt, vodka, beer, rice flour.

 

Don't use your good vodka here, it would just be wasted. Besides, it's fun to step up to the counter and demand, "A pint of your cheapest vodka, my good man!" Also, I remember saying that all you needed was an American-style lager, and yet here we have Anchor Steam. While Miller Lite will work (heck, club soda or Fanta Orange will work, if you like that sort of thing), the more flavor in your fizzy stuff, the better.

 

Next, combine the dry:

 

 

Add the wet:

 

 

We now pause for a poetic interlude, courtesy of Ogden Nash:

 

There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth—
I think that perhaps it's the gin.

 

A-hem. I usually load up a shaker with rice flour to dust the raw shrimp (after seasoning them)

 

 

Fry the battered shrimps at 375°:

 

 

This (the lighter) makes superior crunchy bits, if that's of interest to you. (It should be. What's wrong with you?)

 

 

The shrimps are loaded into toasted flour tortillas (this photo shows the final texture of the batter very well). Unlike most other applications, we don't measure the protein by weight; here, it's by numbers; five 21/25 shrimp per taco.

 

 

Fully dressed, with salsa roja, toasted garlic sauce and shredded romaine (usually iceberg, but we had tons of romaine):

 

 

C'est tout!

 

[Smithy]

Ah, Dave, thank you! Those shrimp are things of beauty! I still have to get the rice flour, and may have to get vodka unless we have some on board. I may have vermouth. I have reserved a bottle of our good Scottish-style ale (Kilt Lifter) and can probably get more if the rest of the ingredients come available soon.

 

Then, it's Katie bar the door!

[Kim Shook]

Mr. Kim always comes home from a BBQ judging event with freebies.  This was one of them this weekend:

I wouldn't have known it if I hadn't seen it here first, @Smithy! 

[Smithy]

15 minutes ago, Kim Shook said:

Mr. Kim always comes home from a BBQ judging event with freebies.  This was one of them this weekend:

I wouldn't have known it if I hadn't seen it here first, @Smithy! 

 

I look forward to reading your tasting notes!

[Smithy]

Lunch today. I really wanted to use my lemon vinaigrette, but forgot to take it out of the refrigerator before going to town, and it's congealed. Instead I'm using the Double-Sesame Dressing I made back here. It's actually pretty good on this salad, better than I remember it being. I still keep forgetting to put ginger into it.

 

 

Guess what? The Hispanic grocery store in the nearest town doesn't have rice flour! The clerk thought it was a strange request. I don't expect us to be visiting any larger towns during this stay, although they have larger grocery stores. We did our best to stock up on everything before breaking camp so that we wouldn't have to drive much while we're here.

 

So...good ol' Amazon and their lockers to the rescue! My package of Bob's Red Mill White Rice Flour (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) should arrive Friday.

[Smithy]

I love eggplant. I especially love it in Middle Eastern dishes such as baba ghanouj and moussaka, and until we broke camp I had several eggplant recipes I wanted to try out of the cookbook Falastin (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). I bought a couple of eggplants, a couple of weeks ago, then got busy. Then I had to return the library book. And there the eggplants sat.

 

(I did not love eggplant when I was a child. My sainted grandmother, whom I adored, would slice it, pepper the bejeezus out of it, and fry it. Whether she also breaded or battered it I don't remember, but all I could taste was the pepper! It was years before my sister and I overcame our dislike of black pepper. We think it's because Nana's pepper was always stale, bless her heart. It was years after I left home before I was willing to try eggplant again.)

 

Our latest mail shipment included the March-April 2023 issue of Milk Street. That magazine has a "No-Fry Neapolitan Eggplant Parmesan" recipe that looked like something I wanted to try. I like eggplant parmesan. It's been ages since I had it. I mean, doesn't this picture make it look delicious?

 

 

 

"What's for dinner tonight?" asked my darling. When I said "Eggplant Parmesan" I saw him flinch. "What meat will be in it?" he asked plaintively. Right away I decided to take liberties with the Milk Street recipe.

 

 

I remembered, once I got going, that the reason I don't do eggplant often -- in fact, it's been a couple of years -- is the issue of getting it cooked properly without its soaking up half a bottle of olive oil. This recipe has you brush a baking pan with oil, lay the thin slices atop it, then brush the tops of the slices with more oil, and roast at high heat. I've seen this trick before. Madhur Jaffrey uses it. Lynne Rossetto Kasper may use it. It's a great trick...but requires very close attention lest the slices burn. 

 

 

Enough slices escaped the carnage that I could still make the dish.

 

I had to take liberties with Milk Street's sauce, too. Because of the meat, I needed more tomato than they'd called for. I didn't have all the cheeses they specified. In fact, as I was putting the layers together I mused that this might be more like my Egyptian Moussaka than Eggplant Parmesan. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. We love moussaka!

 

 

And it was good. We both liked it.

 

 

Good thing, too, since there are plenty of leftovers.

[heidih]

Glad for you it came out well with your cook's flexibility. I love eggplant with lamb. Have you ever had the pleasure of the little green pea looking ones? Generally I go simple wth the big purple ones and do the roast, mash wth olive oil and garlic and maybe fresh herbs. .And wow your eggplants must have been quite fresh to last before cooking so long. 

[Smithy]

1 hour ago, heidih said:

Glad for you it came out well with your cook's flexibility. I love eggplant with lamb. Have you ever had the pleasure of the little green pea looking ones? Generally I go simple wth the big purple ones and do the roast, mash wth olive oil and garlic and maybe fresh herbs. .And wow your eggplants must have been quite fresh to last before cooking so long. 

 

That sounds like a good way to treat globe eggplants. Yes, these had been quite fresh. They were starting to go soft when I finally coooked them, but still plenty good.

 

What do you mean by the green pea ones? I don't think I've ever seen those.

[heidih]

Pea eggplant  https://www.templeofthai.com/food/fresh/thai-pea-eggplants

[Dave the Cook]

3 hours ago, Smithy said:

Guess what? The Hispanic grocery store in the nearest town doesn't have rice flour! The clerk thought it was a strange request.

 

Pfft. This guy could own -- own, I'm telling you -- the Hispanic rice flour market in the area.

 

 

 

[Smithy]

I'll probably find 5 different brands of rice flour when we get to Texas.

 

And they'll all be cheaper than what I ordered. 

 

🙄

[heidih]

So what is the rice flour use/culture in Latin American cooking. I am not clued in.

[Smithy]

11 minutes ago, heidih said:

So what is the rice flour use/culture in Latin American cooking. I am not clued in.

 

This is a great question for @Dave the Cook.

[Dave the Cook]

Sorry to disappoint, but I have no deep knowledge of Mexican, Central American or South American food, other than what I pick up here and there. I can sum up my experience so: usually, I like to eat it.

 

Looking at recipes on the product's website, It looks like rice flour is used pretty much the way other cuisines use cornstarch: as a thickener, as bulk starch, and as a coating. I will note that the company got its start as a producer of wheat flour.

[Smithy]

I want to make a pitch for The Rustik Oven's sourdough breads, in case someone else here likes San Francisco-style (really sour) sourdough bread. I discovered The Rustik Oven Bakery last year or the year before when I was looking in vain for San Luis Sourdough bread. (San Luis used to make a wonderful Rosemary Olive Oil Sourdough, but stopped making it for some reason. Their distribution range seems also to not be where we travel these days.)

 

Rustik Oven makes several types of bread: Sourdough, Italian, Cracked Wheat, plain white, and Cracked Wheat Sourdough. I am a sourdough lover, and both of these sourdoughs fit my tastes. They seem to suit a lot of other people's tastes, too: in both Yuma and Duluth, it's been hard to keep the Sourdough on the shelves. I rarely see the Cracked Wheat Sourdough, but took a chance on it this year and discovered that it's also excellent.

 

 

(The bottom part of that collage is from some oven-toasted bread for a salad, and doesn't show the cracked wheat version. I just finished it.)

 

[heidih]

I recently started getting the Rustik pop up ads. I too like a sour sourdough.  Thanks for the detail.

[Smithy]

These campsites have very nice sun shelters, with concrete pads, sturdy picnic tables, and pedestal grills that pivot for best wind advantage. 

 

 

We swore last night that we'd cook outside, and got the firewood and the campstove out so as to give the cook a choice. Then we waited for the wind to die. And waited. (Our camp host commented that it's been so cool and windy this year that she used her gas grill for the first time this week!) We finally decided to cook inside instead. Superburgers, with vegetables of our choice.

 

 

The extra rain that this area gets has made for an interesting comparison of plants between where we were staying and where we are now. The plant community is basically the same (creosote, ironwood, palo verde) but the flowers are much more abundant and much, much taller. The orange and purple flowers (apricot mallow and heliotrope phacelia, in case you care) are knee-high here, whereas they rarely got above a foot tall there. There are also new (to us) plants: the yellow fiddlenecks and hedgerocket didn't appear at all down there.

 

 

We're only 1000' higher, but the mountains do seem to squeeze out extra moisture. 

[C. sapidus]

Those campsites look very nice. Rotating pedestal grill is a clever idea, so it is a shame that the wind did not cooperate.

 

We bought a bare-bones work van and the boys tricked it out as a camper van so that we can travel with the dogs. We have driven the van to Maine and Cape Cod so far, mostly just camping in friends' driveways.

 

We have a 3-day trip planned where we will test out staying at an actual campground and a Harvest Host site. Hoping to work out as many glitches as possible before longer trips this summer.

 

I am learning a lot from your posts. Thank you!

[Smithy]

9 minutes ago, C. sapidus said:

Those campsites look very nice. Rotating pedestal grill is a clever idea, so it is a shame that the wind did not cooperate.

 

We bought a bare-bones work van and the boys tricked it out as a camper van so that we can travel with the dogs. We have driven the van to Maine and Cape Cod so far, mostly just camping in friends' driveways.

 

We have a 3-day trip planned where we will test out staying at an actual campground and a Harvest Host site. Hoping to work out as many glitches as possible before longer trips this summer.

 

I am learning a lot from your posts. Thank you!

 

If you have questions that aren't food-related, feel free to PM me. I'll be glad to answer questions if I can.

 

And when you take to the road, I hope you'll post about it!

[Smithy]

Finally! We finally cooked with fire! In that lovely pedestal-based grill!

 

 

I coated chicken thighs with liberal amounts of Berbere spice and coriander.

 

 

When the time came, I loaded them into our grill basket and parked them on the grill. From there it was just a matter of adjusting the height of the grill grate, and turning the basket occasionally until the thighs were cooked.

 

I tossed cut-up chunks of cauliflower in a mix of tahini sauce, olive oil, paprika (sweet and smoked), cumin, coriander, and a lovely blend my sister gave me called "Five-Alarm Fire Sea Salt". (It's a good thing I tasted the coating before committing the cauliflower to it. That salt blend turned out to be a bit much, so I had to dilute the mix with yet more tahini and olive oil, and maybe the other spices, before coating the cauliflower with it.) Then I parked the florets on a lined baking sheet. When the chicken went onto the fire, the cauliflower went into a 425F oven until the bits were browned and crispy, maybe 40 minutes. Here's the before-and-after shot:

 

 

This is pretty simple cooking, and it left time for socializing outside while the food was doing its thing with minimal monitoring.

 

The chicken, taken off the grill and out of the grill basket:

 

 

 

Dinner was delicious. There are still 3 chicken thighs left. Leftover chicken is never a bad thing.

 

 

[Porthos]

On 3/26/2023 at 1:18 PM, Smithy said:

 

Thanks for that information! I kinda thought Gebhardt sounded familiar, but couldn't place it. I've probably seen some of their offerings in Texas. For sure, now that I'm aware of it, I'll see it jumping off the shelves at me. (Yes, I was speaking of Gebhardt. Tampico is all over the place where we live and shop.)

There's also Tapatio. When a friend was working a serving counter he was once ask for Tuh-PATio sauce. It's been a joke within our group ever since.