Over the years on the California and southwestern fieldschools and camping trips, several recipes have become annual favorites. For those interested we give them here:
Anasazi Beans
To do these right you need several pounds of the dried anasazi beans available by mail order from Colorado. Supposedly these are the same variety grown in the ancient Southwest by prehistoric pueblo peoples. The story goes that a group of archaeologists from UCLA were excavating a publo site many years ago and came across a storage jar filled with ancient beans. To everyone’s surprise, when planted the beans germinated and the Anasazi beans now in cultivation are their descendants- a localized genetic survival from ancient days. You can substitute pinto beans or any other type of bean if you need to. Chop up a couple of onions, saute these, with garlic and a few juniper beries preferably fresh from the tree. Add some whole coriander seed and some good dried chile (whole or powdered) to taste. Cook gently in a large pot with plenty of water for several hours. Season to taste and serve with tortillas or cornbread and a salad if you have some fresh greens in camp.
Saddleback Butte Posole
I usually use two restaurant sized tins of posole corn (hominy) for up to 18 people. Add tinned chopped green chile, onion, garlic, carrots, celery to taste. Simmer for at least an an hour then add some chopped green cabbage at the last minute before serving. If there are no vegetarians in the group this can be profitably augmented by browning a pound or more of browned pork with the onions and garlic before adding the vegetables, posole corn and water to your kettle or dutch oven.
Jalama Beach Tri-tip
get a large tri tip- maybe 3-4 pounds. Marinate in dry tri-tip spices. Grill whole over glowing coals. slice thinly Serve with the local Pinquito or other beans and maybe a salad of sliced oranges with red onion and some good sourdough bread or baked potatos.
Feeds up to 18 Welsh students after windy beach walking.
Carrizo Plains Cornbread (good with the posole above)
If you measure out the dry ingredients and put them in a ziploc bag before your trip you can mix easily with no clean up by just dropping the liquid ingredients in and mixing. This is a handy trick on Carrizo Plain where you have to haul all your water in when camping – it saves needing so much water for washing dishes.
2 oz melted butter or bacon grease plus an extra ounce for greasing the pan
1 large egg
1 cup milk or butter milk or evaporated milk (or could use powdered milk mixed with a cup of water)
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1 cup plain flour
1 cup cornmeal
4 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
2T sugar
Preheat a campfire oven to 425F if you have one with a thermometer on it or just get a a dutch oven sizzling hot. Put 2 T of the butter in your pan and set it to heat up- swirl around to coat the pan. When the butter is sizzling but before it starts to smoke, pour in the cornbread batter (which should be mixed lightly and only just before you cook it.) Don’t have the pan or oven over open flame- it should be on a bed of coals while actually cooking. It should take about 20 minutes to cook but this depends on the size of you pan as well as the heat) Eat warm- this does not keep very well.
Viv Turner’s Coconino Plateau Campfire Loaf
To really do this one right you have to have mix it and raise it on the road, sitting in the back seat of a fast moving off road vehicle roadtripping up to Grand Canyon on a hot desert afternoon. The dough will be infused with the perfume of the high desert, the pine pollen and sage scents. The yeast is bound to be boosted by that dose of warm wind by the time you set up camp. Your bread will have a true gout du terroir from the Coconino Plateau or Mojave dust blowing in the windows. Raise your dough til you get to the campsite. Knead while the air is still warm and let it rise once more on a picnic table under the pines while you set up camp. Bake in a dutch oven over a good bed of coals for as long as it takes. Eat some while still warm and save the rest for breakfast to eat with some desert honey thoughtfully picked up from a roadside stand.
Santa Cruz Island Reserve Mango Salsa
Cooks for a Jepson Arboretum research party met on Santa Cruz Island at the UC Reserve field station taught me this one. Enough mangoes for the amount of salsa you want. Make sure they are ripe. Chop and mix with some diced white onion, some ripe tomatoes and some fresh roasted chile. Add some coriander (cilantro). A pinch of sugar may help if you have dull mango. Great with the tri-tip and tortillas or really with almost anything.
Mike’s Great Basin Burritos
Economy camp grub for hungry fieldworkers perfected by the revered Grateful Deadhead archaeologist and camp cook for Pine Valley Archaeological project back in 1974. Get more than enough giant flour tortillas. Make a pot of beans from scratch, seasoned to your taste. Cook and cook, then mash those beans. Put out some fixin’s like grated cheese, chopped onion, canned chopped green chile, salsa. fried bacon pieces and maybe some of that leftover campfire roast turkey (Mike stuffed this with the local Great Basin sagebrush artemesia tridentatabefore roasting it in an old oven fixed up in the corral of an abandoned ranch. He figured that sage is sage. No! Don’t do it- use something else. I never have quite gotten the taste of that overpowering sagebrush infused turkey to go away!) The counsel of perfection is to have some sour cream or yoghurt around with this on the off chance that you have some lurking in your ice chest.
David Miles’ Archaeological Bacon Sandwiches
In a very hot week during the summer of 1977, David enticed a group of us into early morning starts on a dig at Barton Court Farm in Oxfordshire by promising to make hot bacon sandwiches for lunch and then to finish up early for a swim in the river. He used fresh loaves of granary bread cut in thick slices and local bacon fried up with tomatoes from his own garden together with a few mushrooms. This was accompanied by big chipped mugs of strong tea from the giant kettle in the finds caravan. Memorable.
Karkade
On our fieldschool in Egypt a few years ago we developed a taste for karkade, a hot or cold tea made with hibiscus blossoms. At the Windsor Hotel in Cairo they served it in tall glasses with a pink foam on top. At Siwa Pauline and I bought a kg bag of hibsicus blossoms for Karkade, but then accidentally left it on the bus to Alexandria. Oh well! The same thing is served in Mexico and California under the name of Jamaica and it can be found in Italy sold as Karkade. The dried flowers are easily available in small packets in grocery stores in California and it makes a refreshing drink hot or cold. In North Carolina I ran into an iced tea variant made with hibiscus flowers, mint and lemon at a farmer’s market in Sylva. Red Zinger tea is similar to hot karkade- just weaker and has additional spices.
Campsite Ice Cream
You need two ziploc bags for this, one smaller, one large. Place crushed ice and about a cup of rock salt or kosher salt in the large bag. Fill the smaller bag with about a pint of any ice cream recipe of your choice. close the smaller bag securely and place in the larger bag. Play catch for 10 minutes or so til the ice cream is frozen. Eat
Ziploc Omelettes
Have personalized omelettes ready for the whole group at once!
Have everyone write their name on a quart-size Ziploc freezer bag with permanent marker.
Crack 2 eggs (large or extra-large) into the bag (not more than 2) shake to combine them.
Put out a variety of ingredients such as: cheeses, ham, sauteed onion, roasted green pepper, tomatos, mushrooms cooked hash browns, salsa, etc.
Each camper adds prepared ingredients of choice to their bag and shake. Make sure to get the air out of the bag and zip it up.
Place the bags into rolling, boiling water for exactly 13 minutes. You can usually cook 6-8 omelets in a large pot. For more, make another pot of boiling water.
Open the bags and the omelet will roll out easily. Be prepared for everyone to be amazed.
Nice to serve with fresh fruit and coffee cake; everyone gets involved in the process and a great conversation piece.
If you have an ice chest you can get these ready the night before, andin the morning after boiling the water in 13 minutes, you got a nice omlette for a quick breakfast!!! Could be dinner too.
S’mores
take two graham crackers, a toasted marshmallow and a little chocolate. sandwich together and eat in front of a good campfire. Good for potassium crashes too if you use decent chocolate. My experience is that British students do not like American chocolate bars much. Chocolate bar composition seems to be a culturally specific taste for many.