Cooking in the Black Hills

[snousle]

This last run saw some new experiments in camp cooking. The group normally eats out or does informal things at camp, so having me there cooking was sort of the icing on the cake; from my end, it meant that the consequences of failure were more or less nonexistent. So I took a more open-ended approach, shopping each day and generally not planning very carefully.

Overall, things went very well. The hailstorm didn't interrupt things much, although it sure stressed the hell out of me, and if it hadn't dried up promptly it would have been a real mess. There were two huge hits: chile colorado with polenta and various toppings, which was super easy to prepare, and breaded pork chops with mushroom gravy. For the latter, I deep-fried in the field using the iron wok, and found that I could fry 6-8 chops at a time in just a few minutes. Getting through thirty of them was a piece of cake. I think these will be the featured dinners for the pre-Badger crowd.

One issue has me a little vexed, though, and it's more of a social question than a culinary one. I jotted down the latter part of this post while on the road, and had decided not to grouse about it on LJ, but clarkelane's post about the relationship between food and power got me thinking about it again.

I have some really strong feelings about food, and in particular I just don't feed people things that I think are of poor quality. And yeah, I'm a real Kitchen Nazi when it comes to that. I also pride myself on efficiency and avoiding waste - a major reason this works at all is that I don't carry unnecessary crap. In particular, the cooler gets packed with equipment when i leave, and all perishable stuff gets used or tossed. Left to my own devices, I can get waste down to about five percent, which is very little indeed. And this low waste is how I can put together great meals with top ingredients for less than five bucks a head.

By and large, I've been getting much better at involving others in the kitchen, and several campers made major contributions to the effort. It was fun and good! But not all efforts at participation are equally constructive.

Unfortunately, when breaking camp, many people get the idea that their half- frozen hamburger patties, cans of beans, Velveeta slices, squishy hot dog buns, and whatnot, are all precious gifts to be magnanimously donated to the chef upon departure. One guy walked up with a couple of bags filled with such things and proclaimed "here's your dinner tonight!" Um, considering I had been planning all day for those wonderful pork chops, I demurred, and wasn't completely charming about it either. I think he was kind of put off by this, but damn it, it's my kitchen and I am not going to feed people crappy manufactured shit!!! 

It's been kind of hard to balance the ideal of community with this non- negotiable principle, and maybe i should just say thank you and quietly dispose of the stuff. At this camp, there was a dumpster, but when i have to haul trash out myself it can be a real burden, because at the slightest provocation I'd be showered with these unwanted leftovers. Frankly, I see these "donations" as a little bit passive-aggressive; I'm being asked not just to bend my cuisine to other's will, but to also handle a disposal problem while simultaneously discharging their guilt about wasting things. If there were some shortage of food, yeah, this would all be a big happy bonding ritual. But that is not the world we live in, and why should we pretend that it is?

Comments

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Well, that's exactly what I did. In a couple cases I took a few selected items, but I was unable to avoid being a little short about it.

Put anything you want on polenta! Any pasta sauce will work. It's also good fried up the next day with eggs. (You really must use a teflon pan for this, it's much easier.)

[chefxh.livejournal.com]

Ugh! I hate it when another chef on campus sends me a speed rack of leftovers and dead prep. I've actually called the guy up and said, "Don't you have a dumpster over there?"

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Send him back the same rack with a heap of assorted roadkill. :-P

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

And for a difficult-to-feed person like me, discovering that I like polenta is a good thing. ;)

[h0gwash.livejournal.com]

I suppose if you really wanted to, you could simply lay the half spoiled stuff next to the freshly fried chops and everyone will see that no one wants the crappy stuff.

Or maybe you could eternally beg off on accepting the stuff by saying "Can you hold onto it for a while, I don't think I can use it, and I can't make a dumpster run right now."

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

"Due to food safety regulations I am unable to use food that I did not personally buy and prepare."

[broduke2000.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded by a TV commercial a decade ago, where a bearded cowboy announces to the roughnecks what dinner will be.