- Joined
- Mar 15, 2000
- Messages
- 45,835
Folks, ya'll posted up some really good stuff in the cooking contest.
There are a few recipes I want to try myself.
However, there can only be one winner, and it was a consensus decision.
I had in mind a winner, and I had my wife judge the contest independent of me. She picked the same winner.
I also conferred with another mod, and he agreed. So without further delay, the winner is... mingo_clambake!
Her entry had it all--camp cooking, wilderness skills, edibles identification, and great presentation.
It displayed more than just cooking. It showed off a connection with the outdoors that I think defines Becker Knife and Tool.
Mingo posted up a recipe for a fantastic wild salad (miner's lettuce, chickweed, wild sweet pea flowers, chopped burdock root, wild mustard, dandelion, yellow dock, sheep sorrel).
She was able to locate and cook up morel mushrooms, and her steak was a thing of beauty.
Finally, the presentation on the burdock leaves was a great touch.
My only minor critiques were that I'd have like to seen the salad picture more in focus just because it would have looked so durn nice. And with better timing, those mushrooms could have been served with the steak.
Anyhoo, mingo, I need your address. I want to encourage you to post up some more and get your Beckerhead number (wasn't required for this contest).
Maybe two or three of your threads could be on wild edibles. You have a lot to offer there.
There are a few recipes I want to try myself.
However, there can only be one winner, and it was a consensus decision.
I had in mind a winner, and I had my wife judge the contest independent of me. She picked the same winner.
I also conferred with another mod, and he agreed. So without further delay, the winner is... mingo_clambake!
Her entry had it all--camp cooking, wilderness skills, edibles identification, and great presentation.
It displayed more than just cooking. It showed off a connection with the outdoors that I think defines Becker Knife and Tool.
Mingo posted up a recipe for a fantastic wild salad (miner's lettuce, chickweed, wild sweet pea flowers, chopped burdock root, wild mustard, dandelion, yellow dock, sheep sorrel).
She was able to locate and cook up morel mushrooms, and her steak was a thing of beauty.
Finally, the presentation on the burdock leaves was a great touch.
My only minor critiques were that I'd have like to seen the salad picture more in focus just because it would have looked so durn nice. And with better timing, those mushrooms could have been served with the steak.
Anyhoo, mingo, I need your address. I want to encourage you to post up some more and get your Beckerhead number (wasn't required for this contest).
Maybe two or three of your threads could be on wild edibles. You have a lot to offer there.
I often like to go out with a minimum of ingredients (in this case, salt, pepper, oil, and a steak) and forage for the rest to make a full meal. So that's what I did for this challenge! Of course, if I had more time, I could have set out earlier and tried to trap a rabbit or something and forgo the steak, but I actually wasn't even going out with the intention of making a meal for this challenge-- I just noticed so many wild edibles while I was walking around that I decided to document and submit it for this contest.
So, for the first course we have a salad of *entirely* wild greens, including: miner's lettuce, chickweed, wild sweet pea flowers, chopped burdock root, wild mustard, dandelion, yellow dock, sheep sorrel-- lightly dressed with olive oil, salt, and pepper (no need for vinegar or lemon juice, the sorrel has a tart flavor) served on a burdock leaf, i.e., nature's tinfoil.
Here's me foraging-- just finished digging up a stubborn burdock root.
the roots washed and peeled
The finished salad (it's hard to tell the scale in this picture, but burdock leaves are about a foot and a half long, so this is a fairly big salad)
While I was picking wild greens, I found some morels:
Now time to cook:
All I did to the steak (top sirloin, if anyone cares) is rub it with rosemary and minced garlic, & a little oil. But steak (hell, pretty much any meat) really doesn't need much at all to taste good when you're cooking it over a fire. I also chopped the morels and added salt and pepper and a bit of oil and water to keep it from burning.
The mushrooms (which I just ate out of the pot because I was really hungry and it would have gotten cold while I was waiting for the steak to finish):
The steak:
I like cooking more fancy or gourmet stuff when I have a place with a kitchen or while car camping (Widerstand can attest to that-- EVERY day is Thanksgiving when I have a kitchen at my disposal) but I like to keep it pretty simple when I'm hiking in to camp, even if it's only a couple of miles-- being able to find a lot of wild food wherever you are certainly cuts down on the weight of your backpack! And, more than anything, it's just somehow more satisfying than buying everything at a grocery store.
