Hello!

How wonderful to finally have snow! Here in Tiveden, it's the first snow staying on the ground. At last, we have winter for real! This week I've been cooking outdoors. Partly since it's more fun than eating alone back home, but also since some of you have requested some simple dishes to cook outdoors. This post is written with day trips in mind. The dishes are simple, not a thousand ingredients and I use fresh foods instead of dried ones. We will touch on dried tomatoes in one of the recipes though, for anyone curious. But the arts of drying food is worthy of more coverage. I promise you that I'll cover that in another post, later this spring.

Oat-pancakes with blueberries and yoghurt

Suitable: for breakfast or snacks/dessert - when it's could you eat the pancakes as soon as they're out of the frying pan and still warm.

Gear:

• Frying pan or muurikka
• Flipstick
• A bottle for the batter
• A small jar for the cooking fat
• Spoon and bowl
• Fire gloves
• Fire wood and your preferable tool to make it burn

For 1 person:

Mix with a kitchen aid:

• 2 dl oatmeals
• 1/2 dl wheat flour
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 tsp of salt

Add:

• 3 dl soya milk (or cows milk if you prefer)

For frying:

• Ca 50 g cooking fat

Topping from the photos above:

• 3 dl Blueberries turned in 1 tbs of sugar
• 2 dl Turkish yoghurt or similar (I used the one made of oats)

1. I blend the batter at home, bottle it up and bring it with me outdoors. Once by the fireplace I build a set up called "berber eld" in swedish, you can see it in the photo below. Big pieces in the bottom and smaller on top. This fire setup is lit with a small fire on top, burning it's way down. It's a stable setup for the frying pan and I don't have to tend for it all the time. I think I put 2 small pieces of fire wood in while frying.

2. When there are more embers than flames, I grease the pan and start frying my first pancake. When there are too much flames the pancakes will only burn and stick in the pan. So be patient. Grease the pan between every pancake, In my experience you need more grease than you think.

Do the pancakes still stick to the pan and the kids are crying? @mirakellivet came up with the bright idea to fry all pancakes at home and then heat them in a halter over the campfire. A bit more of a safecard. Do you want more pancakes or krabbelurer in your outdoor life? Check out our previous post Krabbelurer for breakfast!

Pasta pesto deluxe

A luxurious pasta with hints of color, simple and tasty!

Suitable: for lunch when it ain't cold, pasta cools of rather quickly. But photos of the dish on snow looks really nice ... (could also be the reason why I ended up with cold food ... XD)

Gear:

• Pot about 2 liter in size
• Spoon and bowl
• Fire gloves
• Fire wood and your preferable tool to make it burn

• I used my happystove, simply cause I didn't want to build a fire place where I wanted to make lunch.

For 1 person:

Boil:

• 1 dl macaroni
• 1 tsp of salt
• 1 liter of water (I brought hot water in my termos)

When the macaronis are soft, add:

• 1 dl frozen edamame beans
• 1/2 dl sundried tomatoes

Pour out the pasta water. I usually squeeze the lid (with my fire gloves on) so there's just a tiny gap and lean the bottom of the pot towards the ground when tipping it over. There are too many sad stories out there of people ending up with pasta on the ground, take it slowly and controlled.

Last of all, stir in:

• 3-4 tbsp of your favorite pesto (I used an organic gevonese) 
• Top it with a sundried tomatoe or two, just to make it more instagram friendly. Bon apetit!

Dried tomatoes 

I didn't have any sundried tomatoes at home, so I cut some small tomatoes in thin slices. Put them on a plate, sprinkled some herbal salt on them and put them in my convection oven at 50° C for about 4 hours. Always with a wee gap, to let the moisture out. I turned of the oven during the night and put it back on for like half an hour the next day. Then the tomatoes had got this lovely texture and saltyness that I wanted.

Sun-soup

A yellow soup to make you warm and happy! It was first made a cloudy day in my tipi. As soon as the soup was ready, the sun broke through sending it's warm light thorugh the gap between the smokeflaps.

Suitable: for lunch all year round, serve with bread.

Gear:

• Pot about 1-2 liter in size
• Ladle to stir with
• Fire glover
• Fire wood and matches/ferrorod/fire steel - whatever you prefer
• Spoon and bowl
• Knife and cutting board (or chop your veggies at home)

For 2 persons:

Mix in a small jar at home and bring:

• 3 tbsp rapseed oil
• 1/2 buljon
• 1 tsp yellow curry-powder
• 1 pinch samba oelek or chili

Also bring:

• 1 dl red lentals
• Ca 6 cm zuccini
• 1/2 dl sundried tomatoes
• 10 cm of french garlic
• 5 dl water (I brought hot water in my termos)
• Pumpkinseeds (optional)

1. Chop up the french garlic
2. Lit the fire
3. Fry the spice-mix quickly
4. Add lentals and french garlic, fry and stir properly.
5. Add water and boil until the lentals are soft and mushy.
6. Chop the zuccini and sundried tomatoes. Let these join the lentals right before taking the pot away from the fire. Stir in some cooking cream.
7. I topped it with some pumpkinseeds for decoration and to get something to chew on.
   

But ... Where's the meat? 

Well, the dishes above is complete on their own and no one will lack proteins on a soft day trip. It works to add some sausage or salami to Pasta pesto or Sun-soup if you want to. I'm also bias, being a vegetarian since 2006 and my cooking-skills with meat goes no further than frying some sausage (for others). The few times when guests requests fish or meat, I get help from my partner, @erik__storm who works as a professional chef.

What do you like to cook on open fire? Please share in the comments or on instagram, and please tag @tracelessintiveden so we get to learn more yummy dishes for outdoors!

Nom nom in peace!

/Lovisa