Camp Cooking Special: Jerk Chicken Rice Bowl

If there's one thing that I've most resented about this summer spent primarily prepping for and taking the bar exam, it's that it was August before I could finally go camping. But camp, we did-- a brief but much needed trip up the steep, winding, gravelly road to Deer Park in Olympic National Park.

Our love of outdoor activities is well-recognized among friends and family with gift certificates aplenty to REI, so over the years, we've steadily acquired a good collection of fat man camping gear. Among the headlamps, thermarest chair converters, camp chairs, and several stoves (2 backpacking and one Coleman 2 burner), by far, my favorite piece of gear is our Binto Box portable kitchen:



Why yes, those are collapsible, plastic wine glasses. What? It's not like we spent the money on the stainless steel chopsticks or little martini shaker... yet.

This baby comes with 3 storage containers for pantry items, plates, cooking pots, etc. as well as pouches for storing wooden spoons, a spatula (and yes, a whisk!) and can unfold to create an upright counter for chopping stuff. It's made camp cooking almost a luxury, allowing me to expand our camp meals beyond just mac n' cheese and canned ham... although admittedly, that's amazingly delicious after a day hiking around Zion National Park. But thanks to the counter, I'm actually able to set up a mise en place:


(Note the Purell-- another camp kitchen necessity.)

Even though there are plenty of great camp cooking recipe resources out there, my goal to cook recipe free follows me on the trail as well as at home. Under the influence of a recent brunch at a nearby Caribbean restaurant, I thought I'd try making a jerk chicken stew of sorts. This would give me a chance to use up lots of fresh veggies from the CSA and a stew is always great for camp cooking since almost everything can be cooked in one pot for easy clean-up.

I packed a pint size container with my spice mix then added the chicken to it to marinate while I cut up my vegetables. I made sure to use plenty of onion, garlic, and jalapeno (would have used scotch bonnets if I could have easily found them) and coconut milk as the soup base. The spicy scent of the jerk mix filled the air with cinnamon, ginger, and allspice, plus the bright colors of the vegetables and the rich feel of the coconut milk made me temporarily leave our Pacific Northwest setting for the tropics until I noticed we had a visitor whom our dog, unfortunately, did not welcome:



Nonetheless, I think this would be a great meal to make when camping in colder climes, when that hint of the tropics is especially appreciated on a night when your sleeping bag is extra snugly due to lows under 40 degrees. It didn't get lower than the mid-50s that night for us, but that didn't stop us from finishing off the evening with s'mores using Hit cookies as the base with marshmallows roasted over our campfire.



2 cups instant rice
1.5 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast, diced
1/2 cup shelled peas
1.5 cups zucchini and yellow squash, sliced into half moons
2 small carrots, sliced into thin rounds
1 sweet onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 jalapeno pepper, minced
3 scallions, chopped
1 15 oz can light coconut milk
1 tsp Better than Bouillon Chicken Soup Base
2 tsp canola oil

Jerk Marinade
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp all spice
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Mix together the dry spices for the marinade in a pint sized container. At the campsite, add the soy sauce and diced chicken and let marinade while you chop up your other vegetables.

Cook the rice according to package directions. Heat the oil in a large pot. Add the onion, scallion, jalapeno and garlic and let cook until vegetables are softened. Add the chicken and continue cooking until chicken is browned. Add the rest of your vegetables and cook until softened, about 5 more minutes. Add the coconut milk and soup base. Reduce heat and let simmer for about 15 minutes. Spoon rice into bowls and top with ladle fulls of the stew.

CSA Count: 5
Carrots, fresh garlic, zucchini, summer squash, shell peas

Roasted Yellow Pepper Soup

If there's a vegetable I'm not such a fan of, I'm afraid it'd have to be the bell pepper. It usually does nothing for me. I don't really like the taste and it's not like it adds any heat like its friend higher up on the Scoville scale. I really think that their only reason for evolutionary survival is the color that they add to dishes and that's about it.

So now that I've probably bored you with that intro, sounding like a certain grumpy old man's hilariously arbitrary prejudice towards fruit, I have to confess that I was recently inspired to make a soup that would showcase this vegetable enemy, maybe considering it a personal challenge. After a really great email conversation brainstorming foodie dreams with some friends recently, I thought I'd try developing one of the ideas mentioned-- a yellow pepper soup. Although admittedly, I think I wanted to do this more for what I hoped would be a pretty and colorful sight and a medium for some creme fraiche. Oh look-- once again, bell pepper used primarily because of its color!

My goal was to play off of the brightness of a yellow pepper and how that vegetable is both sweet yet spicy (not hot mind you, but you know-- that pepper flavor.) I decided to roast the peppers to yield more of its flavor and to use cumin as the main spice since it adds an earthy, complex element without adding heat. Carrots, leeks and sweet onion enhanced the sweet side of the pepper while giving this soup more body. A taste of the soup once pureed was good, but something was slightly off. A last minute couple of dashes of Asian five spice did the trick making this soup taste faintly like a curry but the bell pepper flavor is really distinct and is the main flavor that shines through in the end. Keep this vegan or top it with a spoonful of creme fraiche and the texture of the soup becomes luxurious. The bright color, sunny flavor and slightly cool but creamy feel after adding the creme fraiche made this an amazing summer meal.



4 yellow bell peppers
1 Walla Walla sweet onion
2 leeks
1 large clove of fresh garlic, 1 small clove of regular garlic (~ 1 tbsp minced)
6 small carrots
1 tbsp olive oil
1 quart vegetable broth
2 tsp cumin
2 dashes Asian five spice
salt and pepper to taste
creme fraiche, fresh basil and chives (optional)

Roast the yellow peppers either by broiling close to your broiler's heating element, forking them and holding them over your gas stove flame, or on a grill-- anything to char the skins black. When blackened on all sides, place peppers in a large bowl and seal with plastic wrap, letting sit while you prep and cook your other vegetables.

In the meantime, chop the dark green ends off of the leeks and get rid of them. Slice the remaining stem lengthwise and separate the layers in a large bowl of cold water. Stir around to get the dirt out. Take out the layers, restack them, and slice into thin half moons. Chop the onion and the carrots. Heat the oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the leeks and onions and cook until softened, keeping an eye on the heat because you just want these to sweat, not brown. Add the garlic, carrots and stock.

By now the peppers should have cooled enough that the skins have cracked. Peel off the charred skins then seed and chop the peppers. Add these to the soup pot and bring to a boil then let simmer for 20 minutes. If you're lucky enough to have an immersion blender, blend in the pot until a slightly chunky puree. But if you're like me, add a couple of ladle fulls to your blender and use a towel to hold the top down while you puree. Be careful to do this in small batches as this is hot and can splash! Repeat in batches, pouring your pureed soup into a bowl to keep separate from the unpureed and do a better job than I did about not leaving too much broth in the end otherwise, you'll end up splattering on the wall even though you were careful to not put too much soup in the blender. Once everything is pureed, pour all contents back into the pot to reheat through. Ladle into bowls and if you want, add a dollop of creme fraiche and top with a chiffonade of basil and some chopped chives.

CSA Count: 3
fresh garlic, carrots, chives

Lentil Soup

It's July, and I just sat down to a hot, hearty bowl of lentil soup. Yeah, I'm sure that if you're lucky enough to be experiencing weather that's actually appropriate for mid-summer this post is going to be totally disgusting to you. So maybe you'll come back to it when it's cold and frosty outside?
But lentil soup was totally right for this chilly, blustery day in Seattle. It's also right for another reason. Two good friends just had a baby yesterday, so I also wanted to make something that would make enough leftovers to share with these tired, busy, new parents. This soup seemed like the right choice since it's a filling, comforting one-pot meal. It was also a good opportunity to use this beautiful bunch of rainbow chard from our CSA.

Lastly, soup also seemed like a good choice for "replenishing your womanly goodness" as John likes to summarize my mother's obsession with soup after certain, um... female life experiences. :)
I took a tip from a recipe I saw once that suggested steeping the lentils with tomatoes and their juices as the acid from the tomatoes will help the lentils keep their firmness so you don't end up with a mushy mess. I wanted a balance of sweetness and spice: the base is loaded with sweet onions, carrots, and celery, offset by a jalapeno, fire-roasted tomatoes with green chilies, a big palmful of cumin and a couple dashes of cinnamon. The starch from the potatoes helped thicken up the soup into more of a stew, while the chard added a slightly bitter but mostly refreshing green taste throughout the soup. The end result tasted almost Ethiopian to me which added to the comfort of the soup since I've always enjoyed the communal nature of eating Ethiopian food with different groups of friends over the years. To round off this comfort meal, I paired it with my favorite sandwich of late, which will be described in a separate post. It's really delicious so I hope you'll come back to read about it!


1 16oz package of lentils
1 tsp olive oil
5 strips of thick cut, uncured bacon, cut into 1/4 inch strips
1 large Walla Walla onion
2 small sweet onions
5 carrots, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
4 celery stalks, chopped into 1/2 pieces
5 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 jalapeno pepper, seeds removed (because Rike's a wuss about spice, but not about labor!), minced
1 14.5 oz can fire-roasted tomatoes with green chilies
3 tbsp tomato paste, double concentrated
5-6 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
2 tbsp cumin
2 dashes of cinnamon
1/2 tbsp dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste
2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, diced.
10 cups chicken broth
1 bunch rainbow chard, rough chopped.

Rinse the lentils and set aside. In a big stock pot over medium heat, heat the olive oil. Toss in the bacon and let cook half way. Add onion, carrots, celery, jalapeno and garlic and let your vegetables sweat without caramelizing, about 10-15 minutes or until onion is soft and translucent. Add the lentils, tomatoes, tomato paste, thyme, and bay leaves. Let the lentils steep in this mix for about 10 minutes. Mix in the rest of the spices, broth, and potatoes. Bring this to a boil then lower the heat to a simmer for about 20 minutes. Add the chard and continue to cook for about 5-10 more minutes until the stalks of the chard have had time to soften. Ladle into bowls and serve.

CSA Count: 4
sweet onions, fresh garlic, carrots, rainbow chard