While camping, make ancient ash

Nestling eggs in campfire ashes is a low-fi way to prepare a camping breakfast in minutes. Photo by Maya Visnyei.

Want to freak out a diehard foodie and unrepentant city slicker who signed up to go on a camping trip? Take them to an outdoor gear store and show them the freeze dried "lasagna," which you prepare by adding boiling water to a pouch. We thought we could do better. So we reached out to diehard journalist and unrepentant Canadian Chris Nuttall-Smith. A resident judge on Top Chef Canada, he wrote Cook It Wild, a book filled with clever camping recipes including an ancient one, for Ash-Roasted Eggs with Grilled Toast and Good Honey.

KCRW: I should tell you that the Good Food crew, four women, is heading to Joshua Tree in a couple of weeks to tackle the great outdoors.

Chris Nuttall-Smith: I love that.

Could you inspire us by sharing a mind-blowing experience that you had on a camping trip?

I'll tell you one of the most extravagant ones with a meal that goes back centuries. It was designed as a meal to be cooked and eaten around a fire but it's taken on these more gourmet tones. It's paella. I have a friend named Sasha who's a former chef and she's an accomplished outdoors person as well. I took her on a paddling trip and we were mid-portage (when you're carrying your canoe between lakes). Her pack was really heavy and she was complaining. I said, "Well, what do you have in there?" She said, "I have a block of frozen squid." My eyes bugged out. It was one of the strangest things I've ever heard from somebody in the wilderness.

What was fascinating was she had prepped everything ahead. She'd made her sofrito and she'd cooked it ahead. The squid was all cut and ready to go. As soon as it thawed, she put a paella pan, which, by the way, I think is just about the greatest open-fire cooking vessel you can get (and even better, they cost about $20 or $30). She put that on the fire and 25 minutes later, we were eating this smoky, crackly, crusted, decadent, glorious paella under the stars.

I love that. You tell us that there are five key steps in preparing for outdoor eating, what are they?

It comes down to: Anything you can do at home, you should do. Chop up vegetables, chop up meats, take the bones out of them because nobody wants to carry bones after the fact. Packing things often means unpacking things. Let's talk about something basic like wine. Take it out of the glass bottle. Bottles shatter, they're heavy. Put it in a soda bottle or a reusable container.

Freezing is a really big part of it. Anything that can freeze without losing quality is really worth doing. Cook ahead. So if you're making something with shallots or I mentioned the sofrito for that paella, you don't need to cook it over the fire. Cook it in advance and take a bunch of the labor out. You're reducing the weight of what you need to cook. You also don't need to measure and chop and all those other things [at the campsite]. Anything that can be mixed ahead, you should. That means spice blends for grilling, dry mixes. I have a very simple buttermilk pancake dry mix. It's made with buttermilk powder and chia seeds. You just add water and you get fluffy pancakes. Mixing ahead, even for doughs. One of the more interesting make-ahead desserts I have is sticky buns. So it's mixing your dough, getting everything ready and then freezing it.

Is there a best kind of ice and a best way to pack a cooler? Is there a special ratio of ice?

There is and I want to say that it's not science. That's not true. It probably is science. I don't treat it that way. But really, you want to have a lot more ice and frozen goods than you have non-frozen goods. Anything that you freeze in advance counts as ice. So when you pack your cooler, it's best to start at the bottom with block ice, if you have it, because block ice stays frozen longer than cube ice. Then, you layer your cooler with the foods that need to stay coldest and you're going to use last. At the top of your cooler is your lunch for the first day and more fragile things, the things that you need to grab more frequently. When you pack that way, you're not reaching into your cooler constantly. One of the keys to keeping a cooler cold is don't open it all the time.

What happens when our package of eggs starts to disintegrate from the wet?

First of all, anything that needs to stay dry in a cooler, I use those Cambro bins. You can also use silicone zip top bags. But eggs, in particular, are such an interesting question. There are different ways to pack them and bring them. I think usually the best way to pack eggs for camping is you don't make the batter at camp. You make it on your counter at home. I have this decadent French toast recipe. You whisk together cream, eggs, sugar, salt, vanilla, orange zest, and then you put them in a little bottle and you freeze that batter. So when you get to camp, it thaws out. You don't need to have all your raw ingredients. Again, everything's measured and you just soak your bread, put it in a pan and you're off to the races.

But then we won't be able to use our wrought iron egg spoon.

Okay, if you have a wrought iron egg spoon, you can also get plastic egg containers. They're pretty good. Eggs are one of those foods that you really want to baby. If you want to bring eggs, they're nice when you're out there. I would say the same of tomatoes and fresh produce. We generally camp in peak produce and fruit season. So I tell people, here's how to pack that so when you get to camp, you have a chance of it still being edible.

When I think about getting in my car to go anywhere, I think about snacking.

Yes, that's important.

It's very important. What can you suggest beyond trail mix?

I think there's a very, very important place in the world for trail mix. I am a trail mix aficionado. We eat it when we're paddling, when we're hiking. I have a chapter in the book, it's actually the first chapter because I think it's such an important meal. When you pull into a campsite, whether in your car or you've been hiking, it's usually early afternoon. I like to think of that as cocktail time. So I lean heavily on cocktail snacks, on Spanish snacks. For instance, warm olives that you set at the side of the fire that you've maybe spiced with some chilies and some orange or peppers that you've roasted with a little sliced Manchego. I think so many people worry that if a piece of cheese sits out on the counter for five minutes and you touch it, you're going to instantly die. People forget that cheesemaking is a food storage method. So many beautiful cheeses like Parmesan and Pecorino Romano to a lot of farmhouse cheddars and even some softer cheeses travel beautifully, if you wrap them right. And you don't even need a cooler for them.

What about cocktails? Do you go the wine route as well where you kind of batch them and pre-freeze them? How do you chill the drinks without ice?

You're not making me choose between wine and cocktails, are you?

No, no, no.

We often do both. It depends what kind of trip it is. If it's a backpacking trip, obviously, weight is more of a factor. But for paddling trips, and certainly for car camping trips, you pre-batch cocktails. I usually put them in vacuum bottles and freeze them in the bottle. I like to add water, about one-fifth by volume of your cocktail to the mix, so it freezes beautifully. That also accounts for the fact that you often don't have nice cocktail ice when you're camping. Instead of ice, your drink is already diluted. It freezes beautifully.

I even show people how to freeze a can of beer, which sounds dangerous and completely counterintuitive, but it's science. If you don't freeze them too long, when you get to camp, they stay nice and cold. You open them up and you've got slushy beer with you.

Nothing's better than slushy bear.

It's pretty good when you're somewhere hot. I think in Joshua Tree, that's going to be a hit.

I think so too. Let's move to the main course. Do you have a specific technique for using foil to roast?

Heavy duty foil is so great for roasting things over the fire. I'll do anything from radishes with miso butter to fingerling potatoes with herbs and butter and olive oil. Those come out just blistered and absolutely gorgeous. Even for dessert, orchard fruit, which is so beautiful, in your part of the world in particular, why not bring some apricots, cherries or plums? You just slice them up, add some vanilla sugar that you've made at home, wrap them in a little foil and stick them on a grill. To me, that is one of the most magnificent outdoor desserts you can make. It's so easy and anybody can do it.

So if one of us isn't stung by a scorpion or wandering an unknown trail by morning, let's talk about breakfast. How can we make it special? Maybe tell us about your ash roasted eggs.

The most low-fi recipe I cooked this year is ash-frozen eggs. They go back at least to Roman times. I think that's when the first record of ash-frozen eggs exists. And they're really what they sound like.

You take an egg, you poke a little hole in the top to let expanding air come out so your eggs don't explode, and you just stick them in warm ashes from your fire. You stick them in about two-thirds of the way. It usually takes about six to 10 minutes and you get such a gorgeous, soft or hard boiled egg, however you like it. When you pull an egg out of the ashes and you crack the top, it's just beautiful and it's got this golden jammy yolk. People get very, very excited.

Ash-roasted eggs go back to Roman times. Photo by Maya Visnyei.

Serves 4

I feel safe in calling this the most low-fi camp recipe you’ll make this year. Ash-roasted eggs, done right, are rich, soft, and just the slightest bit camp fire smoky. The simple technique for making them dates back to the Romans, at least. The dish also sounds, to the unfamiliar, like some kind of prank. Which makes them that much more delicious when you open them up, with the whites just set and the yolks the color of marmalade. Alongside warm grilled bread and flavorful honey, this basic breakfast stops time with every bite.

PREPARE YOUR FIRE. Pull warm, deep ashes and smoldering gray embers from a dying fire, or light a hot, fast fire of twigs and sticks in an existing fire pit and let it burn until it’s nearly out.

ROAST THE EGGS. One at a time, stand each egg upright and use the point of a sharp knife to carefully tap a hole at its peak; the hole should be about as wide as a spaghetti strand. This will keep your egg from exploding in the heat. Nestle each egg into the ash bed so the hole is facing up, then gently mound it with ashes and embers to three-fourths of the way up. If your ashes are very hot, the eggs may push some of their whites out of the steam holes; this is normal. If it happens, gently scrape the whites away so the holes remain clear. If it’s cold out, you can mound the ashes nearly up to the top of the eggs.The eggs should be soft-cooked in about 7 minutes, or hard-cooked in 10 minutes. But this is primitive cooking, not the Modernist Cuisine research lab. I wouldn’t bet my breakfast on cooking these by the clock.

GRILL THE BREAD. While the eggs are cooking, toast the bread slices on a grill over the glowing coals, 1 to 2 minutes per side. If you don’t have a grill, lean the slices at the edge of the fire. Remove the bread from the heat, butter generously from edge to edge (don’t scrimp at the edges!), and cover to keep warm.

SERVE. Using a fire glove or tongs, remove an egg from the ashes, then crack its top open as you would a soft-boiled egg to see if the whites are set to your taste. (If it’s underdone, replace the top and carefully stick it back into the ashes.) When the eggs are ready, open the remaining ones and serve with the buttered toast drizzled with the honey and salt alongside.

**NOTE

Freshly laid eggs have a natural bacteria-blocking barrier on their shells that makes them safe to store unrefrigerated. In North America, however, most eggs must be washed before they’re sold; the washing removes that barrier. So, if you’re lucky enough to have access to unwashed eggs fresh from a farm, you can store them without refrigeration for 2 weeks. If you get them from the supermarket, it’s best to keep them in a cooler and eat them before their best-by date. (For packing tips, see “Of Course You Can Bring Eggs!” on page 15.)

Cook It Wild Copyright © 2023 by Chris Nuttall-Smith. Photographs copyright © 2023 by Maya Visnyei. Illustrations Copyright © 2023 Claire McCracken. Published by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Random House.

"Anything that you freeze in advance counts as ice," says Chris Nuttall-Smith. Photo by Gillian Ferguson.

AT-HOME BASICS

Food writer and resident judge on Top Chef Canada Chris Nuttall-Smith says there are 5 steps for outdoor eating including freezing, chopping, and cooking ahead. Photo by Toby Lennox.

Snacks, cocktails, and meals beyond beans, Cook It Wild ups the ante on campfire cooking." Photo courtesy of Clarkson Potter.