Winning recipes from the cook-off!

I love to cook and try out all kinds of recipes and add ingredients to make them mine. My three boys and husband love the outdoors and Ohiopyle, so when the Member’s Day activity came around I thought I would do some outdoor cooking research, and remembered some of the recipes from my days as Girl Scout Leader to my 4 daughters. I wanted to come up with something that would be fun to make, and something that would teach the boys learn a little chemistry along the way. I added the tart cherries to the recipe to add a “pop” to all the sweetness of the cake mix and peaches.

Cooking with a dutch oven is fun because you have to control the temperature by using charcoal, but it is versitile enough to use with an outdoor cooktop! That day ended up being great because the boys and my husband were worried it wasn’t cooking due to the rain. But we putting the dutch oven on the stovetop to finish the cooking process and the cobbler came out great. We are always up for an adventure and I am already working on my next recipe!

– Alice Beckett-Rumberger

Campstove Venison Stroganoff:

• About two pounds venison steak or loin (you can substitute beef if you like)
• A couple of large Portobello mushrooms (use wild morels from the woods in season)
• One-half large sweet onion
• Two or three garlic cloves
• About a half bag of wide egg noodles
• Half-cup sour cream (optional) (Yogurt might work too)
• Peanut or canola oil
• Red wine
• Beef broth
• Flour
• Paprika
• Black pepper
• Salt
• Nutmeg

Equipment: camp stove, fuel, dutch oven or similar pot, several small plastic bags, wooden spoon, ladle, a few additional clean bowls or plates.

• Boil water and cook the noodles as per package directions. Discard the water and temporarily hold the noodles in a clean bowl or plate.
• Slice the meat into thin strips, across the grain for tenderness, and dredge in a mixture of flour, paprika and black pepper in one of your small plastic bags. Shake off excess.
• In your Dutch oven, brown the seasoned meat quickly in a few tablespoons of oil over high heat. Then remove and hold the meat temporarily in a bowl or plate.
• Chop the mushrooms into large chunks and brown quickly in the Dutch oven, remove and hold in the bowl with the browned meat.
• Chop the onion and brown as you did the mushrooms (add a little more oil if need be).
• When the onions are translucent, add two or three cloves of chopped garlic. Do this toward the end of the onion-browning step to avoid burning the garlic.
• With the onions still in the oven, deglaze the Dutch oven with about a half-cup of red wine (Do not use chilled wine as it may crack your oven. Warm the wine first, or at least have it at “room temperature”—a tough and contradictory thing to do outdoors, I know. Keep it in a flask in your shirt pocket if you have to but do not pour cold wine into your hot Dutch oven.
• Stir the deglazing wine to dislodge the browned bits on the bottom of the oven (you want these in your sauce).
• Quickly, combine some more wine, and some beef broth with about a third of a cup of flour in one of your plastic bags. Knead the flour vigorously with the liquids to break up the lumps.
• Pour the flour/wine/broth liquid into the oven and stir. As it heats it will begin to thicken nicely.
• As the sauce and onions thicken, place the cooked meat and mushrooms back into the oven and stir them into the sauce.
• At this point it’s just a matter of “feel” and judgment. Add more wine and broth if you think the sauce is too thick. Introduce more flour—blended with broth—if it’s too thin (A quick trick if you need to thicken is to also add a can of cream of mushroom soup).
• Taste and add salt to your liking – a couple generous dashes of nutmeg adds a distinctive and unexpected flavor.
• Simmer the sauce/meat/mushrooms for as long as you need to or want to. This depends on how far you’ve hiked or paddled that day, the weather, the coming darkness, all those outdoor variables. But the thing to remember is, at this point, it’s flexible. Just watch the heat so you don’t scorch the oven bottom.
• When nearing time to eat, blend the sour cream with some beef broth or wine, in the same way you did the flour, early in the process. The sour cream imparts a creamy richness. It’s optional but like many such things, it’s also highly desirable.
• Fold the sour cream mixture into the dish.
• Stir in the cooked noodles and continue heating as the noodles may temporarily chill the dish.
• Serve hot.

The story:

For the VO Campstove Cookoff, I made my stroganoff with venison because I think it was fitting for an outdoor event. Also, I believe the Venture Outdoors membership appreciates access to “local” food, gleaned in a way that has such low impact on the environment. In fact, hunting deer can benefit the forest environment because, when overabundant, white-tailed deer damage the diversity of forests by over-browsing. But that’s not their fault; they need to eat like the rest of us. It’s just our good fortune to have an abundant source of high-quality, low-fat, nutritious wild protein living in our midst here in western Pennsylvania. The deer that went into the stroganoff came from the hills nearby, killed quickly, only weeks before. I butchered the deer myself, so I am sure of its wholesomeness and quality. I knew it was handled with care, respect and appreciation throughout the process. That process, to me, is a fitting continuation of the hunt itself.

I chose the dish because my kids, both of which have their own homes now, always liked it when they were growing up at home. Most of those meals, of course, were made on the kitchen stove inside but the dish adapts well to outdoor preparation, as do most such stews and one-pot concoctions. Obviously, though, it’s not a backpacking meal. Make it when you can carry all these provisions by canoe or on a picnic table in a campground.

I’d like to thank Venture Outdoors for enabling me to share the meal with members and judges. Thanks also to all the other participants who shared their creations. All the food was delicious, prepared with care in tough conditions. It was fun to sample a variety of hot foods in the cold rain with new friends.

–Ben Moyer

Sweet and Savory Sauce (w/ meatballs):

• 1 Can of Jellied Cranberry Sauce
• 1 Bottle of Jack Daniel’s Original #7 BBQ Sauce
• Heinz Ketchup
• Frank’s Red Hot
• Honey
• Heinz Worcestershire Sauce
• A1 Steak Sauce
• Maple Syrup
• Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup
• Brown Sugar
• 1 32oz Bag of Frozen Meatballs (I recommend Rosina’s Homestyle pre-cooked meatballs)

Preparation:

Like my Italian grandmother’s (super secret) spaghetti sauce, there is not a measuring cup to be found when making this sauce!  I have never once measured any of the ingredients.  It’s all based on trial-and-error.  The beauty is that you cannot mess this up!

In a medium-sized saucepan, melt 1 can of jellied cranberry over medium/high heat.  I recommend slicing the jellied form into smaller pieces using a kitchen knife (or stick, assuming you are making this at camp!)  Stir occasionally to evenly distribute the sauce on the bottom of the pan.  Once melted, turn down the heat.  Add 1 bottle of Jack Daniels Original #7 BBQ Sauce.  Whisk the melted cranberries and BBQ sauce until you have a consistently smooth base of sweet and savory goodness!  From this point forward, it’s all taste and personal preferences!

Still on low heat, add in your Heinz Ketchup.  I prefer the squeeze bottle.  I will typically give it a good “squeeze,” haphazardly drawing my best rendition of a smiley face or until my hand begins to numb.  DO NOT STIR (yet!).  After the ketchup, douse with Frank’s Red Hot Sauce.  I will typically give it 8-12 solid “shakes”.  This is what gives the sauce that palette cleansing zip!  DO NOT STIR (yet!)  Next, add in 1 “squeeze” of honey.  After the honey, you can add a small dash of Heinz Worcestershire Sauce. Be careful not to overdue it on the worcestershire.  Next, add in a bit of A-1 Steak Sauce.  Now add in a healthy squeeze of maple syrup.  (Another smiley face, perhaps?)

Now you can begin to stir the concoction together!  I prefer to mix slowly while turning up the heat to just below high.  Mix well until you have a smooth sauce-like consistency.  The amalgamation of aromas emanating from the pot will be tempting to taste, but you aren’t done yet!   The final two ingredients give this savory sauce a tinge of sweetness – chocolate syrup and brown sugar.  Similar to the ketchup, give a generous “squeeze” of chocolate syrup, followed by two spoonfuls of brown sugar. Let the brown sugar and chocolate sit idle in the sauce for 1-2 minutes before stirring into an oblivion.

Continue to stir on medium to low heat until all ingredients are well combined.  Just add more or less of something to flavor to your liking! You can begin to heat up the meatballs in a separate sauce pan.  The meatballs take approximately 5-8 minutes to de thaw and soften.  Once cooked, transfer the cooked meatballs directly into the sauce. Doing so will allow the meatballs to soak up the sweet and savory goodness! Keep warm in a crock pot and serve with toothpicks.

Serving Size:
Rosina’s Homestyle meatballs come is bags of ~64.  The above ingredients will be plenty for 64-96 meatballs. (~1.5 bags)

The Story:
I’d really like to tell you there is some special backstory on how this recipe came to be.  Maybe an interesting chronicle of how my Italian-German ancestors used to make this sauce to survive the cold winter months in Pittsburgh or how my mother used to humor my siblings and I by adding “the sauce” to every meal.  Mom – I know you’re going to read this and I swear that nothing you ever made ever needed additional flavor!  :-)

Alas, I have no such tale. You may be thinking, “So this is what guys do when they have nothing else to eat in the house.  They take a bunch of random ingredients from the fridge and embark on a late night food science experiment in hopes of satiating their hunger.”  While (partially) true, the reality is that this recipe is the culmination of my own culinary creativity. I have been making this sauce (with meatballs) for the past few years for family get-togethers, socializing with friends, and, most recently, impromptu camp-stove cook-offs.  It has always received positive reviews from my toughest of critics and so it lives on. I would welcome your personal modifications to this recipe – I need a good story to tell!

Enjoy.
– Larry Gioia