Tucked into the woods, around a crackling campfire, Emma Frisch lays out a luxurious spread.
There are cheeses and olives and crackers, next to homemade hummus and bread charred over the fire. Grilled sausages are topped with sauerkraut and honey mustard, alongside grilled asparagus and kale raab and a rainbow of peppers tossed in za’atar seasoning. Lentil salad rounds out the meal, while bottles of beer and wine chill in the cooler.
She and her fellow campers feast, under the open sky.
“I want people to know that when they’re outside, they don’t have to eat a can of beans thrown over Fritos with ground beef,” Frisch said.
In her new cookbook, “Feast by Firelight,” she returns to what she calls “the roots of camp cooking”: simple recipes made from fresh ingredients, enjoyed in the open air like our ancestors did.
Instead of those canned beans, how about steak with salsa verde, or salmon roasted in a foil packet? And for breakfast, how about tiramisu French toast, griddled in a cast iron and dolloped with melty mascarpone?
