Cooking on the Road

Brooke and I did our version of Chef at Large this weekend and packed up our kitchens for the great outdoors. Prior to leaving we planned out some meals we wanted to make, groceries were purchased, and we were very excited about the challenge this would be for us. Little did we know how much challenge though.... My husband volunteered to be in charge of packing for the trip, since it was his idea and Brooke and I had book club the night before leaving. Thinking that my husband is perfectly capable of ensuring everything on the list (yes, we even made him a LIST!) made it to Banff, I happily agreed.

Upon arriving in Banff, the discovery was made that all the non perishables and freezer ingredients had come with us, but that everything from the fridge had stayed in Edmonton - d'oh! To add to that, the additional realization was made that the connection from the camping stove to the mini propane tanks didn't match up, so we were going to have to cook 100% over the fire with zero temperature control. Needless to say, Brooke and I were annoyed after all of our planning, and my husband, in an effort to try and make it seem like a good thing said "it's like Iron Chef, but with the secret ingredient being fire! Oh, and missing a bunch of the ingredients you thought you had." Dinner on evening #1 was our first meal, and we made herbed lamb burgers (no cheese as planned), and sautéed potatoes (no roast veggies).

Ages ago we purchased a full lamb, and with it came a few pounds of ground lamb. We had been saving it for BBQ season, and there hasn't been a lot of that happening this year to date. It went into the cooler frozen, and didn't take that long to thaw once we arrived. I had brought rosemary, oregano and thyme from the garden and we chopped it up and combined the lamb with bread crumbs, an egg and the herbs and formed patties. We "fried" the patties until they were cooked through, and reserved some of the fat to use for later.

At the same time, we had chopped up some potatoes nice and thin so that we could boil them while the burgers were cooking. Once the burgers were done, we threw some garlic and the potatoes into the pan with the lamb fat, to give them some additional flavour and crisp up the outsides a bit.

Not bad considering what we had to work with!