7 Tips for a Better Picnic

Marnie Hanel, Andrea Slonecker and Jen Stevenson are the authors of “The Picnic: Recipes and Inspiration From Basket to Blanket,” and members of the Portland Picnic Society in Oregon, which meets about once a month to dine together outdoors. Here are a few of their tips for a less hectic, more delicious outing:

PACK YOUR OWN seasoning kit of herbs, lemons, salt, pepper and olive oil. This way you can taste and adjust food on the site, and refresh any dishes that need to be perked up.

DON’T BRING DISHES that could be damaged by a bumpy car ride or walk. You can always finish up — fill deviled eggs, dress delicate salad greens, cut fruit and sandwiches — at the picnic site.

IF THERE IS NO TIME to cook, you can put together a fine picnic with sandwiches, fancy groceries or prepared foods, and still make it an occasion by using colorful unbreakable plates and silverware.

REMIND EVERYONE to bring water. It’s a heavy but necessary item, and no one person should be responsible for bringing all of it.

DROP A PIN in a map app on your phone and text your location to guests.

DON’T FORGET trash bags, a wine opener, a washable blanket, a sharp knife, a cutting board and serving utensils.

TAPE A THERMOMETER inside your cooler, and return dishes there between servings to keep them fresh and cool, and prevent spoilage.

How to make courgette and sorrel soup

We’ve been loving or loathing sorrel in England for hundreds of years. Before citrus was readily available it was a handy way to add an acidic flavour to foods.

That acidity – thanks to the oxalic acid in sorrel – isn’t to everyone’s taste. But used judiciously, it’s a boon in the kitchen.

It’s also simple to grow and since it’s a perennial, it conveniently pops up year after year. Here at home, we like sorrel in soups or cream sauces or paired with fatty fish like salmon.

But you’ll find sorrel in Nigerian cooking where it’s used in teas, stews and salads. It’s also popular in Russia and the Ukraine.

Food writer Olia Hercules has several sorrel recipes in her book Mamushka (Mitchell Beazley) including a sorrel broth and moreish Moldovan breads with cheese and sorrel.

Sorrel pops up in Eastern European cooking, Indian, Vietnamese and Greek.

The bright green, arrow shaped leaves can be eaten raw in salads or cooked but be warned that heat turns it a rather unappetising brown colour.

For this soup, I add the sorrel in at the last minute and can depend on hefty amounts of courgette to keep the soup lovely and green. And you don’t need a huge amount of sorrel either to get that punchy, sour, fresh taste. Best yet, this soup is perfect hot or cold – a definite benefit in the hot summer weather.

Courgette and sorrel soup

Serves 4

1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 medium courgettes, approximately 600-700g total weight
​500ml chicken or vegetable stock
50g sorrel
Salt an pepper
Heavy cream
Micro sorrel leaves or minced chives to garnish

Heat the olive oil in a medium sized pan. Add the onion, stir and cover with a lid. Sweat the onions until they’re soft but not brown. Add the garlic and cook for a further minute or two. While they’re cooking, top and tail the courgettes and slice into discs. Add the courgette slices and stir to coat with the oil and onions. Add the stock, cover and cook over medium high heat until the courgettes are just cooked through.

While the soup is cooking, remove the leaves from the sorrel, discarding the stem. When the courgettes are ready, remove the soup from the heat and stir in the sorrel leaves. Using a blender or stick blender, puree the soup. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.

Serve in soup bowls and garnish with a healthy drizzle of cream and garnish with the micro sorrel leaves or minced chives. The soup can be served warm or cold.

How to cook Swedish-style baked leeks and beef rydberg on an open fire

Before the arrival of the electric cooker, fire, wood and iron were the holy trinity of the Swedish kitchen. I grew up in Järpen, a small village in the north of Sweden. My parents would take us to the mountains, and we’d cook over a fire pit. As a young chef, though, I became passionate about Italian olive oil, French braised chicken and molecular gastronomy – serving dishes, in my first restaurant, such as “asparagus clouds”. I could hardly have got any further away from the rustic slow cooking of the Jämtland forests.

And then I spent the summer of 2011 with my family in a cabin on the island of Ingarö in the Stockholm archipelago. My wife Katarina had just had our first child, our son Vinston. I wandered around on the island and pondered, like a gloomy character from a Bergman film staring at the trees, and remembered the open-fire cooking of my childhood. I chopped down some of the birches I had stared at and made a fire pit. For the whole summer, it was our family kitchen – it never went out. Most of the time we grilled in the usual way, on a grate, but one day I didn’t have enough patience and just whacked a cast-iron pan straight into the flames. The fire sizzled and sparked around the pan; the force of the heat knocked me back; and the flavours of the food … what depth! The image of an analogue fine-dining restaurant developed in my mind, a place where everything was cooked over fire, like in the old days.

Back home in Stockholm, I devoured 18th-century cookbooks, researching how Swedish food was prepared before the advent of electricity. Despite what the trends might have you believe, Nordic cuisine can be summarised by a few techniques and tricks that are easy to get the hang of. Anyone can make their own pickles, anyone can handle a cast-iron pan: it works in everyday life – both inside and outdoors – because that is where it belongs. Here are a few recipes that, I hope, will show you how.

Ember-baked leeks
If you can get really young, slim, fresh leeks, this recipe will be even better. Soaking the leeks in cold water will help them to cook without burning, but don’t worry if the outer layer burns, as it will be peeled off.

Serves 4
2 leeks or 4 large spring onions 
85g butter, at room temperature

For the seasoning
1 tsp pink peppercorns
3 tbsp sea salt

1. Light the fire, using enough wood to create a bed of embers.

2. To make the seasoning, roast the peppercorns in a dry pan for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Set aside to cool, then combine the salt and peppercorns in a mortar and grind together. Store in an airtight container.

3. Keep the roots on the leeks. Clean them in cold running water, then transfer to a bowl, cover with cold water and leave for 20 minutes.

4. Dry the leeks with paper towels. Put the leeks in the embers and cook for about 6-8 minutes, turning once or twice, until tender all the way through.

5. Remove from the fire and peel off the burnt layers. Serve with butter and the rosé pepper salt.

Beef rydberg (main picture)

A luxurious variation of pytt-i-panna, a classic Swedish dish made from leftover meat, pan-fried with onions and potatoes. This, made from tender beef and served with a mustard cream sauce, is believed to have originated at the (now closed) Hotel Rydberg in Stockholm in the 19th century.

Serves 4
4 tbsp sour cream 
2 tsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard 
900g waxy potatoes 
900g beef fillet (tenderloin or sirloin)
2 onions, chopped
200g butter
5 tbsp vegetable oil
Salt and black pepper
1 bunch of parsley, chopped
4 egg yolks

1. Combine the sour cream and both mustards in a bowl. Cover and chill until ready to serve.

2. Cut the potatoes into 2.5cm cubes. Rinse in cold water two or three times, then leave to dry on paper towels.

3. Cut the beef into 2.5cm cubes and allow to come to room temperature. Put the onions and 6 tbsp of the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Fry for 30 minutes, or until caramelised.

4. Heat 4 tbsp of oil in a large cast iron pan. Add the potato cubes and fry to lightly colour all over. Add 4 tbsp of butter, then keep cooking until the potatoes are golden and soft in the middle. Remove from the pan and season with salt.

5. Add 1 tbsp of oil to the pan and return to a high heat. Sear the meat one side for about 2 minutes. Add the remaining butter and cook until medium–rare. Remove from the pan and leave to rest for 3 minutes.

6. Put the meat and potatoes back in the pan, add the onions and heat through. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with parsley and serve with raw egg yolks and the mustard cream.