It feels great to be outside these days. It feels even better to eat outside, preferably on a blanket in the soft grass with a picnic basket containing your favorite summer-centric salads and sandwiches.
This summer’s picnics won’t be the large gatherings we typically associate with outdoor eating, where friends of friends huddle around your famous seven-layer dip, scooping seconds and thirds with abandon. Double-dipping is a no-go this summer.
But that doesn’t mean your family or social bubble can’t enjoy an amazing picnic at the park or beach. With a few inspiring recipes and serving suggestions from the experts — including editors at America’s Test Kitchen, whose recently-released “The Complete Summer Cookbook” is loaded with picnic favorites — you can be noshing in a sun-kissed park somewhere close to home.
The most important element of successful picnicking is that the food you make travel wells, says Julia Collin Davison, host of America’s Test Kitchen TV.
“You’re basically catering for yourself, so figure out what you need,” she says. “What will hold together? What is easy to carry? What can be made ahead?”
Cold or room-temp classics come to mind: Potato salad or Greek pasta salad individually portioned in little plates or cups. Parchment-wrapped Dijon mustard pork sandwiches, perhaps, and camping-inspired s’mores brownies. Make-ahead fried or roast chicken is quintessential picnic fare, and ATK’s Green Goddess Roast Chicken has all the bright, herby summertime flavors we’re craving right now. Davison uses a nifty dressing-inspired marinade to create a well-seasoned, umami-laced bird.
If, like Davison, you feel that picnics are inherently celebratory — an ode to summer, a birthday or the upcoming Labor Day holiday — then “it’s fun if some of the food feels special or partyish,” she says.
Cue these Mango Lobster Spring Rolls drizzled with Green Tea-Orange Sauce, or an Herb-Marinated Leg of Lamb, sliced and stuffed into sammies.
To keep that food cold, Davison uses ice-filled zip-style bags in her soft cooler bags. Lots of them. They serve a few purposes. “If you double bag the ice cubes, you can use them in your drinks and to wash the sanitizer residue off your hands before eating,” she says.
Her favorite hard-sided cooler? Just watch this Gear Heads episode from her colleagues at ATK, who recently chainsawed several to find out which $350 cooler had the best cold retention and why. Hint: It’s abominable.
Fill that cooler with containers of individual bites that are skewered or toothpicked and thus safe for COVID-era outdoor eating. Folsom private chef Sonya Keister, blogger at The Rustic Fork, transformed a favorite summer dish — Caprese salad — from family-style platter to compact individual servings.
For her Tomato Caprese Cups with Blackened Shrimp, Keister fills holllowed Campari tomatoes with marinated pearl mozzarella, homemade pesto and balsamic glaze. Then she uses a wooden skewer to secure the pan-grilled shrimp to the tomato cups.
Keister suggests transporting the components in separate containers in a cooler bag and letting guests assemble their own. “That way no one is touching each other’s food,” she says. Too busy? You can buy any of the components, down to the balsamic glaze, at most grocery stores.
And when she doesn’t feel like cooking, she turns to an outdoor eating go-to: charcuterie boards. “We just love a good old charcuterie board with cheeses and grapes,” Keister says. You can keep it simple — a central meat surrounded by accoutrements — or go all out, creating a holiday-style board with dried or fresh summer fruits.
You can also go with a staple that’s naturally personal in size: sandwiches. Few things make the kiddos happier than pre-wrapped PB&Js or ham and cheese sandwiches. A layered muffaletta would satisfy the adults, and Mississippi chef John Currence’s Turkey and Ham “Cobb” Wraps just might please everyone with its Cobb salad-inspired ingredients, arugula and a summery basil aioli.
The James Beard Award-winning chef behind Oxford’s City Grocery and Big Bad Breakfast includes the recipe in his new cookbook, “Tailgreat: How to Crush it At Tailgating” (Ten Speed Press; $28), due out Aug. 25. It’s a collection of 120 outdoor-friendly dishes, from Korean BBQ Wings and Grilled Corn Guacamole to NOLA Roast Beef Po’Boy Bites.
Currence is a self-proclaimed tailgate fanatic, and since sporting events look different this year, we’re using the scrumptious recipes to elevate our picnics and backyard barbecues.
“This is a book about stuff that’s relatively easy to do,” says Currence, who makes his God’s Own Buffalo Chicken Dip with Popeyes spicy dark-meat fried chicken. “Nothing else measures up.”
At his outdoor gatherings, the classics — for him, homemade hummus, like Yotam Ottolenghi’s celebrated Basic Hummus, chicken tenders, maybe a seven-layer dip — make up the majority of the picnic table.
“I try to focus on things that require as little work as possible once they are finished,” he says.
That way you can focus on family and the great outdoors.
The Link LonkAugust 03, 2020 at 08:55PM
https://www.mercurynews.com/summer-easy-delicious-picnic-ideas-from-cobb-wraps-to-caprese-cups
Summer: Easy, delicious picnic ideas, from Cobb wraps to Caprese cups - The Mercury News
https://news.google.com/search?q=easy&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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