Hiking recipes

      I offer my options for preparing and infusing PP. The freshly dug root must be washed in cold water, cleaned of thin roots, corked and rotten areas, and cut into small slices (like carrots for soup). Now you can either immediately throw it into vodka or 70% alcohol, or dry it in a warm place, but without direct sunlight, and then infuse it. Fill the bottle approximately 1/3 full with the chopped root. It is not recommended to dry rhizomes that have not been finely chopped - then the root turns into a plug, and there will be no use from it. If after digging up the root you still have to walk or drive for a couple of days, do not put the root in a plastic bag - this will spoil it. It's better to wrap it in a rag.

ABOUT ALCOHOL

      If the drinking characteristics of the taken alcohol do not satisfy the crew, you can try to purify it using activated carbon. You need a lot of coal, and the supplies that the doctor took for stomach patients won’t save you. To obtain activated carbon, we take a birch log and anneal it until stable coals are formed, place a container with water next to it and dump the hot coals into this water (it’s easier - we put the log into the water, take it out, scrape off the top layer of coal, repeat the procedure until the required amount of sorbent is obtained). Acceptable quality of cleaning is obtained with 1/4 bottle of charcoal per bottle of solution (solution, not alcohol), cleaning time - a day, with periodic shaking. The resulting mixture is cleaned of coal dust through an accessible filter and served to the table (even passed through a cloth, it has a black tint, for which it received the name “chernushka” on our collective farm). The effectiveness of this technique was repeatedly tested by me personally, starting in 1991, when, due to perestroika, a sailor distilled alcohol from free ethyl acetate, but did not have time to fully purify it. As a result, the first attempt to drink the drink was reminiscent of the famous slogan: “tomorrow’s hangover is today!”

      In fact, polyphepane should be included in the layout. Much more effective than charcoal, and alcohol does not stain. By the way, seriously, it makes sense to actually take it with you to the first aid kit. It helps very well with any food poisoning as a super-powerful adsorbent. It, of course, eats it - like chewing peat. But it helps very well.

      Smurdyuk (Tuvinian) - alcohol with water, the taste is almost indistinguishable from store-bought vodka. When mixing alcohol and water, you must pour the alcohol into the water and never vice versa. After mixing, add a few crystals of table salt per liter of drink, sugar on the tip of a knife and citric acid on the tip of a knife. Moreover, be careful with salt, if you overdo it, you will feel it. But a little overdosing with sugar and lemon will not be so noticeable. Once these substances are added, a chemical reaction will be noticeable. After its completion, our drink needs to stand for 1 hour in a cold place.

DRINKS

      The best extracting properties for preparing alcohol tinctures are 70% alcohol. Drinking THIS, of course, is not very pleasant. Should be diluted to ~40%.

      In our company, two types of tinctures are very popular: pine nut shells and “ink”, a tincture made from blueberries. The tincture on nut shells is interesting because it infuses very quickly and has a beautiful coffee color. “Ink” is so named for the characteristic color of the final product.

      “Zukovka” - alcohol diluted with river water with the addition of “zucco” powder for taste and color. “Pongomovka” - alcohol with boiled water and lemon peels, about 50 degrees. “Charyshevka” - just alcohol with water from Charysh.

      “Bouquet of Spring.” Prepared only in spring - from swollen black currant buds that have not begun to bloom. A glass of kidneys, 3 glasses of 70% alcohol. Infuse for 1 to 3 days, do not hold any longer. Don't add anything. Before use, filter and dilute to the required strength. Don't squeeze out the buds - what's left in them is left.

      “Nesmeyanovka.” Ingredients: a glass of cranberries, a glass of sugar, a glass of alcohol. Grind the cranberries thoroughly with sugar, pour in alcohol, close tightly and leave for at least 2 weeks. Better month and better battery life. After this, filter and squeeze the cranberry mixture. The result is a slightly cloudy liquid of a very beautiful color. Filtration or centrifugation may be recommended for clarification. Or you can just stand and drain the upper transparent part. Taste and dilute to taste. At the same time, “nesmeyanovka” has a characteristic feature: it is very easy to drink, but the effect is very strong. Due to its increased sugar content, it is especially appreciated by ladies

      I believe that the term “getting drunk” came from the use of the following product. Whole cranberries are filled with good alcohol (good - in the sense of ethyl and pure). It brews for a month. More precisely, at least a month - equilibrium comes, and the system does not change in the future. The cranberries swell and become spreading. Before use, the liquid fraction is drained, you can dilute it (in nature it is 50 percent) and add sugar to taste. Served as a drink. The berries are sprinkled with powdered sugar and served as a snack. Non-drinkers or light drinkers lean on the berries and the effect exceeds all expectations.

      “Coffee liqueur.” This liquid has a lot of advantages, but two of them are especially relevant in camping conditions: 1) speed of preparation: when the fire is already lit, the process takes half an hour; 2) good “drinkability” - I have not yet met a single person who did not like the liqueur. Take 1 liter of alcohol, dilute 1 liter of water, and set aside for a while. 5 glasses of water in a pot plus 3 tbsp. sugar, bring to a boil, remove from heat, add 6-7 tablespoons of any (up to Pele) instant coffee, stir well, then pour into diluted alcohol, cool, and consume. Some aesthetes squeeze a couple of lemons; if there is time for infusion, throw these lemons into a cauldron with liquor.

      Cocktail “Despair”. A half-liter mug of river water, 1 tablespoon of vinegar, two centimeters of “Pearl” toothpaste (it’s better to take domestic toothpaste, imported ones are very soapy), three lumps of sugar and alcohol - how much is left at the bottom of the empty bottle. Everything is thoroughly mixed under the watchful eye of the caretaker.

      Lemon (lime) is dried in a dark and ventilated place for approximately 4 months (more is possible). Next, with a heavy object (for example, a hammer), the above fruit is broken and placed in a container with alcohol (pure medical grade). After some time (more than 3 days), this infusion is transported on a hike, where it is diluted with camping water to the optimal degree for the team. Sugar and black pepper to taste.

      A liter of alcohol per liter of any cherry juice, one to one.

      “Grog” - alcohol with hot tea with sugar.

      “Baileys” - alcohol with Nesquik (in the absence of Nesquik, cocoa + condensed milk will be used).

      We dilute alcohol (vodka) with last year’s lingonberries, previously suppressed in a small amount of water. The recipe is especially useful when there are no fresh berries yet (but you can find plenty of old ones).

      Alcohol diluted with tea (cold) Ginger&Cinnamon. Usually no one just drinks these sachets and they remain, but with alcohol they fly away with a bang. Especially when, as the drink dwindles, ONLY alcohol is added to it.

      “Black Captain.” Instant coffee, cinnamon, vanilla (to taste). Sugar (again to taste). Alcohol. Hot water. The strength is about 20 rpm, the operating temperature is about 60 degrees. Celsius. If it is not drunk immediately, it is heated in a kana.

FOOD

      Once we lost some of our food during a hike, and a good part of the lost food was stew and buckwheat. We had to go out with the remaining food and actively use pasture. Sorrel and nettle were added in abundance to the soup. We fried wild garlic. The rice went very well with the mushrooms. But the pinnacle of culinary art was a dish called “may-shabak”. These are boiled noodles with the addition of canned “Caspian sprat in tomato.” This dish got its name from the name of canned food, which originated in Kazakhstan, and on the label it was written in Russian letters “may-shabak”. It was possible to eat THIS only by eating garlic and wild garlic.

      Seaweed is marinated and served with sunflower oil.

      Even simple pasta can be prepared in different ways: boil it until it dissolves in water; pre-blow and rinse; fry the dry ones, then cook them; soak in water, and then make flat cakes from this mass and fry over a fire (you can make sausages and wrap them around a stick).

      When only lard and sugar remain, the first is sprinkled with the second. It’s called “let fats burn in the fire of carbohydrates.”

      “Irish soup” - Podravka borscht soup, assorted “hot mugs”, maggi and a packet of mivina (Korean noodles).

      Marinated mushrooms. Boil the mushrooms (not for long, after boiling the water - about fifteen minutes) with salt, if you have it, add peppercorns and bay leaves. Drain the water, let the mushrooms cool, and dump them into a special container - a plastic bottle or plastic container with a tight-fitting lid. Add the essence drop by drop. Add garlic (better to chop coarsely), onions (a little), black currant leaves (slightly mash). If you manage to marinate at lunch, you can eat it for dinner.

      Do not scald the saffron milk caps. Wash, salt, add vinegar, a little vegetable oil, onion. The saffron milk caps acquire a whitish color. Ready in 15-30 minutes. It’s the same with russula, but somehow it’s not very good with them - they taste bitter.

      Dried diced potatoes and dried carrots can be cooked in the microwave.

      Julienne. Pour vegetable oil into the bottom of the pot (with a generous hand). Chop the mushrooms, preferably smaller, and throw them into heated oil for 20-30 minutes. Add some salt. Stir often, otherwise they will burn. Dilute the powdered milk with water to the consistency of liquid sour cream, pour into the pot. Add flour - a couple of tablespoons, and if you have it - finely chopped cheese. All this should bubble for another 10-15 minutes. Finely chopped onions are added along with the mushrooms. But if you fry the chopped onions separately and then throw them into the pot immediately after the “sour cream” is poured into it, the taste of the julienne will be better. You can add mustard for spiciness. Julienne can be eaten both hot and cold - served on bread.

FISH

      “Paella mariscada.” This is done at sea, in our case - on Beloye. Take rice, the ratio is: 1 mug of rice to 2 mugs of boiling water (you get two servings, more is needed per team, respectively). The rice is cooked over low heat, while it gurgles, the mussels are collected. The onion is fried in sunflower oil (not very much), chopped garlic is added (a lot!), all this is sprinkled with seasoning, preferably parsley, and almost immediately freshly picked mussels are poured into the same frying pan, right in their shells. As soon as the shells open slightly, everything is dumped into the cauldron with rice and mixed. The trick is that when the mussels open, they release juice, and the rice is soaked in this juice. You need to eat this right away! Eating mussels is simple - you hold the shell in your fist and scoop out the flesh with a fork. In hiking conditions you can use your finger. And then the shell is carefully licked. You can also add finely chopped fish (fillet) before the mussels. Shrimp too. And in general, the more seafood, the better.

      It is best to stew pike perch and perch whole, as is, with gills and all the rest of it. If the skin is not damaged, the gills and gall bladder also remain intact. Once on the table, they need to be carefully removed. This is done like this: you open the fish along the ridge, open it like a book, all the insides remain compact. You remove them and eat the rest, using the skin as a plate.

      Sashimi from fresh grayling. Take wasabi, dilute it with soy sauce (one to three), and fillet of freshly caught grayling is dipped into this slurry.

      Fish heh. Cut fillets from freshly caught fish (you’ll have a hard time picking out the bones), sprinkle with pepper and spices to taste and marinate in vinegar (6%) for two to three hours.

      Taimen with bazhi sauce. Walnut (ground) will have to be brought from home. Taimen is taken, gutted, the gills are pulled out by the roots, sprinkled with salt, lightly pepper (red), wrapped in foil and buried in the coals. Take a walnut (I speak like Georgians, in the singular), ground in a meat grinder (300 grams peeled). Dilute with water to the consistency of thin sour cream. Gradually, suneli hops, crushed (necessarily crushed, and with salt!) garlic and a tablespoon of vinegar (or even better, pomegranate juice) are added to this. The sauce should have a harmonious taste, that is, if you feel that the taste of garlic stands out strongly, then you need to add suneli hops. The fish is removed from the coals, unfolded and cooled. Then pieces are broken off from it, placed in a bowl and poured generously with sauce. The bowl is secretly placed under a bush and stands there for about an hour (so that the fish is soaked in the sauce), after which you can eat.

      Grayling under marinade. Take the grayling, smell the free-spirited contingent, and your hands must be clean throughout the entire procedure below. By cutting off the fish, the head, entrails, fins and scales, if any, are removed. After which the carcass is cut into pieces, salted, poured with vegetable oil in the amount necessary so that the pieces of fish are covered with an oil film, vinegar, bay leaf, peppercorns and chopped onions are added in small quantities. You need to put a few stones on top for weight, 3-4 kilograms. After which the kan with this product hides in a secluded place, and reliable security is certainly assigned to him. After at least an hour, preferably two, the container is taken out into the light of day, the beer is poured and...

      Nonsense. Freshly pulled grayling is gutted, the fillet is thinly cut into slices into an enamel mug or bowl, sprinkled with salt and just a little ground pepper. After 15-20 minutes with vodka from a flask.

      Fish soup. Small fish, if any, without gutting or cleaning, as well as the heads and ridges of large and noble fish (if they appeared during the process) - in gauze, and boil in boiling water until they completely fall apart into dust. Then throw it away. Rinse the gauze and use again. Although you don’t have to throw out the pike heads, you can suck the jaws there. It’s lazy to clean large perches, so just gut them, again in gauze (it should be larger) and boil them there until tender. That is, so that it doesn’t fall apart into dust, but not soggy either. Salt the water first. Take them out, dump them out of the gauze onto the lid of the can, let those who wish to handle them themselves. Now cook the soup using the resulting broth. Peeled onion, bay leaf, pepper, other spices - to taste. Millet. Dried diced potatoes (not to be confused with mashed potatoes). A little dried carrots. Well, then depending on what you add to your taste. You can also have pasta. And there, about ten minutes before readiness, pieces of gutted and cleaned pike carcass. Well, or other fish of similar value, if caught.

      Fried fish. Pike. Gut large and not very small pike, clean, cut, fry on a baking sheet in sunflower oil, roll in something. Traditionally - in flour or semolina, well rolled in mashed potatoes. You can fry either on the lids of cans, or on a specially taken baking sheet or frying pan.

      Baked fish. Perch, pike. Gut and clean not very small fish (“the size of your palm” or more), clean them (or don’t clean them if you’re too lazy). Stuff a ring of onion, pepper, cloves, and other spices to taste into the belly. Add salt. Wrap in foil. Thoroughly. Place it in the coals of the fire. After a while, take it out and rejoice.

      “Lazy” fish. Open pike, perch, whatever is larger, and gut it from the back. With the extraction of the ridge and cutting off the head (that's where they come from for fish soup). Add salt and spread with a stick inserted across it. Hang it by the fire, or on a fire hook. Not into the fire, but in the warmth. And let it hang. Several hours. If you don’t hang at one parking lot, take it to the next one and hang it there. Sooner or later it will be ready (just don’t let it dry out to the point of sole). It turns out something between baked and hot smoked.

      The fish is salted-dried-natural. This is grayling and redfish, you can also have pike. Again, gut it from the back, cut out the spine from the head (and ear). Add salt, fold the carcass, put it somewhere, hold it for an hour or two (you can even use it for a day...) Then take it out and flatten it. Hang it in the shade, in the breeze, covering it with gauze to prevent flies from landing. So alternate until eaten - it will lie somewhere, then hang... Depending on the circumstances.

      Fish in Karelian style. You clean small fish (bleak, vendace, roach, perch) lazily - only the insides. Pour a little sunflower oil into a frying pan (you can use it in a pan). You lay down a layer of small fry. Top with sliced ​​potatoes (you can probably use dried ones, you just need to soak them first). On top is an onion cut into rings. And so on several layers until there are enough fish. Sprinkle each layer with salt (to taste) and coarse black pepper (it’s better to crush the peas between stones), although you can also use ground pepper. Fill it with water to the top layer, but not to the top. And simmer until the potatoes are ready.

      Smoked fish. Fish (preferably not very large) is cleaned, salted and peppered. Smoke the fish over smoldering coals, adding young willow branches with leaves to them. The smoking temperature is difficult, but it is tolerable, the time is 2-3 hours. It is better not to get carried away with willow, otherwise the fish will taste bitter. Result: boiled smoked fish of golden color.

      It is convenient to smoke fish on fairly thick rods or a grate. The rods are threaded through the fish's mouth and in the area of ​​the caudal fin, then the fish is tightly tied to the rod along the entire length with strong cotton thread, because when finished, it may fall off and fall into the coals. Before use, the thread is removed and consumed with the golden skin.

      Notes

      “Never boil a rag in your ear!” It’s better to drain the broth, well, we’ll lose half a liter of it - anyway, there’s a lot of fish, it’s not brought to the hump.

      Perch can be cleaned well while it's alive. The longer the fish is dead, the worse it is cleaned; this is especially true for perch. At least one peeled 400 gram per eater - it turns out very festive.

      For the fish soup: fish + its caviar, if available, + onions + spices + one carrot maximum, and nothing else is needed. It turns out transparent, tasty and quite nutritious. And from potatoes, millet, etc. You can prepare individual dishes.

      Siberian fish soup: a full cauldron of fish, peppercorns, bay leaves, water - until the cauldron is filled between the fish. Cook. Drink broth and eat fish. You can do the same with trout if you’re already tired of pickled trout, or you want to feed small sailors to whom you can’t give pickled trout. You need less trout, you don’t have to fill the pot - 300 grams per eater is enough, the broth is amazingly tender, but fatty, DO NOT OVERCOOK the fish!

      Fried fish. Make fillet. Two cuts along the ridge with a very sharp knife until it stops at the base of the ribs, then gently along the ribs, bypassing the fins. The resulting two huge pieces of fish meat still have longitudinal fork-shaped bones, but they no longer bother you when eating - they stick out from the pieces of fried fillet and are easy to remove. Cook fish soup from ridges, fins, and heads.

Collected by Irina Tereshkina