Pack a fireside picnic

Story by Rita Feutl

Tired, Relaxed and hungrier than a grizzly just out of hibernation? Feed Body and Sould with a Fireside Feast.

SO YOU’VE JUST FINISHED ANOTHER PERFECT Alberta winter day – maybe carving moguls on a mountainside, riding through snowy foothills or trekking cross-country under a blue prairie sky.  Few things whet an appetite more than a day outdoors.  But sometimes the effort of making a fullcourse meal or packing yourself up and heading off to a restaurant can be as daunting as that last double-diamond ski run.  What you want is something special to put together for a fireside feast.   Alberta boasts an increasing variety of specialty foods, locally produced, that can turn a picnic into a culinary tour of the province.  Whether it’s wild boar pâté or blue baby potatoes, wellaged Parmesan cheese or double-smoked elk sausage, the number and quality of upscale edibles is astounding.

Cheese Please!

Check out the province’s home-grown cheeses, which get rave reviews from Gail Hall, past chair of Cuisine Canada and a director of the International Culinary Exposition planned for Edmonton in 2005.“One of the great features of Alberta is the fabulous cheeses that are available here,whether it’s Sylvan Star Gouda or Natricia goat cheese,” enthuses Hall, also the owner of Edmonton’s Gourmet Goodies.“And there’s Emanuela Leoni’s Parmesan cheese in Camrose,” Hall continues.“Her Parmesan cheese is outstanding and it’s coming from central Alberta.”

So what would Hall pack for a fireside picnic? Any of the Gouda or goat cheeses,with some great Artisan bread (from French Meadows) and a jar of Zinter Brown’s award-winning roasted garlic and onion jam.“To me, that would be a wonderful starter. People might want to round that out with some slices ofMundare sausage,” she suggests.Add in some of Gourmet Goodies’ lemon herb or Parmesan-crusted chicken, which you can serve hot or cold with a fresh pasta salad and you’ve got yourself a no-fuss meal to nosh on while working out tomorrow’s trails.

Or how about starting off with freshly made salsa – say, a mango coconut or a Mediterranean mix of black olives, stewed tomatoes, green onions and jalapeno peppers? At Edmonton’s Urban Gourmet, Geedes Casino is happy to put together a basket featuring these or other homemade specialties. She’ll also include a baguette (the ones from Edmonton’s Tree Stone Bakery are exceptional), cheese slices and some choice offerings from Olive Me, conveniently located next door.

Isabelle Fontaine, Olive Me’s owner, says her most popular selections are olives stuffed with almonds and marinated in oil, garlic and balsamic vinegar; and the Greek olives stuffed with feta cheese and marinated in dill and sun-dried tomatoes. Toss in a tin of wild boar pâté or some wild boar terrine with apricots from Mayerthorpe’s Hog Wild Specialties and you may have enough for a whole meal, though Casino is happy to pack easily heated entrees into your picnic.

Meat and Potatoes - Look Again

What about Marnie Fudge’s Palette Fine Foods chili honey, poured over a slightly warmed wheel of Brie,with a little cracked black pepper over the top? Or you could put some of her porcini/wild mushroom spice rub on a thick bison steak and grill it the night before, then slice it thinly and serve with her purple basil jelly in sandwiches. Add a pre-made salad with baby Russian blue potatoes from The Little Potato Company and you’ll have something way beyond an ordinary meat-and-potatoes meal.“People are becoming more comfortable with eating outside their usual catering outfit, called Red Hot Mama’s Chilis and Chocolates.)

Up in Edmonton, stop by Cut Above, where you can order sausages made of bison,wild boar, elk and even caribou shipped in from Rankin Inlet.And if you’ve really got a hankering for Alberta beef, pick up the famous Longview beef jerky, made in the foothills of the Rockies.

Many of the game meats pair well with our locally produced beers and ales from companies such as Big Rock and Alley Kat Brewing. The flagship Highwood Vodka made in High River by Highwood Distillers works well with smoked meats, while their liqueurs would help finish off the evening.

If you still have room for dessert, pick up Susan Campbell’s pineapple ginger cake at her Edmonton shop, Campbell Cakes. Or gently warm a jar of Palette Fine Foods’ red currant jelly with starfruit and vanilla beans and pour it over a store-bought cheesecake. Or stop by any of the good chocolatiers in the province … and then decide how hard you’ll have to play tomorrow so you can plan a whole new culinary adventure.