The Designer's Dinner

Sometimes, just the colors of foods are enough to satisfy.

I was assembling another of my hobo packets, this time using skinless salmon fillets, thinly sliced shallot, yellow peppers and, to satisfy the color wheel, little thin green beans and broccoli with frilly green tops, what my younger brother used to call "trees."

Tucked 'way down underneath was a spoonful of giant Israeli couscous that had been cooked in chicken stock - slippery little pearls soon to be bathed in salmon essence - and sprinkled over the top was a little lemon pepper seasoning.

Color combinations like this delighted me back when I was a florist for several years and they still do, now that I'm designing dinner instead of flower arrangements. Sometimes, I assemble dinner just by how it will look, rather than pairing tastes and scents.

Wrap it all up in parchment paper - which, by the way, was a cosy, satisfying brown - and slide it into a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes (3 minutes too long - it was a little more done than I like) and you've got dinner fit for an artist's palette as well as his palate.

Hobo Packets

Last week, two little girls came trudging down our narrow street with sticks over their shoulders. At the end of the sticks were bandannas, red for the older girl, green for the younger, in which their Mom had wrapped the contents of a picnic lunch. They were searching for a good picnic spot and they had their Daddy in tow.

It must be fully 50 years since I have seen a bindlestiff, as we called them, but the memory came rushing back. When I was in Brownie Scouts, we made them whenever we went on hikes. Ours were made with garden stakes and bandannas, just like these. Inside the bandanna was always a "hobo packet" of meat cubes and veggies wrapped in aluminum foil to be cooked in the embers of the campfire. This worthy food always preceded the s'mores, which were less healthy but more delicious.

That got me thinking about hobo packets and how I hadn't made one in a long time. So, I decided to fashion two from parchment paper for our dinner that evening. I sliced a shallot very thinly and laid it on the paper, topped it with halibut, sliced zucchini and carrots and fresh oregano from the garden. Laid two halves of a corn ear alongside, dabbed a modicum of butter on the corn and veggies and wrapped the whole thing tightly in the paper, doubling and folding the top and sides to contain the juices. Popped them into a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes. We knew they were done when the scent wafted out of the oven to tantalize.

The packets were served closed on the plates, so we could each open ours and inhale that first delicious wisp of steam that carries all the married scents of the contents. This is cooking magic - everything was perfectly cooked and juicy, all at the same time and without effort. The last shreds of the shallot at the very bottom, limp and slightly caramelized, were a little reward for eating all your veggies and fish.

I'm planning a picnic now, complete with bindlestiffs for me and My Beloved.

Brownie Barbecuing

When I was a Brownie in second and third grade, we actually wore the whole little brown outfit, complete with beanie and sash. My mother had to sew patches on the sash for each activity I mastered; she didn't have to do much sewing. I learned to make seed jewelry and s'mores but my favorite of all activities was making Hobo Packets.

Hobo Packets are vegetables such as carrot, potato and onion chunks wrapped in foil and buried in the coals of a campfire until they are cooked. We Brownies would assemble these packets ourselves from ingredients somebody's mother had kindly prepped ahead of time and the troop leader would put them in the fire and take them out as we anxiously watched our own particular packet. The vegetables were always very plain but the thrill of having made the packets ourselves enhanced the flavors.

Don't know why I thought of Hobo Packets again fifty-some-odd years later but the idea seemed like a fun one to try again. My tastes have changed a bit since Brownie days, however, so I decided to make a fancypants version to accompany our grilled grass-raised beef tenderloin. To a handful of fingerling potatoes, I added whole garlic cloves, thickly sliced onion and thinly sliced kohlrabi, a blob of my frozen duxelles, salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil. I arranged the veggies all in a single layer and, because I didn't have the heavy-duty kind of foil, I made four layers of the thin foil to protect the veggies from the heat. Even so, there were charred spots - another time, I'd use the heavy-duty foil.

Using very long tongs, I tucked them right next to the coals in my Weber grill and turned them a quarter turn every 12-15 minutes for about 45 minutes; I think two turns really would have been enough as the fire was pretty hot. What emerged was all golden and gorgeous with tips of black in some places. The onions completely dissolved as did the duxelles, and the garlic went all soft and squishy, mingling their heady flavors around the potatoes and kohlrabi slices. It was the perfect accompaniment to the slightly smoky beef, which was grilled on the grate above the same fire, and some fresh asparagus.

In honor of my Brownie days, I should have made s'mores for dessert. Maybe next time.