SEATTLE — Grill gourmets and campfire cooking fans rejoice: The Dirty Gourmets are back!
The first time Evening met Aimee Trudeau, Emily Nielson and Mai-Yan <may-anne> Kwan they whipped up goat-cheese stuffed peppers and baked brie over an open flame for us. And we never wanted to cook indoors again.
Their latest cookbook, "Dirty Gourmet Plant Power" will again transform any place in the great outdoors into a great kitchen. This time, with plant-based ingredients.
"Plant based cooking is a great way to cook in the outdoors in general, because a lot of times we're dealing with perishability concerns, cross contamination concerns, plus just the love and care for our environment,” said Nielson, one of the cookbooks co-authors.
Dirty Gourmet started as a blog in 2010, three friends sharing a love of camping and food. It's grown into a dream job for the trio.
“We are in the place right now that we've always been wanting to get to where we're developing recipes. We get to be as creative as we want, and make books and teach. That's our favorite thing is to teach workshops,” Nielson said.
“And we get to hang out with each other. Yeah, we like each other still," laughed Mai-Yan Kwan, another co-author.
No matter what the recipe, the philosophy’s the same: Cooking outside is about improvising and enjoying your surroundings. Something happened during our shoot that illustrated that point about improvising.
"We were just about to get our Dutch oven on the hot coals that we've been preparing for the past 40 minutes and some large party showed up and said, 'Hey, this is our spot,'” Kwan said.
We cleared our gear out of the shelter while the hot coals and the Dutch oven did their work quickly. And the Dirty Gourmet gang averted disaster by sharing the Garlic Pull Apart Bread they just made with the folks who reserved the spot.
"If you offer food, that gets you a long way. We've fed curry to rangers when our van was stuck in the back country of Death Valley,” Kwan said.
These women cook up recipes for adventure and friendship, as well as delicious meals.
"We just want to eat good food outdoors,” Kwan said.
KING 5's Evening celebrates the Northwest. Contact us: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Email.