The Culinary Adventure: Roots, Mishaps and Indulgence
We do it up goooood on this tour. A bit of kayaking, a bit of foraging, and tonnes of cooking, eating and merriment. It’s over-the-top dishes, all on an open fire. Swedish cuisine with a twist, using lots of local and wild ingredients. But how did the Culinary Adventure come about? And can we please have a peek at the menu!
The roots of this decadent tour
I'm Helena and most of our guests actually don't meet me in person. I'm the voice behind our newsletters and stuff. I'm the one you contact with questions and who plans your adventure. And for our crew, I'm the one running the show. But twice a year, I get to head out on the water to one of our favourite islands to cook up a storm, and have a very merry time with our Culinary guests! Let's dig into what this gourmet tour is all about and how and why we created it.
I've been cooking over-the-top food my whole life, at home, in the wild, and in professional settings. During an 8-year hiatus from Do the North, I opened up a brunch restaurant in New Orleans and cooked on the line every day. The general consensus of restaurant life is certainly true. It's hard as hell work and it's relentless. But it's also a lot of fun. Being in the trenches with your team and all the delightful bonds that come with it. Although not as grueling, it's one of my fav things about running Do the North also. Anyways, getting a bit off-track here.
A late night phone call to Thomas: "Hey, how do u feel about me coming back?". A sigh of relief and a resounding "YES!!". Thomas doesn't like being the one in charge, you see. He's so much happier joking around with our guests while guiding, being the visionary for new tours and new ideas, setting a high standard for anything from vibe to gear to photos. He had an idea straight away, of course! "You need to make a food adventure and you're gonna lead it!"
Creating the Culinary, checklist
Fine-tuning the adventure
I'd be lying if I said it was a straight shot from 2017 to what the Culinary Adventure is today. For one, I had built in this historic component, moving from the 1700s to the present. Too complicated, and although our guests appreciate some historic tidbits, they're simply not as interested in that as I am. So...unnecessarily convoluted timeline scrapped!
Moving camps. It takes way too much heavy equipment to pull off this tour to be on the move. But most of all, we wanna be able to leisurely cook, forage and have a great time together. Staying on one amazing island and going for foraging day trips in the kayak was definitely the way to go!
Comfy prepping and comfy eating. Crunching down on the rocks may be fine for a meal that takes an hour to prepare. But if you wanna do advanced cooking, you gotta put in a few! And when it's all said and done, you wanna be able to sit down at a table and enjoy the food we just laboured over, together.
The crew didn't have much confidence in my idea to lash together a large table/bench combo with just twine. Not exactly known as the builder of the group. But I had done this back in my scout days, and the team dutifully went out and cut down my requested birch poles and helped me build it. It takes a full day or so, with many helping hands, and these days we make it into a fun crew mission at the start of the season.
I had, what I thought was a brilliant idea. I love beer. Complex stouts, barley wines, golden triples, sour ales, grodziskies, you name it. I teamed up with a sommelier who runs a specialty cheese shop, and she paired my five chosen micro-brewery beers with cheeses in a tasting progression. What could go wrong, right? Well, turns out these kinds of beers are a bit of an acquired taste – far from everyone liked them. Admittedly, most of them are pretty damn strong both in flavour and percentage. It saddened my malty soul, but I ditched it. I'm more than happy to bring it back on popular request tho 😁!
Lots of the dishes have evolved too, of course. I get new ideas, new stuff for us to try out. Sometimes, we'll make something for the first time ever.
Present day and menu
When you love cooking, there’s no better feeling than having all the time in the world and then sharing the fruits of your labour amongst friends. Fun techniques and ingredients. Bordering on a ridiculous amount of leisurely effort for that perfect bite. It’s decadence in all the right ways!
Cooking over an open fire takes all your senses. You got no choice but to look, listen, smell, feel, taste, for it to turn out good! Adapting is the name of the game. You should actually approach all your cooking like this, fire or not, and if there’s one lesson I want you to bring home, it’s this one.
You’ve probably gathered that our foraging has zero to do with survival skills. Like everything else on this tour it’s about pleasure. What ingredients are out there and how can we use them to enhance our culinary experience? Kayaking to reach them. Wandering the landscape to collect them. Sitting around the fire trimming them. And in the end, tasting these delectable treats from the wild.
You certainly don't need to like alcohol to enjoy this tour. If you do however, when yours truly is hosting – good beverages are intrinsically connected with good food. I may whip up a surprise cocktail with flavours from the forest. A bit chilly out? A hot boozy drink coming your way. Dinners are served with well-paired local beers, or wine. Alcohol-free options are available too, of course.