Here’s 2 great ideas for picnic food – baby cheesy hasselback potatoes and delicious lemon meringue pies in jars. Both travel and store so well and taste brilliant!
Lets start with the baby cheesy hasselback potatoes – this does work with big potatoes too but your cooking time may be longer. Grab some mini potatoes that have been washed, cut them so they are nearly all the way down so still holding together and work your way all along it, should kind of look a little like an armadillo I may have the wrong animal there, but you get the idea, as we cut it down it gets a little wet some of the starch releases so do give it a dry with a teatowel. Keep going until you have worked through all the potatoes and they are looking all slithered and stuff, official word, slithered and stuff.
Dunk the potatoes in some olive oil making sure you get it all coated and into the grooves too, you could also use melted butter if you wish, make sure all the potatoes are fully covered and then give it a nice seasoning with some fresh ground black pepper. We then whack them in the oven, sitting it straight on the shelf and baking it for a full 25 minutes until they are looking gorgeous and golden brown and as they are like that they are pretty darn tasty.
Once done this is the bit where you can let your creativity run wild in terms of the potatoes, they will have opened up a bit, I am stuffing cheese into mine, which actually helps keep them open too but you could put different herbs and flavourings and even meats in there if you wanted to. Once ready whack back in the oven to warm it through, just to melted the cheese slightly and that is that all done, either eat them right away nice and warm or store in a sealed container keeping it in the fridge until ready for your picnic served with a dollop of sour cream on top they go down really well with my girls!
That is the savoury done lets make lemon meringue pies in jars! The first thing you want to do is grab yourself a mixing bowl and whizz up some biscuits into crumbs, with a little bit of sugar and some melted butter added, mix that through and that will be your biscuit base for these pies, all you do then is spoon into the bottom layer of the jar, around about a fifth of the way up pressing it down.
Next up grab a separate bowl and combine together the egg yolks with the condensed milk, we will use the egg whites in just a moment. Also add in the lemon zest and the juice with the yolk mixture whisk together quite lightly with a balloon whisk until nice and combined and a uniform colour. Add that on top of your biscuit base, leaving a gap for some meringue. Now grab one more mixing bowl whip up the egg whites with the cream of tartar which helps to stiffen the whites, get that nice and big and stiff and foamy then gradually keep whisking through adding the sugar as you go until nice and glossy and ready to go.
Spoon the meringue on top of your jars making spikes with your spoon then just shove the jars on a baking tray in the oven for ten minutes to brown off the tops! Be careful removing from the oven they will be very hot, chill in the fridge once cooled to room temperature and take to your picnic with in a cooler bag.
Thats it, I hope you give these 2 picnic food ideas a try, they will go down a storm!