LAKE PLACID — On the wild side of Indian Lake, Susi Gott Séguret will mostly likely be serving up fresh corn or tomatoes, or both, right about now.
The North Carolina-based author, chef and culinary educator turns her palette here in her latest book, “Adirondack Appetite: 150 Recipes for Cabin, Camp & Beyond,” published by Hatherleigh Press.
“So this I have been wanting to write for a long time. I’ve been to the Adirondacks every year of my life. My father’s great grandfather was one of four people that exited from New York City and created a camp up there in 1888,” she said.
Séguret grew up in Appalachia, so it made sense that she wrote “Appalachian Appetite: Recipes from the Heart of America,” which features Appalachian-inspired recipes covering the whole Appalachian chain from Mississippi to Maine.
It also makes sense for her to celebrate Adirondack cuisine, starting with the great-camp era of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
“This is not a great camp. It’s a small family camp that’s been passed on for four generations, but it’s in that same style,” she said. “That rustic elegance is a combination of the woods living element inspired by, of course, the Native Americans living there, the French Canadians who came down through with their canoes and fur trapping trade, and then all the people who live there and tried to make a living in the hardscrabble environment during the long, cold winters.
“So it was a combination of that kind of rustic elegance that was embodied at our family camp as well as the great camps.”
Indian Lake is 12 miles long, so there’s a lot of activities that generations of campers have worked up an appetite for.
“A lot of it was just really basic food to feed hungry children and children who had been out swimming, camping, on the trail,” she said. “So my grandmother made sandwiches, some of which are detailed in the cookbook.
“Some were simple, like cucumber sandwiches or cream cheese and olive sandwiches, and of course, your classic PB&J but with a twist to make them special. Of course, anything that your grandmother feeds you, the most essential ingredient is love. That’s why your grandmother’s food tastes so wonderful.”
Huckleberry pancakes is the first recipe in “Serious Starts,” cream cheese & jelly sandwich in “Outdoors & On the Trail,” and mountain magic meatloaf in “Back at the Cabin.”
“The recipes are mostly my personal favorite recipes that I have fed my children throughout the years — some from my family, some from my years of living in France,” Séguret said. “I lived in France for 20 years. Since there’s this French influence in the Adirondacks, I felt it was appropriate to bring in some of the French recipes, particularly since the great camps often hired French chefs to come in and cook for them.
“French recipes were not unknown in the Adirondacks, so there is a collection of those, as well. It’s a combination of easy-to-transport food for hiking, biking, skiing, boating, beach camping, whatever, and then more in depth recipes. The kind of comfort food recipes that might be slow cooked, over-the-fire recipes that you can find when you come back home to your cabin after you’ve been out for an outdoors adventure.
“There is always somebody who doesn’t go out on the outdoors adventure and stays in the cabin and cooks for people.”
Campers patronize local farmers’ markets to source fresh produce and support the farmers.
“But the people coming to the camps, most of them are seasonal. They are not putting in the time to till and bed down gardens over the winter,” she said.
Séguret is fond of the Eagle’s Reach Corn Eating Contest.
“This was passed on by one of our camps’ old members. It’s one of the recipes in the cookbook. The corn-eating contest being a setting to boil up as many ears of corn as you can get your hands on, and then everyone eats as many as possible, and then you line up your eaten ears on the porch and lie down next to them to see if they can reach from your toe to your head,” she said.
“So there’s a whole section devoted to fun and games, and that is one of the camp games that’s woven in. There is also another section devoted to campfire songs at the end of the evening after you’ve had your family meal around the campfire, if you want to share songs with your guests.”
Mushroom foraging and ferns each have their own section in the cookbook, as well, and the last recipe is “S’mores of Course!”
“There are some twists on that,” she said. “You can go crazy if you like adding peanut butter, peppermint sprinkles, changing out the graham crackers for chocolate chip cookies or peanut butter cookies, or wherever your imagination takes you.
“The trick is to eat it before the bears get there, right? And don’t leave anything behind afterwards.”