A Very Full Day At Tom Douglas Summer Camp

Summer camp is all about hikes and crafts and singing around a fire while stuffing your face with s'mores, right?

Not if you're attending the Tom Douglas Culinary Camp in Seattle, a very grown-up version of camp that involves five days of entertaining/informative chef demos, cooking competitions among campers, nonstop eating/drinking and the occasional silly stunt. On Monday, that was a fire-eater masquerading as a chef.

Forty campers -- many seasoned veterans of camps past -- start early and go strong all day long. I got to be a fly on the wall for Monday's session which included:

A British breakfast buffet with bangers, blood sausage, ham, bacon, fried tomatoes, beans, fried eggs and toast with housemade apricot jam that was just about the best use of apricots I've ever tasted.

Chef Rachel Yang, who owns Joule and Revel with her chef husband Seif Chirchi, showed us how to make crispy fried mussels with green curry mayo, as well as seared pork butt steaks and pickled collard greens. For a light dessert, she made ricotta cheese seasoned with star anise, topping it in a drizzle of orange honey and mascerated strawberries.

Is your mouth watering yet? Well, campers are not left hanging. As the demos continue, they're served small bites of the dish that's being prepared.

Next up, we learned all about salts from Mark Bitterman, a mineral missionary who calls himself a Selmelier. (At least that's what he calls himself on Twitter.) Bitterman (pictured on the right, above, serving steak seared on a Himalayan salt block) is author of Salted and the owner of The Meadow in Portland, Ore., and New York City, a lovely shop that specializes in five things: salts from around the world, fresh cut flowers, chocolate bars of the highest quality, wine and bitters. What a combo, right?

Bitterman preached against the use of industrial, mostly domestic sea salt and Kosher salt and gained a couple of influential converts in Tom Douglas and his executive chef and longtime business partner, Eric Tanaka. "We've just never thought much about it," Douglas said. Bitterman's presentation was a game changer.

Just goes to show you, when it comes to food, you never know it all.

Learning is a whole lot of fun in this setting, too, where funky music blares during breaks and each dish is paired with a wine selected by Pamela Hinkley, Tom's CEO.

After a lovely lunch of three types of gnocchi prepared from chef Ethan Stowell's cookbook, New Italian Kitchen, the campers settled in for the afternoon's program, which featured a terrific talk by a commercial food photographer, the hilarious fire-eater followed by a wicked spicy tequila cocktail mixed by Maggie Savarino, author of a holiday drinks book that's set to be released in December. Incredibly delicious pork belly tacos, made by chef Cormac Mahoney from the red-hot Madison Park Conservatory, made a perfect companion for that cocktail.

After a very full and filling day, some campers lingered after the last presentation to plan for their challenge for Tuesday: Teams were charged with creating a food truck menu and prepping one dish to be tasted and judged. Wonder if anybody put s'mores on their lineup.

The only way this experience could be improved? Take it on the road. I'd sure sign up for Tom Douglas Culinary Camp Winter Tour to Buenos Aires or springtime in Tuscany or autumn in Vietnam. Just saying.

-- Leslie Kelly