Food for the Festive

Sorry this invitation is so late getting to you, but we’ve just been so busy lately--you know, with that outhouse incident and the subsequent laser surgery. The time just got away from us.

But we still wanted to invite you to a Fourth of July picnic.

Seriously, what would a Fourth of July picnic be without you? Remember when you pretended to be a human sparkler? And that time you dressed up like John Philip Sousa?

Well, anyway, better late than never. Here’s the invitation. Hope you don’t have anything planned.

DATE: Fourth of July, 1997.

WHAT: A picnic with family and friends--and lots of good food.

How good? Well, we picked the brains of a few Ventura County chefs to find out what they would put in a Fourth of July picnic basket.

As soon as he arrived last August at the Ojai Valley Inn in Ojai, Chef Rex Hale let it be known that he was going to build his menu around the area’s fresh fruits and vegetables.

He suggested doing the same for a tasty holiday picnic.

“All of the fruits are beautiful now,” Hale said. “I would suggest peaches and nectarines, either in a cold salad or whole, served with some nice cheeses from California and some nice freshly baked bread, probably from La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles. Not everyone has the opportunity to do that, but we have some very good bakeries in Ventura and Santa Barbara [counties].”

Hale said his picnic basket would include some pate made out of chicken, duck or venison liver--all of which serve as nice spreads for the breads. And he would accompany the pate with marinated vegetables that are in season now, such as Anaheim peppers, sweet cherry peppers, gypsy peppers, jalapenos and carrots, plus cauliflower or broccoli.

He said he also would stock the basket with a light barley or couscous salad and some kind of corn dish.

“Corn is starting to look really good in July,” he said. “I’d probably roast some corn and leave it on the cob and serve it cold and I’d make some kind of herb and citrusy vinaigrette to roll the corn in.”

If that is a little elaborate for the average picnic cook, Hale offered variations.

“It can be as simple as going to a nice grocery store or gourmet market and buying a pate or taking corn with you to the picnic and grilling it,” Hale said. “With the salads, you could literally substitute a nice organic green mixture for the fresh vegetables.”

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Desi Szonntagh, co-owner and chef of 2087--An American Bistro in Thousand Oaks, said sandwiches of one kind or another are the best choice for an outdoor culinary occasion.

“They carry well, they’re easy to prepare and they’re easy to eat,” he said. “I would probably do some kind of barbecue sandwich, like a barbecue short-rib sandwich, with corn on the cob and red and white cole slaw, something light.”

In lieu of meat, Szonntagh suggested a specialty of his--a salmon salad sandwich with dill-caper mayonnaise and fresh sprouts, served with cold potato salad. For the slightly more adventurous, Szonntagh suggested a Provencal sandwich--or pan bagnat.

“You take a Kaiser roll, cut the top off and scoop out the center,” he said. “You stuff it with red onions, tomatoes, celery, garlic, basil and a mix of diced, cooked ahi tuna and toss it with a grain mustard vinaigrette and put the top back on like a hat. You use diced raw vegetables. You don’t even have to cook them. It makes a really refreshing combination.”

Pan bagnat, he said, can be served with small French gerkins, cornichons, pickled pearl onions, potato salad or cole slaw.

And it can all be washed down by Szonntagh’s picnic beverage of choice--either a white wine, preferably a nice Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc, or a very light red, maybe a Beaujolais Nouveau.

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If any chef knows how to celebrate the Fourth of July it’s probably Refugio Perez, a chef at Verona Trattoria in Camarillo. Of course, Perez’s perfect holiday picnic would probably include his own birthday cake, the Independence Day baby that he is.

But even for those not planning a double celebration, Perez had a few tips for filling the Fourth of July basket.

“Usually we start with bruschetta (sourdough bread charbroiled with olive oil and garlic, topped with diced tomatoes, onions, celery, eggplant, black olives and Parmesan cheese) and then we make a caponata (a mixture of bell peppers, carrots, black olives, eggplant and capers, sauteed with olive oil and garlic and fermented for two or three days) and then a veal pate,” Perez said.

“Then for something a little more heavy,” he suggested, “assorted imported cheese, provolone, prosciutto, roasted sweet bell peppers, sun-dried tomatoes and Sicilian olives.”

It may sound too extravagant for the amateur cook to tackle, but Perez said the menu is truly within the realm of possibility, even if Julia Child isn’t planning to help with the preparation.

“Everything is made already,” he said. “Cheeses are already made, prosciutto you can buy sliced, sun-dried tomatoes you can find in a can, roasted pepper you can find in a can too. And the olives, the same thing, you can get them in a small barrel.”

It’s a kind of BYOCO (bring your own can opener) affair.

WHERE: Just about anywhere you can find an unoccupied picnic table or a plot of grass would do the trick. But that’s much easier said than done on a major holiday.

“By far, it’s one of our busiest times of the year--our reserved spaces are filled six months in advance,” said Michael Henderson, Oxnard’s superintendent of parks and facilities.

Other parks run by Oxnard and cities throughout Ventura County have space available on a first-come, first-served basis, but Henderson said people will go to extremes to be first on the scene.

“People usually end up camping out to get a spot,” he said. “They get out there very early in the morning.”

While the competition will be stiff for city land, there are plenty of picnic sites in parks operated by the county that require neither reservations nor excessive determination to acquire.

Among the local sites in unincorporated areas of Ventura County are Camarillo Grove Park at the foot of the Conejo Grade, Foster Park on Casitas Vista Road near Casitas Springs, Soule Park off of Ojai Avenue outside Ojai, Steckel Park on Mistletoe Road near Santa Paula, Kenney Grove Park on Oak Avenue off California 126 and Warring Park on Orchard Street near Piru. “People do the beaches on July 4th. They go to the ocean,” said Pam Gallo, operations supervisor for Ventura County parks. “Then the beaches get filled up and people can never believe there isn’t room for them.”

The county parks, on the other hand, generally have plenty of room, she said, and provide a more peaceful setting.

“They’re quieter and more relaxing than the beach,” Gallo said. “The beach is too much work, having to step over bodies getting tan and all that sand in your shoes.”

The one drawback with the county parks, which cost $2 per vehicle to enter, is that they lack certain amenities, like convenience markets or food stands on site.

“If you forget your cola you’re going to have to go back to town,” Gallo said. “Bring your picnic basket with everything you need or you’re going to have to go back to get it.”

That shouldn’t be a problem.

RSVP: ASAP