“Ramen?” everyone groaned when I brought out the packages of instant noodles on a backpacking trip in Point Reyes last weekend.  The wavy blocks of cheap dried noodles have become such a culinary clichè in the back country that my companions couldn’t believe the food writer would actually serve them.

“Give me a break,” I replied a bit testily. “David Chang likes ramen.  Just wait and see.  It’ll be good.”

Chang, the irreverent chef of Momofuku, so loves ramen in all its forms that he named his celebrated Manhattan restaurant for the Japanese inventor of instant ramen, Momofuku Ando.  The first edition of Chang’s new quarterly, “Lucky Peach,” focuses on ramen from every angle.   He even gets former Gourmet Magazine editor Ruth Reichel to confess in print that she used to serve instant ramen noodles all the time to her son and his friends — in her homemade broth, of course.

As I was paging through the magazine the week before the backpacking trip, I chanced upon Chang’s unorthodox technique for cooking the noodles with cheese and black pepper.  He reduces the volume of cooking water, infuses it with the flavors of butter, olive oil and cheese, and then stirs the noodles into the rich broth.  As the noodles cook, they soak up all the rich flavors. (The nasty-tasting seasoning packets are discarded.)

“That’s genius,” I thought, and set about adapting the idea for a quick pasta primavera. I’ve made the dish before with angel hair pasta but the noodles are so fine, they often clump up when the rehydrated vegetables are stirred in.  Ramen solves that problem.

The instant noodles also take care of the issue of what to do with water drained off the pasta when you’re cooking without a sink nearby.  The noodles drink up most of the liquid and what’s left makes a thin sauce.

This dish uses so little liquid that one of my companions was clearly skeptical.  “I don’t think that’s enough water for all those noodles,” she insisted.

Five minutes later, she had to admit she was wrong as she was slurping up chewy, cheesy noodles with a generous portion of peas, corn, carrots, red peppers and tomatoes.

My fellow hikers’ raves more than made up for the earlier razzing.

Multiply this recipe by as many campers as you want to feed.  It will outshine any packaged backpacker dinner you can buy and the ingredients are very lightweight.

There’s only one drawback to this easy dish. Melting the cheese in the liquid creates a sticky glaze that is difficult to get out of the pan.  A handy little nylon pot scraper saves the day.

As soon as we started planning the camping trip we took to Death Valley last month, I began thinking about flat breads.  There aren’t many places to buy fresh supplies in the desert and I’m pretty picky about bread.

I wanted to be able to make my own.  But I wanted to keep it simple — no rising, no rolling, no oven.

The more I looked for traditional flat bread recipes to cook in a skillet, though, the more frustrated I became.  After all, we wanted to spend our time in Death Valley marveling at the incredible landscape and perhaps spotting a few wildflowers, not waiting around for bread to rise.

Bad Water, at 282 feet below sea level, in Death Valley National Park

Inspiration finally came from an old copy of “Joy of Cooking,” where I found a recipe for the Johnnycakes that travelers carried in their rucksacks as long ago as the mid-18th century.  Also known as journey cakes and hoe cakes, these corny flat breads sounded a bit austere, though, and my eye was drawn to the corn flapjacks on the same page.

Why couldn’t I dress the flapjacks up with some chiles, sun-dried tomatoes and green onions to create an Americanized version of the  uttapam made with a lentil and rice batter?  The result was an extremely tasty cross between a Mexican tortilla and a spicy Indian street snack.

I tweaked the the flapjack recipe to use powdered buttermilk and mixed the dry ingredients together at home.  In camp, I stirred in water, olive oil, and an egg. Then I poured a spoonful of batter into a hot skillet and sprinkled each cake with jalapeños, sun-dried tomatoes and scallions while the first side cooked, before flipping it over to finish.

The batter was thin and the cornmeal quickly settled to the bottom, so it had to be stirred before dropping each spoonful onto the hot skillet. But that was the extent of the special effort.   The corn cakes were super simple to prepare and we had fresh, hot bread in no time.

The cakes were great warm with a big bowl of chili.  They were even nice a couple of hours later, after they had cooled.

And we had plenty of time left to look for those elusive desert wildflowers.

Before we left on our recent trip to Alaska, I compiled a collection of recipes that I thought might work for car camping.  They had to be simple — based on ingredients we could find at most any grocery store —and require a minimum of pots and pans.  One skillet would be ideal.

At the same time, I wanted fresh flavors and appealing textures.  Canned goods and pantry items soon lose their charm when you’re traveling for six weeks.

Our favorite quick and easy meal turned out to be an updated version of Joe’s Special, the venerable San Francisco dish made with spinach, eggs, onions and ground meat.  Think of it as a deconstructed fritatta.  It takes a bit of chopping but it comes together fairly quickly and tastes terrific.

I’ve substituted ground turkey for the original hamburger and thrown in sliced mushrooms for meaty flavor.  What makes this dish so easy and fresh tasting is the baby spinach now available washed and bagged at all but the smallest supermarkets.  Bagged spinach holds up nicely in an ice chest for several days.

Throw in some good Parmesan, chopped pimentos and dried oregano and you have a very tasty one-dish meal.  Just be sure not to cook the spinach and eggs too long.  The dish should be moist and each ingredient identifiable when it’s served.

We liked this dish so much, it’s going into our emergency dinner repertoire for those nights when we’re just too bushed to attempt anything more ambitious.  A food processor would cut the work to almost nothing.

One of the striking ironies of Alaska is how difficult it is to find fresh fish in the ports serving North America’s biggest fishery.

Frozen fish is everywhere, neatly packaged in vacuum-sealed pouches.  That’s because all but a small portion of the huge harvest of salmon and halibut is destined for markets elsewhere.  The fish are filleted and frozen within hours after they’re pulled from Alaska’s icy oceans.

Homer, where we spent a couple of days earlier this week, is the hub of halibut fishing.  The legendary Spit is lined with signs advertising halibut charters.  Hundreds of commercial fishing boats fill the harbor.  Several processing plants do nothing but pack and freeze fish to ship around the world.

It seemed like the perfect place to find a nice chunk of fish for the seafood chowder recipe I had brought with me from California.  Yet finding fish that wasn’t frozen as hard as a chunk of marble proved daunting.

The supermarkets didn’t have any fresh local fish.  When I went to the market on the spit recommended by the manager of the campground where I was staying, it didn’t have any fresh halibut either.  The case was filled with frozen fillets.

“Don’t you have any fresh fish,” I asked?

“It’s fresh frozen,” the young clerk replied.

Now I know that flash frozen fish is pretty good.  It’s certainly better than fish that has been sitting around in a cold case for a couple of days.  But it still doesn’t compare with the firm texture and sweet flavor of fish that’s just been pulled from the sea.  So I kept looking.

Down the street, there was another processor that touted its fresh halibut.  But the shop was locked and a sign on the door suggested calling for assistance.  When I dialed the number, the man who answered said he did have fresh fish but he wouldn’t be back to his business until the next day.

I would be gone by then, headed north to Tok, and I began to despair of cooking the chowder I had been anticipating for weeks.

Luckily for me, Joe of Kachemack Bay Seafood was walking by and overheard my cell phone conversation.

“I can get you some fresh halibut,” he offered.

I followed him to his little shop, hidden near the docks, where he pulled a glistening halibut out of an ice chest and expertly cut off a fillet just the size I wanted.

“Most people are surprised how hard it is to find fresh fish down here,” he said.  “The frozen is good alright, but it’s just not the same.”

I thanked him profusely and took my beautiful piece of fish back to the camper, where I made this elegantly simple chowder on the two-burner propane stove.  Light and fresh, it was the perfect showcase for this impeccably fresh fish.

Resist the urge to add too much seasoning or take measures to thicken the broth.  You want the sweet, slightly briny flavor of the fish to sing out in this dish.

Halibut, firm and mildly flavored, is my choice for the chowder but any firm, white-fleshed fish would be good.  Just be sure not to overcook it.

Of course, fresh fish is best.

Alaskans call themselves “sourdoughs” in tribute to the prospectors who settled much of America’s last frontier in the late 19th century.

Among the miners’ most treasured staples in those days before powdered yeast became commonplace was a crock of sourdough starter to leaven their bread, biscuits and pancakes. The starter — a mixture of flour and water allowed to ferment with wild yeast in the air — was so central to their diets that they called anyone who survived a hard winter in the gold fields a “sourdough.”

So it seemed only fitting that I should bring a jar of starter with me on my camping tour of Alaska. What better way to start the day in the shadow of the rugged Alaskan Range than with a stack of sourdough pancakes swimming in maple syrup?

Even though we’re staying in a developed campground in Denali National Park, there’s no doubt that we’re on the fringe of a wilderness that has changed little since prospectors and trappers arrived in the heart of Alaska.

A moose, all ungainly legs and protuberant nose, grazed on the fresh green tips of spruce trees not far from our campsite the other day. Red signs posted on all the trails warn that female moose are calving in the area, increasing the presence of hungry bears. At a campfire program, the ranger told of a moose tearing through the woods just as another program had ended a few days earlier. A grizzly was on its heels.

From our shuttle bus en route to Toklat, 53 miles into the center of the park, we spotted a pair of grizzlies, a couple of moose and more than a dozen Dall sheep — the animals whose threatened population inspired the creation of the park in 1917 as a game refuge. A fox, snowshoe hares, golden eagles and ptarmigan appeared, too.

What we didn’t see was Denali, the Athabaskan name for the mountain identified as Mt. McKinley on official maps. At 20,320 feet, it’s the highest mountain in North America, but it’s notoriously shy. Even when the sky is clear elsewhere, Denali wraps itself in mist and clouds. Rangers tell visitors that they only have a 20 percent chance of seeing the mountain.

To sustain us for a day of watching for the mountain to peek from behind its veils, I made pancakes with the starter I brought from home. I was worried about whether it would work since all sourdough lore emphasizes the importance of keeping your starter warm so it will be active enough to raise batter. But the pancakes came through even if Denali didn’t. (If you want to see the mysterious mountain on one of its good days, click here.)

Although temperatures dropped to 40 degrees overnight and our little camper is unheated, the starter bubbled away after it had been fed with more flour and water. Just before cooking, I stirred in milk, oil, an egg, a little sugar, and salt. The pancakes were picture perfect, light, tender and a little crisp around the edges.

The starter came from a friend, who had been nurturing it for some time. That’s one of the nice things about starters. Once you get them going, they need to be fed regularly and there’s always plenty to share. Take a cup of starter out for a loaf of bread or a batch of biscuits and stir in ½ cup of flour and ½ cup of water and it will replenish itself. I’ve even used my starter to make terrific sourdough cornbread straight out of an old “Joy of Cooking.”

A starter can be kept going indefinitely as long as you feed it, the flavor getting deeper and more tangy as the benign bacteria grow. I store mine in the refrigerator between baking bouts and have let it languish as long as three weeks between feedings. It hasn’t failed me yet.

If you don’t have a friend with starter to spare, or if you’ve let yours expire from neglect, don’t despair. It’s easy to make a new one. Even if it’s not quite as tangy as a mature starter, it will raise your baked goods just as well. In the past, I’ve used the recipe below with great results.

You don’t have to be an Alaskan to appreciate good sourdough.

The sapphire waters of the Inland Passage are the lifeblood of Southeast Alaska.  Winding through a magnificent landscape of dense forests, deep fjords and glacier-carved peaks mantled in snow, the icy seas teem with marine life that has sustained the native Tlingit people and fed the bears, bald eagles and migrating whales for millennia.

Today, the maze of inlets, channels and sounds serves as a watery highway to the outside world for fishing camps and towns hugging its shores for the more than 200 miles from Ketchikan to Juneau. The waters support a vast commercial fishing industry.  They’re a primary draw, too, for throngs of tourists, who sail in aboard cruise ships and ferries throughout the summer, hoping for a glimpse of wild life that lives off the ocean’s bounty.

Lucky me, I’ve arrived during the King salmon season, when it seems every fishing crew is racing to get its share of the lucrative catch. Fishermen sell whole fish off boats in the harbors and local papers publish notices of salmon fishing derbies.

King salmon, with its luxuriously moist red flesh and rich flavor, is my favorite fish.  Since we’re camping, I’m not equipped to handle a whole one, so I’ve been buying fillets and steaks from the markets. Although I haven’t found any bargains ($16.99 a pound appears to be the going price), the salmon has been incredibly fresh and satisfying.

This is fish without guilt.  Wild salmon are plentiful here and the fishery is managed to ensure that enough mature salmon are left to swim back upstream and spawn at the end of their life cycle.  Forage for the eagle and bear populations is factored into the equation.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program ranks wild Alaskan salmon as a best fish choice for diners.

“For us, it’s one of the poster children for a sustainable fishery,” says Geoff Shester, senior science manager for the aquarium’s sustainable seafood initiative.

When salmon is wild and straight out of the sea, it needs little embellishment.  I’ve been cooking it very simply.  Fillets were excellent pan-fried quickly in butter then finished with a tablespoon of capers and a splash of red wine vinegar a la Nigel Slater.  But a thick steak, cooked in a foil packet over hot coals in a campfire ring, was sublime.

All I added to the steak were a few cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced scallions and a generous pinch of dried thyme.  This recipe, adapted from Mark Bittman’s “Quick and Easy Recipes,” should work just as well in a hot oven or on a grill.  Fresh sprigs of thyme would be a nice addition.

For camping, cooking in foil can’t be beat. The fish stays moist and is hard to overcook. It definitely produced the best salmon we’ve tasted in Alaska.

Still, the pan-fried salmon comes in a close second.  So I’m including that recipe here, too.

If you can’t find perfectly fresh salmon, try some of the flash-frozen fish sold in better markets for these dishes.  When the fish is thawed slowly in the refrigerator before cooking, the texture and flavor remain quite good.

I’m heading north — to Alaska, no less. It’s the ultimate road trip, more than 3,000 miles of asphalt one-way through some of the most gorgeous scenery in the world. We’ve been fantasizing about it for years and making preparations since January.

Before we left,  I baked a batch of these extra nutty peanut butter cookies for the drive.  You never know when you’re going to find yourself starving, miles from the nearest grocery store or restaurant. And I like to rationalize that there’s at least some protein in these big, crunchy cookies to tide us through a long day on the road.

We’ll be camping most of the way in our pint-sized, pop-top camper.  It’s about as basic as you can get without pitching a tent.  There’s  a queen size bed, a stove, a sink and an ice box.

So we’re not going to be doing a lot of elaborate cooking.  That doesn’t mean we don’t plan to eat well:  We intend to get our fill of Alaska’s famous wild salmon and halibut.

I’ll be cooking most of the time since we’re on a budget and Alaska isn’t really known for it’s restaurants.   I’m even bringing along a jar of sourdough starter in tribute to the miners who rushed north in search of gold more than a century ago.

By necessity, the recipes will be simple but I’ve come up with tasty camping dishes that also would work well as summer meals in a hurry. I’ll share them here as well as photos and reports on what we find  on our way.  I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

This cookie recipe marks a breakthrough for me.  I’ve finally figured out how to bake with the natural peanut butter I like best rather than the excessively processed, big name brands that most cookbooks insist are required for successful cookies.

I started with a basic recipe and played around with techniques and proportions of ingredients.  Then I introduced chopped, salted peanuts just before baking to get more intense peanut taste and a better balance between sugar and salt.

The cookies are sturdy, substantial and satisfying — just the thing for a long road trip.  The only problem is they’re so good, they never last long.  Next trip, I would bake at least a double batch.

Last week I returned from camping and hiking in the Eastern Sierra with a mission. Inspired by earlier forays into grilling pizza at home, I had decided to make the Italian staple in a skillet on the propane stove after hiking up to Ruby Lake. But something had gone wrong and I wasn’t ready to give up on the idea of hot, yeasty pizza outdoors.

The crust I made at camp was thick, doughy and a little too black on the bottom to pass off as nicely charred. My companion — who I now know will eat almost anything after a long hike — pronounced it delicious. I ate it glumly, cringing every time I bit into an undercooked pocket. When you’re camping, there’s little choice but to eat your mistakes.

I had cooked pizza in a frying pan while camping before and it had turned out far better.  It’s clear to me now that the cast iron frying pan I used at the time made all the difference. But I’d prefer not to take my ancient cast iron pan camping. Cleanup is problematic outdoors and I don’t want to worry about it rusting if I don’t get it absolutely dry. Plus it takes up a lot of room.

At home, I set up the camp stove, brought out my trusty nonstick skillet with the folding handle, and tried again. The dough was part of the same homemade batch that I had taken to the Sierra and kept chilled in the cooler. The toppings were virtually identical: homegrown tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil leaves, and sausage.

This time, though, I rolled out my crust with a wine bottle on a flexible plastic cutting mat rather than patting it out by hand. I got it as thin as I could handle easily, about 1/8-inch thick. Then I poured a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil into the skillet, more than I had used at camp, and kept the heat at medium instead of medium high. When the oil started to shimmer, I carefully slipped the disk of dough into the pan and let it sizzle for a few minutes until it turned a crisp golden brown on the bottom. Because the skillet is large and sits a little offset above the burner, this time I also rotated the dough in the pan after a couple of minutes to make sure it was cooking evenly. When big bubbles rose from the crust, I pushed them back down with the tongs.

Once the bottom was browned, I flipped the crust over, and took the skillet off the burner just long enough to scatter tomatoes, cheese, basil and thin slices of peppered salami over the top. The skillet went back on the burner and was covered for a couple of minutes to help the cheese melt. I removed the lid and let the bottom crisp, watching to make sure it didn’t burn this time.

When I slid the finished pizza onto the plate, it was everything I had wanted after that strenuous hike. The olive oil contributed nice flavor and the crust had a good, crisp bite without any annoying, undercooked spots. The toppings were warmed through and the mozzarella had melted evenly. Even the slightly rustic shape was appealing.

A couple of subsequent smaller pies proved even better. The optimum size for my stove and skillet seems to be about 6 inches in diameter.

At last, I had pizza with a minimum of equipment. An impressive new camp dish had just joined my repertoire

This simple technique, similar to cooking pancakes, would work just as well at home. It’s not appropriate for a heavily laden pizza — the toppings would never cook through and it would be tough to get the pie out of the pan. Still, you could make the crusts in the skillet, add the toppings, and finish by passing the pizza under the oven broiler to melt the cheese. Jamie Oliver suggests this approach — with much more oil — in his charming new cookbook, Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life (Hyperion, $37). Mark Bittman offers a video on the New York Times web site.

A thin crust is essential, but most pizza doughs will work. I like the refrigerated dough from Trader Joe’s in a pinch. Bring it to room temperature for about an hour and let it rest for a few minutes after you pat it into a circular shape before rolling it out.

If you don’t have a favorite recipe, this one from Pizza on the Grill: 100 Feisty Fire-Roasted Recipes for Pizza & More by Elizabeth Karmel and Bob Blumer (Taunton Press, $16) is easy and quite good. Made with a food processor or stand mixer, the dough can be frozen for up to a month and thawed at room temperature before using.

Oh, and if you’re thinking about a fall hike in the Sierras, check out this view of Little Lakes Valley from the trail to Ruby Lake. Only the most confirmed couch potato could resist. Pizza in camp afterwards is just a bit more incentive.