4. Vantastic Food
Oct 21, 2018
Our van is, in its entirety, about half the size of our old kitchen in London. Add to that the fact we have one stove, a limited supply of water which needs to be turned on via a pump, no fridge, no oven and only one of each kitchen item (one cup, plate, bowl each) - then cooking becomes a little more of a challenge.
But somehow everything tastes better in here. We appreciate every cup of coffee - because it’s not as easy as flicking a switch on a kettle anymore. We have to get creative - making meals I’d usually plaster a kitchen with, using only one or two pans. Rustling things up with only the ingredients we have, and cooking on an open fire whenever we can to save gas.
Camping + cooking usually conjures up images of tins of beans and super noodles, but we’re cooking exactly the same, if not better than before we moved into a van. (The only things we struggle to make are chips and pizza… which probably isn’t a bad thing. Although Simone is planning on attempting a pan-cooked Calzone).
We cook everything from scratch, keeping a supply of non-perishable tins and cupboard carbs (rice, pasta, noodles) and pick up fresh veg en-route around twice a week. We have a small cooler which helps keep things fresh and allows us to sometimes keep veggie frozen stuff for a few days. Being vegetarians makes everything SO much easier because we don’t need to worry about getting food poisoning or milk going off quickly. Cold nights also means we can leave bottles of orange juice and soya milk outside, fresh n' cool for the morning.
Food is important to us, and we’ve made sure not to let that suffer with our lifestyle change.
Simone is the cooking Queen out of the two of us, but we share chef duty, using each other’s eager appetites as motivation to cook better. Simone certainly taught me everything I know in the kitchen. But she still can’t help slapping my hand away when I try to season her pots...
I’m going to start by showcasing some of my attempts, and let Simone take over and steal the thunder at the end.
I love sauce. Intense flavours, juicy spoonfuls, get in ma tummy. Friends used to joke that I always had a condiment or two (or five) on my bedside table, and genuinely struggle to eat some meals without ketchup. So most of my dishes are saucy and flavoursome.
Like these Bombay potatoes I cooked the other day. So simple. Chopped red and white onions, garlic, chilli, coriander, some tikka masala curry paste, a bit of turmeric and cumin, a splash of soy sauce, cook it down, and voilà.
We always try to cook more than we need for one meal so we have leftovers for the next day, to minimise the pain of having to wash up using a tea spoon of water after each meal. So the next day I turned the leftover Bombay potatoes into a curry, by adding some more veg, herbs, chickpeas and a tin of coconut milk.
One of my favourite things about cooking in the van is that we get to eat in incredible surroundings. Here’s a Quorn sausage sandwich I made on our first #vanlife morning, which we ate with a coffee on the beach.
As well as munching in beautiful locations, we sometimes cook outside. I made a Spag Bol (with Quorn mince - honestly so much better than the real thing) on our portable cooker under a sunset sky.
And cooked bangers and mash on an open fire! (Putting veggie sausages, onions, carrots and parsnips in a cast iron pan, sizzling on the open fire).
Oh, and marshmallow toasting, obviously.
Also - don’t knock it until you’ve tried it: leftover Bolognese on toast - the bomb.
And talking of toast - we’ve managed to find ways around not having the right equipment for the job. We use our outside grill on our gas stove to fire our bread until it’s smokin’.
Last night I made us some fajitas - the leftovers of which will become a burrito for lunch today.
I’ve also loved keeping things to one pot - mostly just to minimise mess. Like this hearty casserole.
And keeping things fresh n crunchy with this ‘chicken’ caesar salad (using Quorn pieces and chunky croutons).
The easiest option is always not to cook at all, so sometimes we’ve opted for cereal, sandwiches, and when going out mountain biking for the day, a good ol' pot noodle for lunch (using hot water from a flask). But so far we’re doing well at cooking most meals fresh each day. Ask us again in a few months time.
(Ps. No spoon, no problem!)
Over to Simone.
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I grew up in two very different kitchens. My Dad is a Yorkshireman and My Mum is from the West Indies and Sundays roasts differed between the parent, but they both shared similarities.
My Mum would make a typical roast dinner with the addition of rice and peas and macaroni cheese. Dad was always making his own Yorkshire puddings with homemade gravy and learnt how to season his food from my Mum - meaning he would pour a tub of all purpose seasoning over every dish.
They would feed anyone who walked through the door and I developed a taste for great food which was always shared with friends.
My Mum’s a great cook and I learned a thing or two by always being in the kitchen and washing up after her creative explosions. We’d sometimes fall low on food and utilise what was left in the cupboard and create something special out of nothing.
Food is my comfort and I can’t live with eating the same meals day in day out so being creative with cooking in a van is a must. I’ve taken some of the meals that I would usually create in a ‘house’ kitchen and transferred them to a ‘van’ kitchen.
I’m not a chef I just love to eat and cooking is essential to eating.
1. Lasagne
They say it's hard enough to cook lasagne in a normal kitchen in a conventional oven, but I managed to pull it off in a small kitchen on wheels with nothing else but one pot and some foil. No oven is needed when you have foil. I would have liked to cooked it outside on an open fire, but it was cold and rainy outside.
2. Thai Green Curry
Cooking on a hot stove, which you can barely gauge the temperature on, means all food has to be continuously stirred to not burn the bottom of the pan. This makes cooking rice extremely hard. I’m having to put a lot more water in the rice than usual to counter the stirring.
We have a coriander and basil plants which we struggle to keep alive, but being able to pick our own herbs gives us the same comfort as being in a ‘house’ kitchen.
3. Mushroom and Broccoli Risotto
This is a new one for me. I’ve never cooked risotto before, but turns out its super easy and only needs one pot. I sautéed mushrooms, onions and garlic, then added the risotto rice with veg stock and broccoli. I then left the water to evaporate and the rice to become soft.
4. Tandoori Curry
I stocked up on seasoning before we left London so buying curry spices from our local East-end shops was easy and cheap. It’s incredibly handy having a spice rack next to the stove to get creative and throw in all the tastes. Mixing coconut milk and chopped tomatoes then adding curry spices is a great way to make the base of a quick, flavoursome curry.
5. Pad Thai
A quick and simple one pot meal. I wanted the veg to still have a crunch to it, so this had a max total cooking time of 15 mins. It’s just a posh stir fry with crushed nuts and fresh ginger and lemon.
6. Rustled up Mexican Meal
Sometimes Becky gets cravings after a long drive and it’s my job to create the closest meal possible to her taste bud description. On this occasion we had no food in the kitchen and she fancied tacos.
A quick rummage through cupboard and this was born.
Crushed avocado, mixed beans, cucumber and tomato salad, thinly sliced potatoes fried in a very small amount of olive oil with garlic seasoned with hot paprika. This took about 10 minutes to cook with no real effort as it was only a matter of frying potatoes and heating a tin of mixed beans.
Not quite the taco she craved, but it’s kind of Mexican so I think I got away it.
7. Jacket Potatoes
Jacket potatoes on an open fire with roasted garlic (still in it’s shell), olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, then wrapped in foil and placed at the foot of the fire. I left the potatoes in the flames until they became soft.
Eating food from a fire always seems to taste better to us. You have to put work into making the fire beforehand, and then it rewards you with soft and fluffy jacket potatoes that you struggle to save for the lunch the next day.
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So there we have some of the vantastic vegetarian food we'd been cookin' up since we hit the road. Despite the lack of space, tools and budget, we've been feasting like Queens - proving that kitchen challenges are actually fuelling our creativity. And our tummies.
Love,
Becky and Simone