Camping on the Isle of Wight

I like camping, I like the way you are taken out of your usual every day and put in a situation that lets you appreciate all the stuff that you don't need in your normal life. Of course, it also lets you appreciate all the stuff that you suddenly realise that you desperately need but have forgotten to pack, even more.

This Easter, The Child and I went camping for some Daddy and Daughter time while Mrs P worked through the week. We've been on camping holibobs as a family for some time so she was enthusiastic and I was naive, therefore we both packed up and shipped out for the best part of a week.

Two trains, a bus, a ferry, another bus, a missed bus and a very helpful man called Richard later, we arrived at our site and started to get set up. Grange Farm on the Isle of Wight is exactly what we had wanted with amazing coastal views, amazing beachy walks and a massive children's play area. The weather played along beautifully too and we had enough unexpected wall to wall sunshine to burn us both to a perfect lobster crisp*.

Gratuitous sunset shot:

Yeah, I know.

'But surely Rob', I hear you cry, 'during this self-imposed camping exile, you must have given up your gourmet ideals and lived off only burnt sausages and boil-in-the-bag porridge?' Not a bit of it my friends, among the meals we enjoyed, the two I will share with you here were the most successful. Admittedly there were others that didn't quite work out as intended and as it was a holiday, I also treated The Child to a Dirty Burger or two but then you can't appreciate the good without the bad, right? Now, as you all may have noticed, I don't normally do recipes but I'll make an exception here because sometimes it's useful to know what you really need to make some decent scran when no-one expects you to be able to. And lets be honest, part of this is all about showing off to other people isn't it?

Firstly lets talk essentials, if you've been following me for a while, you may remember I literally started from scratch last February to see what you really need to make it over a month. Here, it's just a week so we can cut a few corners but we were taking literally everything with us so were trying to travel as light as possible.

Essentials:

Two sources of heat - really important if you want to eat stuff hot.

A saucepan and a frying pan

A chopping board - perhaps not essential but how far does your personal ingenuity go?

A sharp knife

Salt and pepper

Chilli - again, not essential per se but for me it's got to be up there

Instant noodles or rice

'Fresh' pasta - you know the stuff I mean; it's not really fresh but it's the non-dried sort that lasts for months in the fridge, it also cooks much quicker than dried

Garlic + Ginger - these travel really well so you can stick a bit in your pocket and forget about them

Chicken stock cubes - just a couple, I know I bang on about doing it yourself and that's all well and good but in this situation you need instant flavour

Oil  

I tried to make sure that each meal had some form of carbohydrate, protein and veg with the protein and veg elements picked up either daily or every other day. All campsites have shops of some kind and the good ones have local farm supplies which you can dive in to.

Here we have tortellini with chicken, cherry tomatoes, spring onions with a salad motif topping. We had forgotten the plates so ended up eating everything out of bowls; c'est la vie.

Chicken

Cherry Tomatoes (On the vine of course dah-ling)

Garlic

Spring onions

Chilli

Pasta - I took tortellini because it is more filling that other kinds

Boil some water and put the frying pan on, fry off some chopped garlic and cubed chicken. Chop an entire packet of cherry tomatoes and add them once the chicken is browning. Add salt. Add the chilli if you want it to simmer through, or put it on afterwards if you have any reticent diners

Cook the pasta for a couple of minutes and when its ready drain off most of the water but throw a little bit back into the chicken to loosen the sauce up a bit and mix it all together.

Serve in a bowl with salad, or on a plate if you are feeling posh.

We pushed the boat out on this one with noodles, prawns and sweetcorn.

Instant noodle

Prawns

Baby sweetcorn

Spring onions

Chilli

Pepper

Boil your water and add a chicken stock cube, fry some garlic, ginger and chilli for a couple of minutes. Then break your baby corn in half and throw that in. Eat the rest of the packet of corn while you wait for the rest to cook. Sprinkle with pepper (we had white pepper because that was the only kind that I had in the cupboard when I was packing), and add the noodles to the water when it's bubbling.

Add the prawns to the pan to heat through and when the noodles are soft enough just combine the whole lot together. The stock cube has turned the water into a broth (kind of) so why waste it?

I know that these recipes are not quite haute cuisine, but they are tasty, easy and quick to cook and filling so given the choice between a bowl of chicken and tortellini or bitterness and regret for tea, I know which one I'll be packing.