Now, I am not for a moment suggesting that it’s a good idea to actually cook pasties in a caravan. But they are easy to make, everyone likes them, and they are the original picnic food – they were invented to send down with miners as an entire meal in one tasty package, with meat in one end and jam in the other as desert. With all this in mind you could do a lot worse than having some pasties with you on your next caravanning trip. Whenever we went camping my Mum used to prepare a batch of pasties the night before, leave them raw in the fridge until morning, then bake them off while we were loading the car up. Then she’d quickly wrap them in tinfoil and then together in a tea towel, and they’d still be warm at lunchtime when we’d finished setting up – what a brilliant way to start a holiday!

A Cornish Pastie

Makes 4 pasties

Ingredients

1 pack of puff pastry (you could, of course, make your own puff pastry, but I’ve always thought that life’s too short)

2 large onions

1lb cubed beef (steak if you have it, any will do if not)

4 portabella mushrooms

1/2 pint nice ale

2 tsp flour

1 beef stock cube

Salt and pepper

1 egg for glazing

Method

1. Slice the onions as thinly as possible and fry quickly in oil until soft, stirring all the time to make sure they don’t catch.
2. Add the meat and stir quickly until brown on all sides.
3. Slice the mushrooms and stir in. Continue stirring quickly until everything is turning golden brown.
4. Pour over the ale and keep stirring until it bubbles up. Turn the heat down to a simmer. Sift in the flour, sprinkle in the stock cube and add a generous amount of salt and pepper. Stir until the sauce thickens and leave to simmer, stirring occasionally.
5. While the sauce simmers, prepare the pastry. Roll out the pastry and cut into circles the same size as a small dinner plate. Grease a baking tray.
6. When the sauce is thick and reduced so it is not runny, turn off the heat and divide the beef mixture between the disks, dolloping it in the middle. For each disk, scoop up two sides to the middle and press together, working your way out until the meat mixture is encased in the pastry.
7. Bake in a hot oven for 20 minutes. Good hot or cold.

As always, cooking, especially in a caravan, brings dangers, and these should always be insured against with Caravan Insurance.