There is a café in Amsterdam called the Café ‘t Smalle (http://www.t-smalle.nl/). It is my favourite café in the city. It’s right by the Anne Frank House, so very convenient for a quick lunch after a morning’s sightseeing. In summer if you go you can sit out on a little pier on the canal and watch the boats go past, but my favourite time to go is in winter. This is because it’s only in winter they’ll serve you the mulled wine and pea and ham soup. This is, quite literally, the best soup in the whole world – flavourful and filling and so thick you can stand a spoon up in it for a full 10 seconds before it falls over – my Dad tried it once! This recipe is nothing like as good as Café t’ Smalle’s soup, but it is delicious, and can be cooked quickly and easily on one ring in under quarter of an hour. Serves 4.

One small bag of frozen peas (it doesn’t matter if they’ve been out for a while and thawed)

Two ham stock cubes, made up with recommended amount of water

One small pack of nice ham

5 spring onions

A splash of milk

A knob of butter

1. Heat the butter in a small saucepan until it is foaming. With a pair of scissors, snip the spring onions into the pan as thinly as possible, leaving out the ends.
2. Fry, stirring with a wooden spoon, until they soften.
3. Add the stock and peas and bring to the boil.
4. Shred the ham into the pan, stir everything well to combine and reduce the heat.
5. Simmer for five minutes
6. Take off the heat. Mash the mixture roughly, using a fork. You want the consistency to be definitely liquid, but not too smooth.
7. Return to the heat, stir and add as much milk as you like depending on how runny you want it.
8. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve with crusty bread.

This soup makes a brilliant late supper, perhaps if you’ve been out to lunch, but is particularly good poured into a thermos and taken on a picnic. As it’s so quick, it’s no hassle to make it before you set off. I would normally say that to make it vegetarian you could leave out the ham, but I do feel it’s nothing like as good without it.

Amsterdam is easily accessible by ferry, especially from Hull. The Relaxing Crow Caravan Park is a reasonable distance from the city centre.

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

Stroganoff is a delicious, creamy and decadent meal that has the distinction that it can be cooked in under 20 minutes and in just one pot.

Stroganoff is a Russian dish in origin and was developed in the 19th Century. The original dish used cubes of beef and was less rich and more tomato based than it has become. From Russia, the dish became popular in China, and after the Second World War it spread to America. The traditional accompaniment is matchstick potatoes – a Russian dish consisting of very thinly cut potatoes, deep fried (much like French Fries), but in Europe it is more often served with rice. The dish is named after the Stroganov family, who were important, especially in politics, in 19th century Russia.

A generous knob of butter

Oil for frying

2 onions, sliced as finely as possible (the thinner they are, the faster they cook)

250g mushrooms, sliced

500g steak, cut into thin strips

A good slug of brandy

1 lemon

2 small tubs of soured cream

2 tsb paprika

1. Heat the butter and a little oil in a pan. When the butter is foaming, add the onions and fry gently until they soften.

2. Add the mushrooms to the pan and cook quickly until they are starting to brown. Tip the onions and mushrooms into a bowl.

3. Turn the heat right up, add some more oil, and quickly fry the meat until cooked.

4. Pour in the brandy and stir vigorously to deglaze the pan, combine and burn off the alcohol.

5. Return the onions and mushrooms to the pan, add all the remaining ingredients and heat, stirring, until the cream bubbles.

Then serve the stroganoff immediately. It goes great with rice or pasta, but if you only have one cooking ring the best choice is some fresh, crusty bread. Serve by putting the pan and the loaf in the middle of the table and letting everyone help themselves! For a vegetarian option, use 3 onions, 750g of mushrooms and no steak – it’s nice to use different varieties of mushroom if you’re doing it this way. To make the dish lighter you could use plain natural yoghurt instead of sour cream.

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

In celebration of the fact that January and with it the pretence that I’m on a diet is well and truly over, I thought I’d share my favourite scone recipe. I love making scones, because they’re so easy and quick, but people are always impressed when you offer them around. They are also extremely robust and will come out well even if your oven isn’t as even as it could be, or won’t go as hot as you want it – both common problems in a caravan! If you don’t have a caravan oven, these are still ideal – they’ll keep extremely well, so just pop them in something airtight, and when you want to eat them, either spread with cream and jam as they are or split them and lightly toast them (kids love to do this over a campfire!) before buttering and serving to grateful friends and family!

Note – even my friend C does not keep a set of food scales in her motor home, so the measurements are supplied in cups. You can get proper measuring cups, but if you don’t have any, you want a smallish teacup – a little less than a normal mug.

2 Cups self raising flour

2 Generous tablespoons of sugar

3 Tablespoons of salted butter

1 Medium egg

Half a cup of milk, though you may need a little more

1. Stir the flour and sugar together in the biggest bowl you have.
2. Cut the butter into small chunks and drop into the flour. Use your thumb and fingers in a rubbing motion to mix the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs. The colder you had the butter the easier this stage will be.
3. Stir in any extras you want to add (see below).
4. Stir in the egg.
5. Add your milk gradually, stirring, until a think dough is formed. You may need a little more milk here. Bear in mind that the scones will be nicer if you use full fat milk.
6. Pull off egg sized chunks of the dough and squash into a flat disk with your hand. Place on a greased baking tray.
7. Bake at around 200 degrees Celsius for around twenty minutes, or until they’re springy and golden.

Extras

If you have any other ingredients around, or you want to make your scones more of a treat, you can put in a handful of dried fruit or some grated cheese (leave out the sugar if you do this). You can even put in chocolate chips and serve them spread with Nutella – a very special treat for kids. And maybe adults like that more than they’re admitting too…

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

Next up in our series of one pot, easy to cook recipes suitable for cooking in a caravan is my favourite dinner, which has seen me through many a chilly night – my special Bolognese sauce.

Serves 4

300g lean beef mince

1 onion, chopped finely

1 clove of garlic, crushed, or if that’s too fiddly, a squeeze of garlic from a tube

2 tbsp tomato puree

1 can of chopped tomatoes

A good slug of red wine

Seasonings – 1 tsp oregano, 1 tsp paprika, a scrunch of salt and lots of pepper

Grated cheese

1. Gently fry the onions in olive oil until they’re translucent and starting to turn golden.
2. Add the mince – as you’re using lean mince there’s no need to brown it separately as there won’t be that much fat coming off it. Stir with the onions until the meat is sealed.
3. Add the garlic, stir and leave to warm for a couple of minutes.
4. Now add your seasonings. A lot of people add the seasonings at the end, but if you add them at this point the flavours will be absorbed into the meat much better.
5. Add the tomato puree and stir until everything is mixed in.
6. Now add the chopped tomatoes and the wine, stir and bring up to a simmer.
7. Turn the heat down, pour yourself some of that wine and leave the sauce to simmer – at least 20 mins is recommended, and it’ll be better the longer you leave it, but you can get away with 10.
8. Put some freshly cooked pasta (I use spaghetti or linguini, but penne would be just as good and less messy!) in bowls, top with the grated cheese and serve.

Now, this is not strictly a one pot meal, as you need to cook some pasta to go with it separately. If you only have one ring though, it’ll keep warm fine with the lid on for long enough for you to boil up some spaghetti to eat it with. In an emergency, I’ve had this with just some crusty bread on the side before and it was still amazing. If you have a bit more space and time, this is a great meal to bolster up your vegetable intake. You can chop hard veg like carrots or peppers very fine and add after the onions and before the mince and they’ll almost disappear into the sauce but add a nice richness to the base. Soft vegetables like mushrooms, aubergine and courgette can be cut into very small chunks and added after the tomato puree.
As always, cooking in a caravan should always be insured against with caravan insurance .