COUS COUS 3 WAYS

+ a camping food breakdown

Ciao ragazzi,

I hope you are all having wonderful summers, finding time to slow down and enjoy the longer days. I’ve just returned from my annual family camping holiday in the south of England, a trip we have been taking for the last fifteen years. Every summer, for a long weekend, almost 40 members, from my mum’s side of the family, gather in a field, pitch our tents and relax. To say camping is relaxing is to say you slept like a baby, it’s not always that simple. There is always an airbed with a puncture, a pigeon keeping my dad awake, the every present worry you didn’t pack the right layers for the four seasons of weather you will experience in one day and at the campsite we frequent, there is always an army of wasps keen to get in on the action. But what I always find, and this year more than ever, is that the lack of internet or phone signal for four days leaves me feeling more refreshed and energised that a 12 hour sleep. It was a real treat to relax into the knowledge that I couldn’t be online even if I wanted to be, and to just surrender into the endless days of reading, swimming, cooking and catching up with my family, some of whom I only get to see at camping.

I always say that I LOVE camping, but what I’ve realised I mean is, I love the way we do camping. Having done this trip for so many years with the same people, we have developed a real system for how to feed such a large group of people, what to bring, how to divide the labour and how to make it as delicious and simple as possible.

I shared a little of the food we ate here and a few of you asked me to go into some more detail on the menu, so I thought I would break down how we do it. One of the key steps to making it work is making the curry, daal and chilli at home, freezing it into containers and bringing in cool boxes. This means no one is slaving over a camping stove trying to make enough chilli for 35 people on a weak flame and it minimises ingredients packing by a long way. The other real bonus to doing it this way is that your boxes of frozen curry / chilli act as ice packs for everything else in the cool box and tend to be perfectly defrosted, yet still chilled, by the time you want to reheat them. It’s a revelation for feeding many while camping.

OK so the camping menu goes like this:

Night 1 - Chilli Night

• Spicy margaritas on arrival

• Meat chilli & veggie chilli

• Rice

• Guacamole

• Sweetcorn salsa

• Tortilla chips, grated cheddar, sour cream and jalapeños

Night 2 - Curry Night

• Chicken madras (made at home and brought frozen)

• Daal (made at home and brought frozen)

• Crispy onion pilaf rice

• Yoghurt, mint & cucumber

• Tomato, onion & coriander

• Popadoms, mango chutney & lime pickle

Night 3 - BBQ Night

We used to just do burgers and salad, but this year we changed things up. I brought a mixture of meat: steaks, burgers, sausages, a rack of ribs, chicken wings and Texas hot links. We cooked it all, sliced up and served on a big platter along with three different salads, bread buns, sticky caramelised onions and all the sauces. It worked really well and everyone had a selection of the meat for a more family style BBQ.

Breakfasts are a fend for yourself venture, lots of bacon, eggs, bread, yoghurt, granola and fruit. Everyone gets up at their own speed and makes what they fancy, rotating pans for kettles so there’s always a pot of coffee on the go. A few of us make sure to bring a baked good, for those moments when you need a little injection of sugar, I made the Crunch recipe from my cookbook, In for Dinner, and my little sister made the Masala Chai Shortbread. There were three types of cookies from my other cousins and mountains of bags of crisps and crates of beer. It’s basically heaven and I encourage anyone with a big family to go to the effort of organising a trip like this, because once you are there, it’s more than worth it.

RIGHT - to the recipe.

I am a huge advocate for using your time in the kitchen wisely in the summer and the recipes below are designed to help you get the most out of your time and your energy, Couscous can often be overlooked as a quick but bland carb and I’m here to show you three ways you can use it to the contrary. I love the greek style rice stuffed tomatoes and I ate many while I was there on holiday, but the time and effort it takes to make them properly is not something I’m often up for. Cooking them this way, with raw couscous in place of the cooked rice, saves SO much time and hassle and it’s my new favourite magic trick. Then we have a very delicious couscous salad, that could be the base of many a meal and is a great one to batch cook at the beginning of the week for lunches. And if you have any leftover and you’re sick of eating it as a salad then I have another recipe which utilises it in a high protein quick and easy breakfast loaf that will keep you going all week.

It’s all go! I hope you enjoy these recipes as much as I did developing them.

Sending love, Rosie x

SLOW COOKED STUFFED TOMATOES

Inspired by the rice stuffed tomatoes so often found in Italy and Greece, these are a simpler, quicker but just as delicious meal that is perfect for hosting in the summer when you don’t want to be standing over the hob all night. They cook low and slow in the oven, allowing the sweetness of the tomatoes to really come out and all the juices to gently cook the couscous to perfection.