Main courses



Wild garlic pesto pasta.

Toast a handful of sunflower seeds in a pan and crush with a stone. Mix in two handfuls of chopped wild garlic leaves and a handful of grated cheese Add 200ml oil and mix to a paste, with salt and pepper. Cook the pasta and mix in the pesto. Makes two large portions.

Andy Laing

Pancake patrol

As an 11-year-old Guide, I was very impressed by a 13-year-old patrol leader who knocked up savoury pancakes over a campfire. Fry onions, diced peppers and minced beef, then put to one side. Make up pancake batter, cook pancakes and put one on each plate. Add a dollop of savoury mince and roll the pancakes up. We were the envy of all the other Guides as they tried to force down cold baked beans! Another easy option is potato rösti. Don't bother hand-making it (the Swiss don't any more either) – you can buy it long-life in foil packets from Waitrose – just mash it into the frying pan, turn it once (use a plate to help) and then serve with sausages – delicious!

Clare Lipscombe

Risotto di campfire

Heat water and store in a flask or use it to soak porcini mushrooms. Chop onion, celery and garlic as finely as your equipment and patience allow. Melt a knob of butter in the pan and add the veg; let it soften then add as much risotto rice as you think you and your hungry hordes will eat. Keep stirring and when the rice looks transparent, add a glass of white wine. Once the wine has evaporated, start adding hot water or liquid from the mushrooms. If you have mushrooms or anything else to add, do so after 10 minutes. When the rice is no longer crunchy (around 20 minutes), check the seasoning, dish up and add parmesan.

Adele Borrowman

Cornish wild garlic and goat's cheese omelette

Whisk up four eggs (from a local farm) with milk, and season with a little salt and pepper. Melt a little butter in a frying pan and pour in the egg mixture, as the egg mixture begins to set, add slices of goat's cheese. Roughly chop some wild garlic including the flowers. Then, just as the cheese begins to melt, add the wild garlic. Flip over one side and serve with a little wild sorrel salad (from the coastal paths) and a slice of fresh bread from a local bakery.

Lynne S

Photograph: Robert Garvey/Corbis

Very very easy potato curry

Whenever we go camping I always pack a jar [or two] of curry paste and usually end up making potato curry. The beauty of this meal is that the other ingredients can be bought, cheaply, just about anywhere. It only takes one pan, it goes with anything from barbeque meat to white sliced bread. It is just as good all by itself with a spoon straight out of the pan. Chop onions and fry gently in any kind of fat - butter, oil or marg. (If you aren't that organised, pour out the oil that collects on top of the curry paste and use that.) Add curry paste and a tin of tomatoes and carry on frying gently. Peel potatoes and add in quite big (roast potato size) pieces to the pan, or just throw in whole new potatoes. Top up with water to cover potatoes and simmer till tender. Of course this "recipe" is totally flexible: you can add anything, such as other vegetables, chillies, garlic, or eggs. Or why not go back to nature and forage for your food?

Kathy M

Bean stir-fry

This can be made with ingredients from local shops/camp shop. Sauté chopped onion and garlic (meat eaters could add bacon). Add three types of drained tinned beans – red kidney beans, butter beans, cannellini beans or chick peas. Stir around then add a tin of tomatoes, and one tablespoon of tomato purée. Stir till wlll mixed and hot and, if available, add a sprinkle of washed and chopped wild garlic leaves. Serve with instant noodles.

Helen P

Wild garlic. Photograph: David Levene

Buckwheat pasta spirals

Hi, after retiring I've rented out my house and taken off on a campervan trip round the UK, with No Particular Place to Go. I'm very aware of using as little gas as possible, and have honed my cooking to a fine art, using a small stainless steel collapsible steamer inside my saucepan. I pick fresh nettles daily: they're free, yummy and full of vitamins and minerals. This is my favourite recipe – it's gluten-free. Cook buckwheat pasta in water, with nettles or wild garlic leaves in a steamer over the top. Mix sun-dried tomato pesto into pasta, top with grated cheese and veg and enjoy.

Margot Oakenby, Oxford (but no fixed abode at present)

Festival tuna medley for two

One tin of tuna, one tin of creamed mushrooms and one small tin sweet corn. Heat and mix in one pan. Serve with noodles or any pasta, and drink wine or beer. Enjoy the music!!.

Martin HG

Hot sweet potato and feta salad

Slice a sweet potato, brush with oil and grill on a barbecue. While still hot mix with feta cheese, a bag of spinach, chopped cherry tomatoes and some chopped onion. Pour on olive oil and balsamic vinegar and serve still warm with grilled pitta breads or couscous

Colemanje56

Miser's feast

Chop and fry onions, garlic and bacon. Add sliced (but unpeeled) potatoes and cover with water. Simmer until potatoes are cooked. Drain off most of the water, put back on a low heat and add cheese (any that can be grated). Serve when cheese has melted.

Graham Dean

Pizza express

A great tip for camping with big groups is to make a huge batch of pizza dough (rises perfectly in warm tents) and set out bowls of tomato sauce, cheese, meat and veggies for people to make their own folded "calzone" pizzas. Grilled on a barbecue for five minutes each side they make messy but tasty fun.

Kirstie Fagan

Chicken chorizo

This is a very easy, filling, warming and impressive one-pot meal for six, best cooked over an open fire in a cast iron pot, but a saucepan and gas cooker will do just as well. Fry six chicken thighs and six inches of chorizo until the oil is red and the chicken browned. Add chopped peppers, onions, garlic and chilli and a tin of chick peas, butter beans or similar and cook for five minutes. Add stock and/or half a bottle of wine and one jar of any pasta sauce. Simmer for half an hour. Add one cup of couscous, stir well, replace lid and leave to soak for 15 minutes. Serve in bowls with a dollop of houmous on the top. This is best eaten around a campfire with friends, family and a large glass of wine.

jojo2003

Gnocchi knock-out

Fry a chopped onion till soft, then add a few slices of chopped bacon and then oregano, basil and garlic. Add a box of passata, a splash of wine and, once boiling, a pack of gnocchi and season as desired. The joy of this recipe is that it's a gorgeous, rich meal that you can cook in one pot; great for Trangias. The other is that the wine is absolutely essential and, because you're camping, you can't take away a half-finished bottle. I made this for a girlfriend and she was so impressed, she married me.

Jonathan Meyer

Instant corned beef hash

This is a quick hit after a hard day's hoofing in the mountains. We love it when we're sheltering from the rain in our tent – but it would definitely frighten off the Famous Five. Put some water on to boil. Open a can of corned beef and slice the meat thinly. Squeeze some mustard from a tube into the bottom of a bowl, put the corned beef on top and tip a sachet of instant mash powder over the lot. When the water is boiling slowly pour it (whatever quantity it says for the mash) all over the lot and mix well. The hot water melts the fat in the corned beef so it mixes right in with the mash and mustard.

David Coward

Paella

The best camping meals need to be simple, flexible and delicious. That's why I'd suggest paella. It's great anytime but especially on your last day of camping when you have bits and pieces of food not worth taking home. It's a one pot dish, no need for overly precise cooking times and leaves plenty of time for chatting whilst stirring. Heat some olive oil in a large Paella pan, medium heat. Add three chopped chicken breasts, fry for about 10mins. Add chopped red/green peppers, garlic, onion and season. Fry gently till they're softened. Add paella or risotto rice, stir until nicely coated in oil. Pour in a tin of tomatoes, chicken Oxo cube and water, season. Bring to the boil stirring throughout to prevent sticking, then turn down the heat to low and continue to stir for about another 15 minutes. Now add a bag of de-frosted mixed shellfish and your other bits and pieces. Heat through and check seasoning. Quarter a lemon and arrange on the dish. Serve and enjoy.

picasso3

Sketty soup (our youngest couldn't say spaghetti - so the name has kind of stuck)

Put two chopped carrots and a tin of chopped tomatoes into pan with some water. Bring to the boil and add a third of a packet of quick-cook spaghetti, broken into 2-3cm lengths, and the celery. Add a tin of chick peas and a handful of frozen peas (we take a small packet to help keep icebox cool) three or four minutes before the spaghetti will be ready. Serve with cheese sprinkled over and a touch of tabasco sauce (if you like it hotter). Eat with a hunk of bread from a local baker (if you can find one).

Emma and Dave Wheatcrof

Puddings



Peach perfect

Place some tinned peach halves on a square of foil. Make up a packet of scone mix and shape into a ball. Place on top of the peaches, sticking a few squares of milk or dark chocolate into the ball. Wrap the parcel up with the foil and place in the embers of a campfire for 15-20 minutes. Open the parcel to find a hot fruity-chocolatey-doughy delight!

Sarah Hewitt

McVitie's chocolate Hob Nob, biscuit

Hot chocolate orange crunch

Bring a pan of water to the boil. Make up a packet of instant custard . Add about three sachets of orange hot chocolate powder and whisk. Take a packet of chocolate orange hobnobs that have been crushed at the bottom of a rucksack (or get kids to whack with cricket bat). Sprinkle onto chocolate orange custard. Provide everyone with a spoon and scoff out of the pan.

Daisy Williams

Canny camper tips



• Use a frisbee as a chopping board. It's light, the rim stops food being blown off, and the knife marks don't seem to affect its flight. And always take a walk round the campsite before dinner. We've found wild strawberries, gooseberries, plums, figs, chives, wild garlic, mushrooms, dandelions, nettles. You might get lucky and find some roadkill.

Toby Travis

• The king of ingredients is chorizo. Chop and fry with bashed garlic and onion and stick in a bun, or add veg or dried chilli, fry for a few minutes then stir through pasta, rice or couscous. Also perks up a one-pot chicken stew.

amy ellis (prettyholeinthehead)

• We use a Trangia portable stove. Here's how to get pasta (or rice) ready at the same time as sauce (or curry). Bring the starch to the boil. Spread out a sleeping bag with a towel on top. As soon as the water's boiling, lift the pan on to the towel. Put a lid on top, then fold towel and sleeping bag over it. Leave while you cook the rest of your meal, by which time it will be ready.

Pamela Butler

• We take an ice-cream box containing curry powder, dried herbs, cornflour, flour, stock cubes, soy sauce, tomato purée, garlic purée, and chilli powder in small amounts – endless good food can be made with these additions!

Pam and Robin Towler

Photograph: Henglein and Steets/cultura/Corbis

• An open fire is best so long as you take good supply of tinfoil with you - eating charcoal is not fun. Jacket spuds in first, then come corn on the cob, then hopefully some fresh fish that some kind soul has caught and some brave soul has gutted. The corn and the fish just need a bit of butter or spread inside the foil with them; for the spuds the butter comes after. Delicious.

Mrs Elaine Lane

• Last July my wife and I took our tent and beaten-up Citroen on a 22-day camping tour of France. After a 12-hour drive on the hottest day of the year we were offered supper by two travelling doctors camping next to us. To our amazement they rustled up a delicious risotto explaining how easy it was to cook. After that we cooked risotto every other day, varying the finishing ingredients. The beauty of it is that it's cooked in one pot with the basic, economical and imperishable ingredients (rice, olive oil, onions, stock, wine) remaining constant, but the final flourish (parmesan, goat's cheese, tomatoes, chorizo) being added with whatever took your fancy in that day's market. Lovingly stirring every minute or so over the camp fire only adds to the anticipation as the texture turns to oozy gorgeousness.

Benji Cannon

• To cook fish on a barbecue, cut slits in the skin and rub in a mixture of olive oil and salt, so you get a crispy skin and then use a wooden or metal skewer to hold it all together. This avoids the heartbreak of a fish that's cooked but falls into the coals when you move it!

Matt Hall

• The best camping meal I ever had was on a one burner Camping Gaz stove in Connemara. I walked down the cliff to the local (only) shop. Fishermen had dumped a load of crab claws which they were practically giving away. I filled up a bag and made my way back up the cliff. It was the most beautiful day. White sand, blue sky, turquoise sea, sweet delicious aroma of crab simmering on the stove. I made a quick salsa of olive oil, garlic, lemon, chilli, diced red onion and balsamic vinegar. As the sun went down, we fished the crab out of the pot, bashed it with the camping hammer and dipped it in the salsa. Perfect.

Heather McCracken