When the gas goes haywire in a campervan, chaos ensues. It means no heating, no hob, no oven and no fridge. When it happened to us we curled ourselves into fetal positions and had a good cry. Fortunately, though, its surprisingly easy to come up with no cook meals in the face of adversity. Even pasta can be tackled if you have a kettle and some electricity. These four cheap meals have got you covered should you find yourself in a similar situation!
Vietnamese noodle salad
Ingredients:
1 portion of rice noodles
1 Red pepper
Half a cucumber
One courgette
3 spring onions
1 tbsp peanut butter
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
Juice of 1 lime
Method
Slice up your vegetables as thinly as possible and use a potato peeler (aint nobody got space for a spiralizer) to create courgette thins to add to the salad. In a small bowl, whizz together the peanut butter, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and lime until they become saucy. Then, bring a kettle of water to the boil and splash it over the rice noodles in a saucepan (they only take a few minutes). Once the noodles are cooked, drain them and combine everything. Give it a quick fork to make sure everythings mixed in and voila, Vietnamese noodle salad ready to go.
Open salmon sandwich
Ingredients:
Sourdough (or any other kind of bread that tastes like bread)
50g-100g of smoked salmon
1 avocado
Salad leaves
Olive oil & balsamic vinegar
Lemon juice
Method
This one could not be easier. In fact we only wrote that part to bulk out the methods section. Slice your wholemeal/sourdough/classic white bread (whatever floats you boat) and toast. Then lather with butter, sliced avocado and smoked salmon. Lemon juice and black pepper is an absolute necessity, as is balsamic vinegar if youd like your salad leaves to taste of anything.
Healthy tuna pasta salad
Ingredients:
Pasta for two
1 big tin of tuna in olive oil
1 red pepper
Half a red onion, diced
The juice of 1 lemon
Mediterranean spices
1 tsp of chilli flakes
Capers (optional)
Method
Start by chucking your pasta in a pan and covering it with boiling water. Put the lid on and leave for ten minutes. The tricky part here is that youve got no gas so your pan wont be heated. We discovered, though, that if you drain the pasta after ten minutes and refresh the pot with newly boiled water from the kettle, it takes another 5-10 minutes for it to cook. If youre wondering which type of pasta cooks the quickest, its fusilli. Discovering we could cook pasta without gas was a defining moment for us.
Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and add in the tin of tuna including the olive oil, half a red onion, and everything else on the ingredients list. Get a shimmy on with this one. You want to keep all of the residual heat in the pasta. Sprinkle with a little cheese if you really want to spruce things up!
Blue cheese, pear and walnut salad
Ingredients
1 pear
1 pack of blue cheese
2 handfuls of walnuts
Olive oil
1 tbsp of honey
Lemon juice (optional)
Method
This is heaven. Once wed discovered this salad we just couldnt stop making it. The flavour combo is out of this world and even better if youve got a bit of grilled toast on the side that you can mush the cheese on to. As far as methods go, its a simple one. Salad in the bowl, scatter with the walnuts and chopped up blue cheese. Delicately arrange slices of pear on top and finish with a slosh of olive oil and a drizzle of honey. We add a bit of lemon juice if we have any, too.
We live for eating as you might be able to tell, so head on over to our Food and drinks section if youre looking for more culinary delights.