Joe Woodhouse's camping cuisine includes sweetcorn salsa, shredded cabbage with blue cheese and kidney bean salad, and Moroccan carrot salad. These recipes prove that you don't need complicated kit to eat well while sleeping under the stars—just a stove, a spork, and the right ingredients.
Embracing Campsite Cookery
Despite the challenges of camping—sharing facilities with hundreds of people and local spiders—the joy of campsite cookery shines through. After a week in Devon in a one-person tent with an elderly terrier, the best meals came from simple ingredients sourced from village shops, such as the well-stocked Holne Community Shop and Tearoom. The key is focusing on one ingredient that doesn't require cooling, like cured chorizo or feta, and building meals around it until it runs out.
Flavour Bombs for Camping
With chorizo and feta as flavour bombs, plus olive oil, chilli sauce, and salt, you can create feasts from almost anything found en route. Recipes like Claudia Roden's spicy potatoes from Rioja or Thomasina Miers' piperade with baked eggs and crispy chorizo are ideal, though spices can be substituted with Tabasco. Georgina Hayden's blackberry, feta, and seed salad, Yotam Ottolenghi's watermelon and basil version, or Nigel Slater's feta and puy lentil salad (using tinned lentils to save fuel) are excellent options.
Making the Most of Fire and Eggs
At a site with fire pits and damp kindling, aubergines were blackened over flames to make a sort of baba ganoush without tahini, served in supermarket pitta with feta and cherry tomatoes. Eggs are another standby: farm campsites often sell their own, and with bread, you can make scrambled eggs and chorizo, Valentine Warner's nettle tortilla, or fried egg rolls with squashed tomatoes—a meal that rivals any fancy hotel restaurant.
Week in Food Highlights
Felicity Cloake shares her triple-chocolate malt cake recipe, inspired by a Substack summer fete, with a dog design credited to Chelsey of Chelsweets. July is dominated by the Tour de France, where athletes burn about 6,000 calories a day; team chefs and travelling kitchens provide insight into their diets, while the Tour's official website explains regional foods. Cherries from the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale were processed by freezing, made into Uzbek cherry punch from Anna Ansari's book Silk Roads, or pickled using Mary Cadogan's recipe for pairing with cured meat or salads.
Cold Brew for Heatwaves
During heatwaves, a cold brew jug is recommended for chilled coffee or tea, using coarsely ground beans from Rave. This method fuels productivity and is especially useful for those working from home.
