Food We Cook on the Road
This is some of the food that we cook at home and also find not too difficult to have when travelling.
We'll keep adding recipes here as we spend more time on the road and find more delicious recipes.
In this Article
4-Ingredient Artisan Bread
Who doesn’t like the smell of fresh bread just out of the oven? And it tastes even better when you’ve cooked it yourself and didn’t even have to knead it.
With our longer-term plan to be on the road for long periods, and in places where there may not be any shops for days at a time, we wanted to be able to bake our own bread. Just to add to the complexity, because we don’t have an oven in Matariki, we would also have to bake the bread on the BBQ.
So began our search for an easy bread recipe that didn’t require a lot of preparation and fuss, and that we could cook in the BBQ.
This recipe is about the fifth iteration of that process. Initially we tried bread recipes that didn’t require yeast, but none was really successful. One or two came out okay in the oven at home (as a trial before attempting to cook on the BBQ), but when we tried to cook them on the BBQ the results were average to say the least. Also, all of our (I use ‘our’ here to make it look like I had some input into these early attempts!) early recipes required a lot of kneading, which is what we were trying to avoid. We say “no” to high maintenance bread!
Because I’m generally drawn to news articles about food, I’ve found a lot of recipes online that we use regularly, and this bread recipe is one of those. This is from the description of the recipe:
“Move over sourdough, there’s a new bread in town, and it doesn’t need kneading. After about 45 minutes baking you get a crusty, soft loaf in the style of a French boule.”
We’ve cooked this bread successfully in the Weber BBQ, using the small Weber Qware Casserole Dish.
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Serves 6-8 5 + 5 mins to prepare (plus 8-24 hours resting time) and 45 mins to cook
Ingredients
3 cups of plain flour
1 tsp salt
½ tsp yeast
1.5 cups of warm water
Method
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In a bowl, stir the flour, salt, yeast and water until all combined
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Cover and rest at room temperature for 8-24 hours. (hint – longer is better)
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Turn out dough onto a well-floured surface and form a ball (place on baking paper if desired)
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Rest for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, place an oven-safe baking dish with high sides into the oven and preheat to 230 degrees
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Slash an “X” on top of the bread, carefully transfer to baking dish and cover. If using baking paper, you can pick up the edges of the paper and transfer the dough and the paper together into the baking dish
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Bake for 30 minutes covered, then uncover and bake for a further 15 minutes until golden brown
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Cool before slicing.
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra
4 tablespoons Thai red curry paste
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 cm piece of ginger, finely grated
1½ cup cups (375ml) chicken stock
6 chicken thigh fillets, boneless and skinless
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
400 millilitres coconut milk
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons fish sauce
4 kaffir lime leaves, finely chopped
150 grams green beans, trimmed
1 red capsicum, roughly chopped
Vietnamese coriander leaves, to serve (optional)
1 red chilli, finely sliced, to serve (optional)
Cooked Jasmine rice, to serve
1 lime, cut into wedges
Method
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Prepare the barbecue for direct cooking over direct medium-high heat (200°C to 260°C) and preheat the barbecue with a Large Weber Casserole Dish.
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Once the barbecue has preheated, add the 2 tablespoons of olive oil, Thai red curry paste, garlic and ginger to the casserole dish. Sauté for 2 minutes over direct medium-high heat, without the casserole dish lid, stirring as needed, keeping the barbecue lid closed as much as possible. Add the chicken stock and simmer for 5 minutes.
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Add the coconut milk, brown sugar and fish sauce to the casserole dish and continue simmering for 10 minutes, stirring as needed. While the curry is simmering. Roughly cut each chicken thigh fillet into 4 to 5 pieces. Lightly coat with olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Place the chicken pieces onto the cooking grill, around the casserole dish and grill for 3 to 4 minutes per side over direct medium-high heat until golden. The chicken does not need to be completely cooked through as it will continue cooking once added to the curry.
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Once the chicken has cooked, add the chicken pieces along with kaffir lime leaves, green beans and capsicum to the curry and continue simmering for 5 minutes, until the sauce has thickened slightly and the chicken has cooked through.
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Remove the curry from the barbecue. Garnish with the fresh Vietnamese coriander leaves and red chilli. Serve with cooked Jasmine rice and lime wedges.
Thai Red Curry Chicken
Love a good curry? We do, and this curry has two of our favourite curry ingredients, red curry paste and coconut milk.
I do prefer to make curries using authentic Asian ingredients, which I do at home, but they’re a bit fiddly for cooking on the road, so this is a great flavoursome substitute.
We got this Thai Red Curry Chicken recipe from the Weber website (or should that be ‘webersite’?)
This is another dish we cook in the small Weber Qware Casserole Dish.
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4 Servings 20 mins to prepare and 30 mins to cook
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This is another quick and easy curry that you can cook on the stovetop or on the BBQ.
We got the recipe from the Patak's Korma Paste jar.
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4 Servings 5 mins to prepare and 40 mins to cook
Ingredients
1 tbsp oil
1 onion
1/2 jar Patak's Korma Paste (or similar)
1 tsp ginger
50 ml water
500g chicken of your choice
400ml coconut milk/cream
1 tsp sugar
Method
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Heat oil in a large pan or wok and cook onion until soft
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Add Korma Paste & ginger and cook for a couple of minutes until fragrant
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Add water and cook until evaporated
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Add chicken and cook until chicken is cooked through
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Add coconut milk/cream & sugar & simmer until well heated
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Serve with rice.
Chicken Korma
Bengali Chicken Curry
Another curry!
You may have noticed a theme here. You wouldn't need to be much of a detective to figure out that we like curries, especially chicken curries.
This is another quick and easy dish that gets its flavour from a dried spice mix that we picked up at Stanthorpe Cheese on our Boonah, Scenic Rim, Granite Belt trip.
The Australian made spice mix is produced by Spice Nomads who are located in Noosaville, QLD, and who also produce a large number of other spices.
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4 Servings 5 mins to prepare and 40 mins to cook
Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil or ghee
1 small onion, diced
500g chicken of your choice, cubed
2 tsp Spice Nomads Bengali Curry Mix
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 potato, optionally peeled, cubed into 2cm pieces
1 can coconut milk/cream
Additional vegetables, if required, such as carrots and/or peas
Method
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Heat oil or ghee in a medium saucepan and saute onions for 4 minutes
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Add chicken, saute for 2 minutes, stir in the Bengali Curry Spice, salt, tomato paste, potatoes and any other vegetables until they are all coated
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Add coconut milk/cream and stir to combine.
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Bring to the boil, cover and reduce heat to a simmer for 10 minutes
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Remove lid and simmer for an additional 15 minutes, until thickened
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Serve with rice.
