Getting back to our tinned food testing, we next tried the Irish Stew. I forgot to take a photo of it in the can. We went for the Irish Stew as I had some left over lamb stew (but without lamb as we had eaten it) that wasn’t enough for two people. I thought we could stretch my left over stew with a tinned version. Firstly, it didn’t look very appetising. Although there was some meat in it, there isn’t very much. It is also very bland. Fortunately, the stew that I had made had a lot of flavor and when I added the two together, you didn’t really notice the tinned version. It was good enough. The tinned stew is really only enough for one person, so you would either need two cans for two people and you would need to season it, or you could add extra ingredients to stretch it out. This is not something we will be taking on our next camping trip.
A few days later we decided to make a pie with the Ridge Monkey.
We saw people using the RidgeMonkey on a few YouTube videos and decided to give it a try as I wanted a grill to make toasties with. This one is the XL, but it is still small. It does however make an excellent grilled cheese sandwich. We also saw people posting photos of pies they made with the RidgeMonkey and decided to give it a go.
For this recipe I used a tin of stewed steak, half a tin of new potatoes, some mushrooms and Gorgonzola cheese. For the pastry I used Sainsbury’s All Butter Puff Pastry. It is the only one I can find that does not use palm oil. The steak does not look appetising at all. It tasted ok, but it needed some seasoning. The potatoes are rather bland and have a tinned taste and I wouldn’t eat it out of the can. I cut up the potatoes into cubes and chopped up some mushrooms and added them to the steak with salt and pepper.
I put one half of the base in the RidgeMonkey and filled it with the steak mixture and put some Gorgonzola cheese on top of that. I then folded the rest of the pastry over and pinched it together. I cooked it low and slow for about 15-20 minutes giving it a turn about every 5 minutes and lifting the lid to see how it was doing. You want to make sure that the pastry is cooked, otherwise it will be soggy. I make pies with this often and I have it in the oven for about 30 minutes at 190C. You can see that one pie fits a whole plate and is more than enough for two people with veg. We really enjoyed this and will be taking a tin with us.
We then tried the chilli. The tinned chilli is only enough for one person, so we stretched it out with a tin of mixed beans in chilli sauce from Sainsbury’s. You can also use taco beans from Tesco. We had them with mini naan breads that we warmed in the toaster.
As you can see, this is another one that doesn’t look appetising out of the can. There is also a familiar taste about it, but it was a bit bland. As well as the mixed beans, we added some chilli flakes for some zing. It would be nice with some grated cheese on top or you can serve it with a microwave rice that was heated in a pan. We will be taking a can of this with us and some extra beans.
I had recently ordered a Melitta drip filter for making coffee when we wild camp. We have an electric kettle and a thermal cafetière that we normally use when on a campsite for making real ground coffee. When on a site, it is easy to get rid of the coffee grinds when doing the washing up at the communal sinks. However, it wouldn’t be so easy if we were just parking up somewhere or just stopping for a break. We tend to use instant coffee in those instances, but I am not a big fan of instant coffee. This plastic filter holder can make one or two cups. I ordered extra filters. It makes a lovely cup of coffee and all I need to do is put the filter with the grinds straight into a bin.
We still have a couple more tins to try. If anyone has any suggestions, please leave a comment.
Dream Big, Pack Lite 