5 Easy Van Life Recipes

March 19, 2024

Photo credit @sebsantabarbara

Cooking in a van doesn’t have to be hard, and you can still make so many tasty meals that you enjoy at home or in restaurants. And, as I’ve said so many times through my previous books and articles, you can eat great food for cheap when you cook it yourself.

Get the idea that you’re going to be living off packet ration food out of your head and prepare to feast on some of the tastiest van life recipes around!

1. Pasta Sebastiano (or pasta with broccoli, mushroom, olives and sun-dried tomatoes).

Ingredients for Two:

• 2 servings pasta (I can eat half a 500g packet myself, but not everyone grew up in an Italian family like I did.)
• Around 8-10 mushrooms
• Florets from half a broccoli
• 1 pot of olives
• Sun-dried tomatoes (as many as you want to add to the dish)
• 3 cloves garlic
• Olive oil for frying
• 2 pinches of dried oregano
• Chili flakes to taste (I usually go for a couple of pinches because I like a kick!)
• Black pepper
• Parmesan

Method:

• Finely chop your garlic. Slice your mushrooms, olives, sun-dried tomatoes and broccoli into small pieces. Make sure your broccoli pieces are thinly sliced.
• Add water and your chosen pasta to a pan. Bring to the boil and leave to cook.
• Fry your broccoli in the olive oil, oregano and chili flakes. Then, add your garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, olives and mushrooms towards the end of the frying process. You can always use some of the sun-dried tomato oil for flavor.
• Once the pasta is cooked, drain and add to the veg mixture. Season with black pepper and fresh parmesan to taste.

Photo credit @sebsantabarbara

2. Quick & Easy Daal

Ingredients for Two:

• 1 onion
• 3cm piece of ginger
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1-2 chilis
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 250g green lentils
• 2 teaspoons turmeric
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander

Method:

• Grab your lentils and put them in your chosen pan. Pour a generous amount of water into the pan so that the lentils are sufficiently covered and bring to the boil.
• Once the water has reduced slightly, stir in turmeric and reduce to a simmer.
• Using a sharp knife, slice and dice your onion, ginger, garlic and chilis. Once diced, fry them all up in a large pan and add all the spices above while stirring.
• When your lentils start to look a little like porridge, you know they’re ready to go. It’s possible you might need to keep adding a little water, so just keep an eye on them and add accordingly.
• Once both the lentils and your spice mix are both ready, add them together and stir over a low heat.
• Serve your Daal with boiled basmati rice and a dollop of natural yoghurt.
• Grab your lentils and put them in your chosen pan. Pour a generous amount of water into the pan so that the lentils are sufficiently covered and bring to the boil.
• Once the water has reduced slightly, stir in turmeric and reduce to a simmer.
• Using a sharp knife, slice and dice your onion, ginger, garlic and chilis. Once diced, fry them all up in a large pan and add all the spices above while stirring.
• When your lentils start to look a little like porridge, you know they’re ready to go. It’s possibly you might need to keep adding a little water, so just keep an eye on them and add accordingly.
• Once both the lentils and your spice mix are both ready, add the together and stir over a low heat.
• Serve your Daal with boiled basmati rice and a dollop of natural yoghurt.

3. Vanlife Veggie Donburi

Ingredients for Two:

• 1 cup of rice
• 1 pak choi
• 3 carrots
• 2 cloves of garlic
• A chunk of ginger
• 3 tablespoons of honey
• An ample dash of soy sauce
• Chili paste (to taste)
• 2 teaspoons rice wine
• 2 eggs
• Spring onions
• Olive oil
• Kimchi (this is an Asian pickled vegetable dish. You don’t need this to make the dish, but it does accompany it really well!)

Method:

• Slice your vegetables; cut the pak choi leaves in half lengthways, peel and thinly slice the carrots, dice the garlic and ginger.
• Put 1 cup of rice in a pan with water and bring to the boil. Leave to cook.
• Add some oil to a wok or large frying pan and fry off the ginger and garlic. Throw in the honey, some soy and the chili paste to create a sticky sauce. Once made, put the sauce into a cup and cover.
• Using the same pan fry to keep all those flavors in, fry your veg in oil and season with some soy, rice wine and more chili for good measure. Don’t over fry it; it wants to stay a little crunchy. Three to five minutes should do nicely.
• Pushing your veg to one side of the pan, make enough space so that you can fry some eggs in the other.
• Once everything is finished, put your rice in the bottom of a serving bowl, add the veg and place an egg on top. Drizzle over the sticky sauce you made and add some spring onion and Kimchi if you have it.

Photo credit @sebsantabarbara

4. Seb’s World-famous Fried Aubergine, Pesto, Cheese, Olive & Sun-dried Tomato Toasties.

Ingredients for two:

• 2 slices of thick bread or a panini
• 8 slices of eggplant
• A jar of roasted peppers
• Olives
• Cheese
• Pesto
• Tomato purée
• Olive oil
• Basil
• Garlic granules

Method

• Add a generous splash of oil to your RidgeMonkey and fry the eggplant, seasoning with basil and garlic granules. Keep frying until they have browned and become soft.
• Add a thin layer of butter to the outside of each slice of bread, the side that will rest against the inside of the RidgeMonkey.
• Create the sandwich by spreading pesto onto the inside of one slice of bread and tomato purée on the other. Place your eggplant, cheese, sliced roasted pepper, and sliced olives into the sandwich and close.
• Toast the sandwich over a low heat until the cheese has melted. Serve on its own or with a dollop of mayonnaise.

Photo credit @sebsantabarbara

5. Calzones (just like Papa Santabarbara makes!)

Ingredients for two:

• 200g strong bread flour (keep the bag to hand for dusting)
• 140ml warm water (not boiling, just warm)
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 7g packet of fast action yeast
• Pinch of salt
• 1 box/jar of passata (around 500ml)
• Large pinch of dried Oregano
• Black pepper
• 1 bag grated mozzarella (mozzarella balls make the calzone too wet)
• A generous handful of mushrooms
• 1 small zucchini
• 1/2 eggplant
• 1 packet of olives (garlic and chill are my favorite)
• Dried basil
• Salt & pepper
• 2 cloves of garlic

Method

To make the dough:

• • Pour your flour, packet of yeast and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Make a well in the middle and add the 140ml of water and 2 tablespoons of oil into the middle. Mix together.
• Place the sticky dough onto a surface dusted with flour and kneed for about five minutes, continuing to add flour onto the surface to stop the dough from sticking to your worktop. When it’s ready, the dough should be smooth and able to stretch without breaking.
• Clean your bowl, then grease it with a tablespoon of oil. Shape the dough into a ball and place inside, covering the bowl with cling film. If you don’t have cling film, place a clean tea towel over the bowl and place a plate or chopping board on top.
• Place in the front of your cab and leave to rise for around 25-30 minutes until the dough has doubled in size.

To make the filling:

• Chop up your vegetables and olives into small chunks and fry in a pan with a splash of oil, basil and diced garlic. Unlike a pizza, we need to fry the vegetables to remove the moisture so they don’t make the calzones all soggy.
• In a separate pan, throw in your passata, pepper and oregano, adding a pinch of salt to taste. Don’t heat this up just yet.

To assemble and cook the calzones:

This recipe works best if you have two RidgeMonkeys, otherwise one person is going to get hungry while they watch the other person eat!

• Cut your huge dough ball into 4. Before rolling out, kneed the piece you’re about to roll again. I know it might seem counterproductive to do this, but trust me, the dough comes out much nicer.
• Roll out each piece into a sheet slightly bigger than the base of your RidgeMonkey. If you don’t have a rolling pin, get creative with a flask or bottle!
• Lay the dough on the inside plate of your RidgeMonkey and add a thin layer of sauce.
• Sprinkle a generous layer of cheese and half of the topping mixture. The other half will be for your second calzone.
• Kneed, roll and place a second layer of dough on top of the filling mixture, again making sure that it’s slightly larger than the RidgeMonkey.
• Taking the edges of both pieces of dough, twist them into little curls along the edge to seal the pastry, just like you’re making a pasty. (If you live in a country where Cornish pasties aren’t a thing, do a quick Google to get the general idea).
• Cook the calzone on a very low heat. You don’t want to burn the dough, so go gently and don’t rush. It’ll take about 30 minutes or so, and you’ll need to flip your RidgeMonkey regularly.
• Heat up the sauce that you haven’t used in your pan and drizzle over the top of the finished calzones. Boun Appetito!

Photo credit @sebsantabarbara

About the Author

Lippert guest blogger, Sebastian Antonio Santabarbara, is a thirty-two-year-old writer from Yorkshire, UK. His first breakthrough role came as the Head of Written Content for Van Clan, an online media brand documenting the van life movement with a weekly reach of over 5 million readers. This role has led to Sebastian being head-hunted to write several inspirational non-fiction books on alternative living (to be published by Frances Lincoln 2022/23) and Van Life for Dummies (published by John Wiley & Sons Sept 2022). He is also the Editor in Chief for Retro Dodo, a media/news company with a monthly reach of 1 million people. Follow his travels on Instagram!