Food, glorious food!

Whenever I talk about caravan living with people who don't indulge in the pleasures of a life well towed, there are two things that always come up.

The first is toilets - either chemical or of the "toilet block" variety. I freely acknowledge my own dislike of toilet/shower blocks and I seldom use them, although this is more to do with my own anti-social tendencies than any worry about cleanliness. Indeed, particularly on site operated by the two big clubs the facilities are generally spotless, comfortable and rather nicer than my own bathroom at home. It's just that I have a toilet and a shower in my caravan, both of which are significantly nicer than the ones in my first house. Why on earth would I want to share?

I equally will freely acknowledge that chemical toilets are a little bit strange if you let yourself think about it too much, and there is most certainly something rather eccentric about walking across a field carrying a box full of your own poo. Although this is, on reflection, not really any stranger than walking across a field carrying a little bag full of your dog's poo...

Anyway, however proud I might of fixing the flush mechanism of our Thetford unit without any help from anybody who actually knew what they were doing, I don't really want to talk about toilets. The other thing people usually comment on is the food. "All you can cook is sausages and beans" is one of the more common views expressed.  Indeed, it's not just non-towers who have this attitude. There was a letter in the Caravan Club Magazine a year or so ago which questioned the need for an oven in a caravan, arguing that such an appliance was a waste of storage space because "surely nobody uses it".

Regular readers might well remember that I had a conversation along these lines with Mick, co-proprietor of the Peak Weavers, a fabulous restaurant and guest house in the fine Staffordshire town of Leek.  I said then that I'd be coming back to the issue of caravan food, and now seems to be as good a time as any. Because I can tell you that some people use the oven in the 'van because we hardly ever turn the damn thing off!

As a kid I went on caravan holidays with my parents and my big sister in a caravan initially designed as a terribly, terribly small three berth which my dad gutted and turned into a four berth. There wasn't room to swing a microbe, let alone a cat. But my mother - who I think will forgive me if I describe her as "not really a foodie" turned out meals made with real food that hardly ever came out of a tin. And this was in the seventies and early eighties, when the range of fresh vegetables currently available in even the smallest supermarkets was basically unheard of.

When I was eventually persuaded to become a tow jockey I was determined that tins would also be a last resort in our 'van too. Canned food is useful as a standby, but let's be honest, it's not as good as real food.  It's only advantage is its shelf life, and unless you're planning a very long trip in Outer Mongolia, that's hardly going to be an issue. For a start, gammon joints have outrageously long shelf lives - a handy trait when you're planning to be a long way from a shop for a couple of weeks. There's something very comforting about a steaming plate of roast gammon and cauliflower cheese on a cold evening. Chuck in some dauphinoise potatoes and you've got what amounts to a big hug on a plate.

It's not a difficult thing to do in a caravan, it really isn't. Most of the prep is just chopping things and putting them in an oven proof dish - with maybe a bit of par-boiling to speed things up. Then it just goes into the oven while you're doing something else.

It's not just comfort food mind you. Cut some chicken breasts into more or less bite-sized chunks and fry them until they're cooked through. Splash on a good glug of balsamic vinegar (we always used to carefully measure out a table spoon, but who wants to faff about measuring stuff on holiday?) then the juice of an orange, about half a chicken stock cube and some fresh rosemary. (Dried might well do as well, although we've never tried it.) Reduce that down until the sauce has thickened up a bit and gone slightly sticky, and you're done. We tend to serve it with fried potatoes and whatever green vegetable we've managed to get our hands on.

Or, place some fresh sage leaves onto whole chicken breasts, wrap the chicken and sage up in either bacon or Parma Ham and fry - preferably in butter. A minute or two before they're ready glug in a couple of tablespoons of white wine and let it deglaze the pan and evaporate down into a bit of a sauce.

All in all, food like that isn't really a lot more hassle than making sausages and beans - it just takes more forward planning. Unless you're in the middle of nowhere you shouldn't be too far from a shop that can furnish you with basics like chicken, potatoes and vegetables. Fresh herbs can be more of an issue, so we always take some rosemary and sage with us - remembering to cut some from the garden is generally one of Mrs Snail's final jobs before setting off, because there's no way I'd remember. Whack it in the fridge and it's usable for about a week.

You also need to be canny about your cooking kit. We travel with two saucepans (one large one small), two frying pans (one large one small), a small casserole dish and two baking trays. Given that, in spite of having three rings on the hob you can only really fit one pan at a time on there it doesn't seem sensible to carry more, and it seems to serve our needs well.

We do also carry a selection of enamelled metal bowls, of the white and blue type so favoured by the campers of yesteryear, because they're so massively useful. They're light, pretty much unbreakable and oven-proof, which means that they can be used to roast potatoes in the oven and then take them to the table without dirtying another dish. Because the last thing you want to do in a caravan is create extra washing up. It takes up space, for a start, and besides - you're on holiday, washing up needs to be kept to a minimum!

That's not hard either though. If we've used a saucepan to parboil potatoes prior to roasting, then that's the pan that's going to be used to boil any of the other vegetables we're having with the meal. If we're planning a picnic for the following day, then that same pan is going to hard boil some eggs too before it gets a proper wash. If I've* fried bacon for breakfast**then that pan is getting covered up and saved for frying something else later, because everything tastes better when fried in bacon fat.

Except probably ice-cream. I've never been able to make that work...

So. What was my point?

Ah yes.

Cooking in the caravan is not limited by the facilities. I can't think of anything that I cook in my kitchen at home that I can't cook in the caravan. Sure, there's less space in the caravan so you need to be tidier, and you need to plan ahead a little bit more. But to be honest that planning ahead is part of the anticipation for me. In the end there is no place I want to go to if I can't eat a really good meal when I get there. For me a holiday eating nothing but sausages and beans is more of a chore than a joy - and where is the fun in chores?

*Notice most of the time in this post I've said "we". Me and Mrs Snail share cooking duties most of the time. But what we've come to call the "Caravan Breakfast" of bacon, egg, fried bread, tomatoes and (occasionally) mushrooms is my domain.

**And of course I've fried bacon for breakfast. We're on holiday! If you can't at least have a bacon sarnie for breakfast, what on Earth are Holidays for?!

Lunch in Bakewell - ricci's beyond the dreams of Croesus

Finding somewhere to eat in Bakewell wasn't hard. The place is full to bursting with eateries - no the problem was finding the right place to eat in Bakewell. As regular readers will know, lunch is a pretty big deal for me and Mrs Snail, so giving us lots of choice between great looking places when we can only eat at one of them always puts us in a bit of a quandry.

Our initial thought was to try somewhere that sold the town's most famous product, the Bakewell Pudding - but this gave us another choice to make. If Bakewell puddings were like Cornish Pasties, available just about everywhere in their home area (and trust me - you can't bloody move for Cornish Pasties in places like Truro) that would have been one thing. But you can't buy a Bakewell Pudding just anywhere. Oh no. You can only buy one from the people who have the original recipe.

 Actually, if it were that simple, we'd probably done the tourist thing and eaten there. But it isn't that simple because there are three establishments in Bakewell claiming to be in possession of the only true and original recipe, two of which have cafe/restaurant affairs attached. Now, time was ticking on and we were pretty hungry, but we weren't going to eat two lunches and somehow it didn't seem fair to favour one over the other.

We figured we couldn't visit Bakewell and not check the pudding scene out, so we spent some time looking at the Old Original Pudding Company, which offers not just the eponymous puddings, but also tours of the bakery, all manner of quality foodstuffs and anything from a light snack to a three course meal. It was a bustling little place and we were quite attracted to it, but it was also heavingly busy and so we thought we'd see what else there was and maybe return later if we couldn't find anywhere else.

We also  had a bit of a look at The Bakewell Tart Shop & Coffee House, the second establishment claiming to possess the original recipe, but as its name suggest it's more of a tea-room, and by this time we were way too hungry to be satiated by a cup of tea  and a slice of cake, nice as their confections appeared to be. The third and final pretender to the Pudding Crown, Bloomers, is also a baker rather than an eaterie, and so was similarly passed by. And somehow we never went back to any of them, which means I still haven't eaten anything that can claim to be a Bakewell Pudding. Still, it's a good reason to go back - and not the only one.

You see, with hunger really beginning  to gnaw at our innards, we decided to divide and rule and headed off in different directions, fighting our way through the crowds (I don't know if Mondays in Bakewell are always so busy, what with the Market and all, but it seems to me that the entire population of rural Derbyshire must have been there) to see what we could find.

For a small town, Bakewell is rather well provided for in terms of places to buy food. There are many, many, many take-away places - many of which look good - and several pubs which advertise food and looked extremely attractive. It was Mrs Snail who hit gold, however, when she found ricci's* on Water Street.  "I've found this lovely looking little Italian place" she told me as we rendezvoused at one corner of the market square.

Boy, is my wife good at finding places to eat!

I followed Mrs Snail through the thronged streets to a modest looking green and white frontage. We stuck our heads through the door and were greeted by a surprisingly small space which was jam packed with happy looking people tucking in to what looked like pretty delicious food.  "Table for two?" enquired Mrs Snail, more in hope than expectation. A woman - who I later learned was co-owner Sue - with a slightly harassed smile squeezed through the crowd and, with an apologetic look at the crammed tables broke the news that they were totally, utterly full.

"But if you want to give me your mobile number, I'll give you a call when a table comes free" she said. My mobile was pretty much dead, so we handed over Mrs Snail's number, and took off to explore the esoteric mix of shops elsewhere on the street. We explored a rather lovely music shop which had some astonishingly beautiful and high end instruments crammed into its relatively small space - I left quickly, because I came close to "accidentally" spending over £100 on a Ukelele - trust me, it was beautiful, a wonderful little silversmiths, a place that advertised "genuine Austrian Sausage" and a little shop selling all manner of Indian craft goods. That's the beauty of popular market towns.

You see, people in cities might crow about their cosmopolitan make-up, and they might well be right - but big cities like London, Birmingham and Leeds get that eclectic mix of stuff by virtue of effectively being amalgamations of small towns all joined together. Places like Bakewell give you the joy of being in one of those little areas without the hassle of actually being in a city - which so far as I'm concerned is a massive win. Don't get me wrong, I like cities well enough - I just don't want to spend a lot of time in them. Places like Bakewell mean that I don't have to.

It was about fifteen minutes later that Mrs Snail's 'phone buzzed to let us know that a table at ricci's was available. We wasted no time in taking our seats. Ricci's has three sets of tables for two, running along the counter that separates the restaurant area from the kitchen area, and three tables for four running parallel along the window. We took our seats at the middle of the three tables for two and began to peruse the menu.

I was instantly impressed.

There's nothing fancy here, and that's all to the good. Ricci's offers a well thought out selection of salads, pizzas and pasta dishes using ingredients that are either locally sourced or obtained directly from Italy. They actively support campaigns to reduce consumption of "junk food" and avoid the gratuitous levels of saturated fat, salt and sugar that so pollute the fayre provided by establishments with lower standards.

We were both  attracted by the delicious looking Lasagne that arrived at the table opposite at the same time as we took our seats, but a glance at the menu informed us that as dishes are freshly prepared, a Lasagne order was going to take twenty five minutes, and there was no way we were waiting that long. Casting envious glances across the aisle we directed our attention back at the pizzas.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have a thing for burgers. What may not have been obvious up to this point is that I also have a real fetish for pepperoni. Naturally, I went for a ten inch pepperoni pizza. Mrs Snail, still enraptured by the lasagne on the table next to us, went for a seven inch Bolognese pizza. Having made sure that we were ordering the right sized portion by checking out the plates hanging on the wall - a stroke of genius in my view - we sat back with a glass of wine to await the arrival of our food.

At this point I should probably point out that you can't buy a glass of wine at ricci's, because they don't have a licence. They were, however, perfectly happy to supply a brace of rather nice wine glasses to accommodate the wine we happened to have with us***.

Anyway.

The food arrived.

Now. Pizza is a pretty ubiquitous fast food these days. I love pizza. I eat a lot of it. Most if it is, basically, horrible. My dad once described pizza as "glorified cheese on toast", and  often that's really all it is. Like the Croque Monsieur I so enjoyed in Dartmouth, for a simple food, pizza is spectacularly easy to do badly - as anyone who has made an ill-judged drunken purchase on the way home from the pub will attest.

Done well, of course, pizza is one of the finest foods available, and I'm pleased to report that ricci's falls firmly into this category.  It was sublime.

The base was thin - as a pizza base should be, I've never really had much truck with all this "deep pan" nonsense - and actually tasted of something, which is always a joyous thing. It was crisp and bready, and delicious. The tomato base was rich and flavourful, and topped with about a three foot depth of stretchy, creamy mozzarella cheese and a more than generous daubing of salty, meaty, pepperoni goodness. It was utterly, utterly, gorgeous.  If I'm honest, I think I've only ever eaten one pizza I enjoyed more - and given that was in a little pizzaria on the sea front in the little town of Minori on Italy's Amalfi coast, I reckon that's high praise indeed.

If anything Mrs Snail's choice was even better.

Clearly the Bolognese sauce on her pizza was the same sauce used in the Spaghetti Bolognese and the Lasagne - and on the strength of that I'd happily order any of those dishes. Rich, thick and herby, this is a Bolognese with flavour so thick you could almost serve it in slices. It was, quite frankly delicious - so delicious, I wish I'd ordered it.

I have to tell you, if I lived and worked in Bakewell, I'd eat here a lot. They do takeaway too - complete with napkins and cutlery. Because ultimately, that's what ricci's seems to be about. Good food, sourced well, prepared with care and attention to detail. In the end, that's what food sohuld be about, and I applaud them.

And if they ever figure out a way of doing their lasagne by post, I'll be a very very  happy - and slightly fatter - man.

*Don't look at me - I'm an English Teacher. The spelling of a proper noun with a lower case letter makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and a little growl rise from my throat. Imagine the snarl of the disgruntled T-Rex on Jurassic Park and you're about there. But what can you do? People will decide that poor grammar is in some way trendy, and since it's the only thing I disliked about the place, and I seem to one of the very few people who cares about this stuff** I'm prepared to let it slide on this occasion...

**A fact which in no way makes me wrong.

***What? I was a Scout, and Mrs Snail was in the Guides. We are always prepared, and a meal without wine is like a day without sunshine. Except that I was driving, so I didn't actually have any.