Four on a journey

Packing. When it’s time for packing (and there has been a lot of it since today is day 156 since we started on this journey) I instinctively go pick up my tablet and go hide in the corner, much to the dismay of my much, much better half. I am sure she’ll vent about it in one of her blogs 🙂 There is one area though which I am responsible for – the kitchen (not that Mrs Ray can’t cook: quite the opposite in fact, she’s an amazing cook).

What we had

I’ve always loved cooking. I could write a whole blog about how I got into cooking but I’ll save that for another day. In this post, however, I’ll talk about how we, as a family, pack for our cooking needs as we travel.

In the past, we were used to a lot of kitchen gadgets: an Air Fryer, two ovens (yes, two separate full-sized ovens!), a pressure cooker, a griddle pan, a cast iron pan, a raclette (the table-top grill, not the cheese), a fondue pot, a meat slicer. Then we have single stand-alone induction hob (for that all-important hot pot), a Ninja, a hand blender, a bread maker, an ice maker, a rice cooker (I wouldn’t know how to cook rice without it), two hand mixers (why the heck did we have two?), a whole stack of bamboo steamers. (Oh god there’s more) an electric knife sharpener, a yoghurt maker, a pasta maker, a waffle maker, a sandwich toaster, a spiraliser and that all important extra-large-capacity microwave. Oh yeah, we also had 1.5 kitchens in the kitchen – a kitchen kitchen with 6 hobs including a wok burner and a drinks-only kitchen.

Instead of the above, we are now travelling to kitchens of varying quality. Neither will you ever know what are in the cupboards until you arrive (I challenge you to find an AirBnB listing with pictures of the insides of kitchen cupboards). Here are some kitchens we have encountered (in no particular order):

• A two-hob hot plate with precisely one frying pan. No kitchen knives nor spatula of any sort
• A two-burner outdoor camping stove with about 8 pots and 6 frying pans
• A really well done up kitchen … without a kettle or any pots that will hold more than 500ml of liquid
• Standard 4-burner gas hob with two tagine (the earthernware pot) and a stove top kettle
• A 6-hob range cooker with a wok burner, a double oven, hand mixers, extra large capacity microwave… except the oven was broken 🙁

To make the cooking process even more interesting, there are plenty of places which come with *exactly* the number of plates/knifes/forks as the number of people it caters for. No serving plates, no extra plates to hold cut ingredients – it’s a lot of “fun” when we come across one of those.

But we are lucky. We had already experienced something very similar during our 3-week long epic road trip on the NC500 (you can relive it on our Instagram @fouronajourney). Mrs Organised (sorry for giving you another nickname @danielaberlin) went through what we had, what we will most likely need and came up with a formula for if a piece of kitchen tool is needed:

Of course, the above is completely fictitious. But we did have a serious discussion on what we need when we get on the road.

What we packed

What we have here are what we believe to be the most essential: sources, herbs and spices which will allow us to recreate many family favourites while travelling. In the picture we have:

• Salt
• Sugar
• Black vinegar
• Apple vinegar
• Sweet paprika
• German Kebab spice
• Arabic salad herbs
• Za’atar
• 5 spice
• Cinnamon
• Italian mixed herbs
• German Krauter salt
• Curry powder (we replace them whenever we run out, this one was from Morocco)

The tools/utensils on the right paints a more interesting picture. The pièce de résistance being our wok. A wok is an amazing piece of cooking tool – allow you to deep/shallow/stir fry, blanching, dry roast, stew – and even a small wok has a fairly large capacity. The downsides are that it takes a bit of space as well as it can be unstable if you don’t have the right hob. But we learned to make do and improvise.

Finally there’s our Moka pot. It is something which we had picked up while we were in Italy. Prior to Italy, we’ve had either Nespresso machines or we had to resort to good o’instant. Since Italy… we really couldn’t do without our trusted Moka. It’s something I’ll write up another day!

What are your favourite ingredients? What are we missing? If you have any ideas on how we can improve on what we carry or want to share your experiences, please leave us a comment below.

Edit

The missus just reminded me that I had forgotten about the following:

They were sitting in the bag which we had taken on a short excursion to Sligo. They are extremely useful on short excursions – in the car, a picnic or simply for a quick bite and passing out when getting back late at a hotel!

edit 2

Urgh. I forgot about the baking soda as I left it in the kitchen after making pancakes. Useful for tenderising meat and erm, making pancakes!