Karen Wright: Some good clean food cooked from scratch

I am booked to do a couple of demos on Saturday 11 May in Knaresborough at Glampfest, which is a family festival with camping. There will be live bands and nonstop entertainment all weekend plus trade stands, fun and games, kids' workshops and of course food and drink. Then I fly out to Milan for a couple of days with members of the Caravan Writers Guild to visit the Isabella awning factory, so it is all go in my world yet again.

After indulging in food and drinks galore at the Hotel Don Pancho in Benidorm I feel the need to eat some good ‘clean’ food. Clean food is a newish term for food that is cooked from scratch without using calorie dense ingredients, basically healthy light food. I am using my own recipes this week, all taken from my book Meals on the Move: A Campsite Cooking Journey (available at https://www.karenwrightbakes.co.uk/product/mealsonthemove/). The first recipe I cooked was Ribollita, also known as Tuscan bean soup.

Pulses are very good for us, an excellent source of protein and fibre and very inexpensive too. In my soup I used cannellini beans from a tin but any bean will work well. To make the soup you will need a little oil, an onion, a carrot, a red pepper, garlic, thyme, a tin of tomatoes, a tin of beans (drained), a splash of ketchup, a pinch of chilli flakes, a litre of vegetable stock, a leaf of savoy cabbage and salt and pepper.

Making the soup could not be easier, this is what you do: Chop the onion, carrot and pepper into very small pieces and sweat off in a tablespoon of oil until starting to soften and then add everything else except the cabbage. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer and cook until the vegetables are tender, and the liquid has reduced by about a third. Shred the cabbage, add it to the soup and cook for a further five minutes.

Ribollita usually contains some stale bread, but I left this out on this occasion to keep the soup light and healthy. If you don’t add anything else, this is a great vegan recipe, but I do like to sprinkle a little parmesan cheese over mine for that authentic Italian taste!