AWAY WE GO

Make cooking on holiday memorable but stress-free with Rose Prince’s easy, flavour-packed recipes. Photography and prop styling by Yuki Sugiura. Food styling by Valerie Berry

ON THE ONE HAND, I want my summer cooking to be a triumph of haste over effort, but on the other, I still want to cook. We are spoilt for easy solutions to what to give guests for lunch or supper, whether it is opening a pack of mozzarella or prosciutto, throwing a few ready-washed leaves into a bowl, or warming up a cheese tart, but the feelgood factor of cheating wears off as the days and weeks go by.

I think many of us are caught between wanting to create an archive of memories of happy summer meals, and not wearily churning out meal after meal, day after day. It is a situation that often arises when you’re away on a self-catering holiday. There you are in a sunny part of Europe, torn between taking advantage of the beautiful local food in the markets, and relaxing on a sunlounger. Some take their holiday cooking too seriously. Elizabeth David wrote about packing a batterie de cuisine for the holiday home: a range of tools and utensils unlikely to be provided so she could cook just as she would in her own home – or just about. I don’t think we need to go that far, though it would be nice if a rented kitchen had just one decent knife and perhaps a blender, so that it’s possible to make a raw cucumber and mint chilled soup, the embodiment of cooking without cooking, as it were.

One good-sized sauté or shallow pan makes an easy-to-put-together hash a reality and still leaves time for those holiday novels you have been dying to read all year. Curries need no more equipment than a chopping board, knife and cooking pot, so I have added a recipe for a light coconut-based fish curry that can be adapted to whatever fresh seafood you can get, home or abroad. Lastly, who makes puddings when getting away from it all? I’m happy to stretch to a fresh ricotta and mascarpone cheesecake to eat with summer fruits. It is not a lot of trouble, and the time it takes to make essentially earns that very precious thing: a recollection of joyful times – good food with people you love.

You are torn between taking advantage of the beautiful local food and relaxing on a sunlounger