Cooking When Traveling: Mushroom Pasta

Eating out can get very expensive when you're out and about traveling with kids. Especially if your kids are a lot like my mine, a whole bunch of eating machines! This is why I always try to find accommodations that have kitchen so I could cook for my family when we travel. I'm a big fan of Air bnb and service apartments.

Lets be honest, though. Cooking in a hotel or hostel kitchen are not the same as when you're cooking at home. I mean, obviously you gotta skip those recipes that requires you to use the blender, food processor, or mortar and pestle. No deep frying too unless you want to bring a whole bottle of frying oil with you.

Thankfully for brands like Brahim's, Maggi and Adabi, you can almost cook like a gourmet chef on the go, right? They have all these instant paste in all kinds of packages that you can use. Campbell soup is also a good choice.

I use the Campbell mushroom soup a lot when traveling. It's child-friendly. Make soup and eat it with bread or cook it as sauce for your choice of pasta. Add chicken, mushrooms, tuna... whatever you feel like. Go crazy!

One of my boys' favourite would be the ever so simple Mushroom pasta.

All you need:

1 can of Campbell Mushroom soup
Pasta (any pasta)
1 clove of garlic (minced)
Chicken breast (cut into cubes)
Portobello Mushrooms or any button mushrooms (sliced)
Broccoli (optional)
salt & pepper to taste

First, cook the pasta. If you need instructions on how to cook the pasta, I would encourage you to stop everything and simply head to the nearest restaurant.

Meanwhile, heat up a pan and pour a bit of olive oil in it. Or melt some butter. Which ever you have, doesn't really matter.

Throw in the garlic. Then in goes the chicken breast. Note that I did not specify any amount in my recipe. Which mean, you can just decide on your own. No hard and fast rules here.

Remove chicken when it is cooked.

Pour in some more olive oil or butter. Or both. Again, it is up to you.

Put the mushrooms in. Cook it about 5-7 minutes. I like it a little caramelized.

Remove mushrooms.

Open the Campbell mushroom soup can, pour it all inside the pan then add some water.

Stir it carefully so it would't make a mess, because as we all know stirring soup in a pan is not really ideal.

When the soup starts to bubble up, put in the broccoli. I hope I don't have to remind you to cut the broccoli to a reasonable size. Because if I do, then, I would again encourage you to drop everything and simply head to the nearest restaurant. Or open a box of cereal.

(If you're not a big fan of broccoli you can switch it with any other greens of your choice. Peas are good too. Or spinach. Or maybe you just want to skip the greens altogether. I won't judge. My boys love broccoli, hence it being there)

Oh and yup, go ahead and throw in those cooked chicken and mushrooms that you set aside earlier. Salt and pepper to taste.

Then pour in the pasta that you have cooked. You did cook the pasta, didn't you?

Mix them all well.

Sprinkle some parmesan cheese too if you want. It could only make it taste so so so much better.

Easy, right? And filling too. Keeps everybody happy.