The Student Kitchen - Not Just Pot Noodle...

One for fish lovers and veggies

                                     

Being a poor student often means settling for some food you wouldn’t normally eat, like Pot Noodle on toast or baked beans and corned beef. But for me, searching the reduced fridges in the supermarket can always be a good shout. For example, you can easily sort out a week’s worth of dinners for under a tenner. This recipe came about because I was scratching around for ingredients and ended up shoving everything together that I had leftover. That’s the great thing with cooking for yourself, don’t feel frightened to experiment.

Spicy Tomato Baked Cod Loin

Effort: Some prep required but fairly easy

Time: 45 minutes to get everything done

Cost: Varies depending on type of fish you use

To serve: Recipe for 2 portions

Ingredients:

1-2 fillets of white fish, I’ve used cod loin as it was cheap

1 onion, diced

1 chilli, finely chopped

2 teaspoons paprika

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

Handful of coriander/parsely 

1 red pepper, sliced

1 can of chopped tomatoes

1 tablespoon of tomato puree

1. Begin my preheating your oven to 180degrees.

2. Heat a large pan with a small amount of oil and start to fry off the onions and garlic. Once they begin to colour, add the chilli, tomato puree and paprika. Continue to fry and keep stirring.

3. Now add the sliced pepper and fry off for 2 more minutes. Now add the tinned chopped tomatoes, season heavily with salt and pepper and stir through chopped parsely/coriander.

4. Get a baking dish and place the raw fish in the bottom. Pour over the hot tomato sauce and whack in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

5. Remove from the oven once the fish is cooked through.

Serve with roast potatoes or salad. Nice one.

Simple, healthy and tasty

                                       

This recipe will save your gut as well as your wallet. I’m a massive fan of pork fillet. A whole pork fillet will cost between £3-£4 for a good quality one, but you can get 3-4 meals out of it. Not only is it cheap, it’s very good meat that is lean and tender when cooked properly. It’s works well for this stir fry recipe because responds well to being flash fried. I’ve included broccoli as again, it’s very healthy. Forget the watery boiled crap you get served in Weatherspoons, stir frying finely sliced broccoli so it retains crunch not only tastes amazing but it contains loads of good stuff. It has cancer-preventing properties and vitamin C, all of which is lost through boiling. The addition of chilli, garlic, ginger, spring onions and soy makes this a seriously quick and tasty meal.

Stir Fried Chilli Pork and Broccoli

Effort: Not much required

Time: Less than 15 minutes

Cost: £1.50 per portion

To serve: 1 person

Ingredients:

5 florets of broccoli, finely sliced lengthways

One third of a pork fillet, sliced into very thin strips. Take time to get them really thin so that they cook very quickly

1 red chilli, very finely chopped

a thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled and very finely chopped

1 clove of garlic, again, finely chopped

2 spring onions, sliced finely

1 tablespoon of soy sauce

Handful of chopped coriander (optional)

1. Get your wok/frying pan smoking hot, with a tablespoon of oil. Begin by adding the finely chopped garlic, ginger and chilli. This will flavour the oil and take the initial punch out of these ingredients.

2. Fry quickly and keep stirring to stop it burning. Then add your broccoli and continue stirring for a minute, keeping the heat up. Sprinkle in a little salt and then add the pork strips. Let the pork sit for a moment to fry, and then stir. Keep doing this until you’re sure the pork is cooked properly.

3. Once the pork is nicely coloured add in the spring onions and the soy sauce and stir again. Season well with pepper and add finely chopped coriander for freshness. 

This should all be done very quickly for best results. If you let the chilli, garlic and ginger sit in the pan, it will burn and make the dish taste bitter. Make sure you prep everything before you start cooking. Enjoy.

Year 2

So I made it through my first year of university and into the summer. With a heavily overdrawn account (kinda shot myself in the foot with this blog). But still, people have asked me why I haven’t update this in a while. Truth is I was working my nuts off over summer so didn’t have the time. Now I’m back to uni I can fit it into my daily routine. Please keep checking this blog for updates and send it to your friends! 

Peace.

Possibly the easiest recipe ever…

            

Following my diet, I really want something proper easy and tasty, as does everyone I suppose. But to be honest, you can’t get much simpler than this recipe here. Today I woke up at midday (I had work until midnight and didn’t get to bed until 4), so this seemed like the perfect brunch. I’m still pretty full which is good, and the ingredients are very healthy indeed! OK, sweetcorn out of season isn’t very cheap, it’s about £2 for a pack of 2, but realistically you only need 1 per person. I’ve got a huge appetite so I need 2. 

Sweetcorn does everything for me, it’s sweet (hence the name), crunchy, filling and steeped with massive nostalgia. My dad says he remembers me sat on the dinner table when my first milk teeth had came through, him holding a corn on the cob to my mouth and me munching my way along it. We always have it at home in the summer with lashings of butter, salt and pepper. I’m salivating just thinking about it! Along with being tasty, it’s incredibly good for you! So there’s just 2 reasons why you should cook this!

Chargrilled Sweetcorn with Creamed Spinach and Ham

Effort: So so basic

Time: 20 minutes

Cost: £3-4 thereabouts

To serve: Enough for 2, just reduce the recipe for 1

Ingredients:

2 corn on the cobs

1 pack of baby lead spinach

100g of Philadelphia cheese

As much ham or pork loin as you want

Salt and Pepper

1. Begin by boiling a large pan of water. When it begins to boil, plunge in your corn. You’ll need to simply blanch these for 3 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your chargrill. If you don’t own a chargrill, use a heavy based frying pan or George Forman grill. You can also heat your grill to very high and do it that way.

2. Once the 3 minutes are up, drain the corn and place it on the grill to blacken. The blackened parts give it extra flavour and crunch. 

3. For the spinach, place a heavy saucepan on a high heat and add a little butter (I’ve used Fry Light to be healthy), then throw in half a pack of spinach to wilt. Season well with salt and pepper and continue to stir until it’s completely wilted. You could eat this on its own, very good indeed! But to make it creamed, add the Philly cheese and stir until melted. Keep this on a low heat while the corn continues to cook.

4. Once the corn has had about 10 minutes on the grill and is nicely coloured, plate up your meal. A good dollop of spinach, with a corn on the cob, and some lovely ham to accompany. 

Et voila!

Feast your eyes on another blog…

http://skintstarvingstudent.tumblr.com/

This blog belongs to a lovely girl called Lexie who’s at Leicester Uni. She’s following the same style of student cooking as I, but with healthy recipes. Check it out for recipes!

As for me, I’ll be posting some new recipes in the coming days including easy chips, simple bolognaise and maybe a dessert of some sort. Lots of uni work to get through first!

Oli

The easiest pasta sauce in the world

             

When it comes to pasta sauce recipes, it doesn’t come any easier than this. It’s a very basic cheesy mix-through sauce that is deep with the richness of olive oil with a sharp smack of lemon juice and basil. I’ve done this a few times for my mates and they’re amazed at the taste and texture you get from it. In theory, it’s essentially a pesto but so much better. It keeps for a long time and for one portion  of pasta you really only need around 4 tablespoons. Mix this through tagliatelle and serve with salad or garlic bread and you will have a simple, 10 minute dinner that is cheap and full of flavour. If you haven’t tried any recipes so far, I implore you to try this! You will be very surprised at your results!

Pesto Style Pasta Sauce

Effort: Very basic

Time: 10minutes to make the sauce

Cost: Maximum £4

To serve: makes 300-400ml of sauce 

Ingredients:

Juice of 1 lemon

50g grated Parmesan (or finely grated mature cheddar will be fine)

300ml of olive oil (it doesn’t need to be brilliant quality but 500ml can be bought in Tesco for £2.29)

A good handful of very finely chopped basil

Salt and Pepper

1 egg yolk to serve

1. Mix the finely chopped basil with the olive oil and stir. Then mix in the cheese and squeeze in the juice of 1 lemon. Season heavily with salt and pepper. This will be enough sauce for several meals so keep it in a tub or jar in the fridge for weeks. A typical serving will be 4tbsps. Add a little extra oil to make the sauce go further with every use.

2. Before stirring through hot pasta, add an egg yolk to the 4tbsps of sauce and beat well. The yolk will thicken the sauce and add a lovely depth and sheen to the pasta. Remember to season again if need be.

There we go, simple really!

Lovely Homemade Tomato Soup

               

I’ve already done a soup recipe but I thought I’d do another on request from my sister and her friend Jess. They said that they have a thing for tomato soup. I can’t stand it from a Heinz can, it’s far too salty and fake. But this recipe is brilliant, it’s so easy and the results are quite simply stunning for just a few ingredients. The juiciest tomatoes give it a really sweet but sharp punch that is really complemented by lots of black pepper that gives a warmth at the back of your throat. This is what proper soup is!

It’s also dirt cheap to make. This recipe will easily make over 1litre of soup for only a few quid. I’ve heard that tins of Heinz have gone up to around 80 or 90p! You will need a blender for this recipe but you could actually use a masher and then pass the the whole lot through a metal seive, using a spoon to squash through all of the pulp. So let’s get on with the recipe itself!

Basic Tomato Soup

Effort: Little

Time: About 40 minutes

Cost: Less than £3

To Serve: Makes about 1.25 litres of soup, freeze the rest for months

Ingredients:

1kg of fresh vine-ripened tomatoes

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 onion, diced

1 carrot, peeled and roughly chopped

1 stick of celery, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon of tomato puree

1.2 litres of stock made with 2 vegetable stock cubes

pinch of sugar

salt and pepper

1. Begin by placing a large saucepan over a medium heat and add a good glug of olive oil or cooking oil. Sweat the onion, garlic, celery and carrot in the sauce pan until they soften. This will take a good 10 minutes, be sure to add a pinch of salt to release flavours and stop the veg from burning. Once softened, add the tomato puree and cook through for 5 minutes. By cooking the puree through you will stop it from tasting bitter.

2. Take the pan off the heat and prep your tomatoes. Wash them first, remove the green stalks and use the point of a knife to take the top of the cores off. These will just be hard and bitter. Now chop each tomato into quarters. Bring the pan back up to a high heat and slide in the tomatoes. Keep stirring and add a little more salt to bring the flavour out of the tomatoes.

3. Now boil a kettle and make your 1.2 litres of stock from 2 stock cubes. Once the tomatoes have blistered and began to break down, add a pinch of sugar and then the stock. Let this rapidly boil for around half an hour until it reduces and thickens. Finish with a good grind of black pepper and stir through.

4. This mixture will now be ready to blend or pass through a fine seive. This will be okay to keep in the fridge for over a week or in the freezer for several months.

Enjoy.

Banging healthy chilli

                  

Although I’ve already done a recipe for chilli, this one is from scratch, with no shortcuts. It takes time but definitely worth it! I got this recipe from Slimming World as it’s the diet I’m following, so it’s very healthy so don’t go adding any extra oil that you don’t need. It uses 2 chillis which sounds a lot but once it’s thoroughly cooked, the heat will mellow. The recipe will make enough for 4 portions so unless you’re cooking for 4 people, put the remaining 3 portions into food containers and freeze. Serve this with rice or with tortilla wraps. Beeming.

Quick and Healthy Chilli

Effort: Minimum

Time: 30-40minutes

Cost: £5

To serve: Makes 4 good sized portions

Ingredients:

1 large onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 fresh chillies, deseeded and chopped
2 tsps ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp paprika
A pinch of cayenne pepper
1 x 397g/14oz can chopped tomatoes
284ml/½ pint stock 
salt and ground black pepper
454g/1lb extra lean beef mince 
1 x 198g/7oz can red kidney beans, drained
chopped fresh coriander leaves, to garnish
1 level tablespoon of tomato puree

1.  Use a large saucepan and fry the onion gently over a low heat for 5 minutes, until softened and golden. Add the garlic, chillies and all the spices and continue frying, stirring occasionally, for 2-3 minutes. Add mince, stirring until it begins to brown.

2.Add the canned tomatoes, tomato puree and stock. Stir well and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for 20 minutes, until the liquid is slightly reduced. Season with salt and pepper and add drained kidney beans. Heat through gently for about 5 minutes.

Easy as that, and it tastes amazing!

Homemade Scotch eggs

               

Scotch eggs are so damn good. It really annoys me that I can’t find a decent one in the supermarkets. Instead, you can only get those disgusting, dry, bland ‘savoury eggs’ that really don’t compare to traditional ones. Contrary to the name, a scotch egg doesn’t come from Scotland, but it’s the process of ‘scotching’ (coating in breadcrumbs and frying) that gives it its name. 

This recipe is great as it’s so easy, cheap and healthy because they’re oven baked, not fried. Be warned though, they really don’t last long!

Homemade Baked Scotch Eggs

Effort: Medium

Time: Up to 1hour

Cost: £3 thereabouts

To serve: Makes 4 Scotch eggs

Ingredients:

6 eggs

6 sausages (you’ll use 1 and a half per egg)

Pack of breadcrumbs (I’ve used stale rosemary bread ground up in a food processor)

1. Begin by placing 4 of the eggs in a pan of cold water. Bring the pan to the heat, on a very slow simmer. Leave it simmer slowly for 8 minutes. By simmering slowly, the yolks will not overcook and the whites will stay nice and soft, not horribly rubbery.

2. Once your 8 minutes are done, rinse the pan with really cold water so the eggs rapidly cool down. Leave in cold water for 5 minutes. Now preheat the oven to 180degrees.

3. Meanwhile, begin to de-skinned your sausages. Just lightly run a knife down the sausage and peel the skin off. Now crack 2 eggs in a bowl and beat. In another bowl pour in the breadcrumbs. 

4. The hardboiled eggs will now be ready to peel. So lightly tap them on the egg of the pan and begin to peel. The shells should come off easily. Once all 4 are peeled it’s time to wrap them in sausage meat. Get 1 and a half peel sausages and mould onto your hand. Place the egg into the cup of your hand and mould the meat around it. Smooth the meat around the egg until perfectly round, dip into the beaten egg and then into the breadcrumbs. Repeat with the other 3 eggs.

5. Place the eggs onto a baking tray and cook in the oven for about 20-30minutes until the breadcrumbs are nicely golden and crispy.

Enjoy!