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So. I've recovered from my hangover after Saturday night's Murder, and am now focusing somewhat mournfully on the weekend ahead.

Yep, Bun goes to university on Saturday. (brief pause for expressions of maternal woe)

I promised her a home-made cookery book, and must compile same - I don't think she'll starve, and she has a "cheap grub for students"-type cookbook anyway, but I wonder if anyone out there has an inexpensive and uncomplicated recipe to share? Suggestions gratefully received.

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I don't, and that's why I think you should totally send me that cookbook when you finish it. ;)

Heh! Well, keep reading the comments...

Do you have Word on your PC--or something that lets you edit Word docs? I have several in my recipes folder, but doubt they would convert gracefully to comment form--plus you might have to edit to make the measurements be non-American? Which I don't have time to do.

But--I have chicken salad, brocoli salad, cheese scones, spanakopita, baklava, quiche, um, a couple kinds of sweets. I'm sure there's more. If you like, I can email you the Word docs...

I can certainly deal with MSWord, and that'd be most useful - just whatever looks easy to prepare, as I can't see her going Delia! Thank you!

This is really cool for impressing people, while being very, very easy. This is for two:

2 small packets of smoked salmon offcuts, chopped
1 onion, chopped
Dill, chopped if resh or a tsp of dried
1 small pot of creme fresh
Pasta

- fry the onion
- stir in the chopped up smoked salmon and cook until it goes opaque
- lower the heat and stir in the creme fresh -- heat until it bubbles but don't boil it too hard
- stir in the dill
- serve over cooked pasta

Ah - anything wiv pasta is a very good bet. Many thanks!

Several. What sort of thing are you after? I'll list stuff I cooked as a student, but you may already have recipes for most of it. Will give details if required.

Veggie stew with dumplings is fabulously easy, cheap, and only requires one pot. You can have meat in it, but I find that the leftovers don't microwave as well as the veggie version. Also scales well, and is good when you need to feed veggie/vegan/dairy-free folk. Always buy veggie suet. Once she's got the hang of it, suet makes a fabulously easy pie crust too. Watch out for other people needing to use the oven, though.

My family always sends people off to Uni with instructions as to how to poach fish, because, again, stick the veggies around the fish and you have a one pot meal. Note, she will need a decent fishslice. This dish gained me an entirely undeserved rep for being a good cook, because most students have never heard of poaching.

Eggy bread is the easier alternative to pancakes, and still impressive when feeding breakfast guests or when pudding/comfort food is required. (I only mastered pancakes a year or two ago, but my husband won my heart by making me pancakes the morning he first stayed over at my house.)

I used to make a chicken stirfry with a shallot, half a red pepper and half a green pepper, largely because it looks good. I tended to use shallots because they scale better than onions (half onions always dry out or get lost in the fridge). The other chicken breast of a pair (or the other half of the chicken breast, in lean times) got marinaded in a bit of oil and ketchup with herbs, then made into kebabs with the other half of the peppers. I should probbly have used cheaper cuts more often, but I was just too lazy.

Oh and never underestimate the usefulness of scrambled eggs before a bar crawl. Lines the stomach, takes 10 mins to cook and eat. Marvellous.

H

These are Useful Pieces Of Advice, or possibly Reminders, which are also very welcome, being the kind of thing I am scattering through this cookbook. I find detailed recipes don't always compute to student stomachs anyway - when I fed a bunch of males on Sundays at college, I used to multiply the ingredients by at least three...

The poaching of fish is a particularly good idea as I would not have thought of it. But we will have fish pie tomorrow, so she can have a go then. Thanks!

Pasta salad! Cheap, nutritious, bulky, great for pot luck type things on a budget:

- pasta
- tin of corn (the yellow stuff that grows on a cob, also sometimes called maize, I think?)
- tin of kidney beans
- tomatoes
- cucumber
- mayonaise
- ketchup
- salt & pepper
- vinegar/sugar (optional)

Cook pasta, rinse tinned stuff. Cut veggies. Mix condiments to a nice dressing. Gently mix pasta, veggies and dressing.

Also nice as:
- pasta
- tomatoes
- cucumber
- green peas (ours are quite small and come in glass jars, I think British peas are a bit different, but it should still work)
- diced ham (optional)
- garlic
- fresh dill
- mayonaise
- ketchup

Proceed as above, crushing garlic and chopping dill and adding those to dressing.

Excellent - more pasta notions. Pasta = wonderfood, not least because it doesn't have to be kept in the fridge and is therefore not prone to disappearing randomly.

Thanks!

Wheee!

Two simple pan-fried chicken dishes:

1) Ginger/Curry Chicken

chicken breast, sliced into strips

powdered ginger, curry powder, soy sauce

Heat 2-3 tablespoons of vegetable/cooking oil in frying pan/skillet over medium to medium-high heat. Add chicken. As chicken cooks, dust with ginger and curry to taste (both are STRONG spices, if you're unsure, go LIGHTLY your first time!!) and splash with soy sauce, also to taste (rough American measurements: 1/4 teaspoon ginger/curry per boneless chicken breast and 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce [2 or 3 "dashes" from a standard soy sauce bottle] for not-too-strong flavouring, double measurements for strongly flavored) and turn strips to cook completely.

I flavor mine heavily and splash the second sides as well, but that's my personal taste. And this is obviously not a low-sodium recipe. It =IS= excellent served over rice, and the pan drippings top the rice very well if you flavor as heavily as I do, heh. Ginger and curry are spices and thus slightly expensive, but they keep for forever and a year and can be used in almost ANYTHING if you like their taste. Rice (and the soy sauce to go with) is a non-fridge staple just as much as pasta. You can cook ANYTHING with rice and call it a meal.

2) Basalmic Honey Chicken

chicken strips, as in first recipe

Basalmic vinegar (NOT the same as regular or wine vinegar! VERY different taste!

Honey

Similar to first recipe, pan-fry chicken and douse in other two ingredients as it cooks. This one can be done over lower heat, as the idea is to cook the vinegar and honey down to a thick "sauce" coating the chicken pieces, very much like "Chinese Food". I generally use a three-parts-honey to one-part-basalmic vinegar ratio, but again, this is to taste. As long as there's enough honey to at least thinly coat the chicken, you're doing fine. Just be careful not to COOK the mixture down onto the pan; it will be a =major= pain to scrub off, even with soaking.

Not the absolute cheapest of meals what with meat and spices, but the spices/flavorings will go a long way and they're very simple as long as you're familiar with your stove/heating element's individual responsiveness.

-Enjoy!

Ooh, these look yummy. And she will like them. Thank you!

Also, that reminds me, must compile list of Staples To Buy In Supermarket when we get to Bristol. Balsamic vinegar is good stuff.

I have no recipes but wish Bun good luck from me :)

I will that - thank you.

Easy and nice:
Garden pasta sauce
Cook pasta. Mix spoonful or more of cheap pesto into as much Greek Yoghourt as you fancy. If feeling fancy, add splash good olive oil and roughly chopped baby spinach. Stir into pasta. Ideal accompanied by broccoli.

Less easy, but nice:
Spanglish omelette
Microwave thick slices of potato and allow to cool.
Beat 3-4 eggs with tiny splash water and pinch salt.
Fry anything else you fancy (peppers, onions, chopped bacon) in best possible non-stick frying pan (butter nicest, oil easiest). Keep the bottom clean.
Add half eggs and swirl around, letting it set a bit.
Chop cooked potatoes and scatter across pan. Pour over the rest of the eggs.
Lift up the edges and let uncooked egg run underneath to cook and make it fluffy. Doesn't matter if it's raggy. Turn heat down and let the egg cook through.
Got ham? Cheese? Once the egg is all set, scatter chopped ham and or grated cheese on top. Turn on grill.
Slip pan under the grill for long enough to melt any cheese or completely cook top.
Turn onto plate. Eat.
If feeling fancy, make two, put them on top of each other and slice like quiche. Nice thing to have in the fridge.

And, go Bun!

I'm going to be making some of these for myself, I can tell! Thank you.

She's going to have such a good time. As long as she doesn't have to carry her text books anywhere - they are huge! Like encyclopaedias.

Well, I have arrived. :D Thanks for all the recipes everyone.

Yo! Well now, let's eat.

possibly *far* too late, but as any kind of baking tends to earn huge bonus points, and becaus gothoholica is leterally a student recipie :

http://www.livejournal.com/users/interlock/tag/recipies

Of course, when i was actually a student absolutely everything I cooked that wasn't dfesert started by chopping onions, adding tinned tommatoes and then deciding what was for dinner ...

Oh! For some reason I failed to spot this earlier, but thank you. The Gothaholica looks... fabulous... I shall include Stern Warnings when I pass it on. (Like, Save Some for Me.)

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