Cooking is simple, cheap and will make you plenty of friends, writes Marie-Claire Digby. Just make sure they help with the shopping first
THE ABILITY to cook simple meals, using inexpensive ingredients, in very little time, is a life skill that everyone heading to college should be equipped with.
Cooking meals from scratch instead of relying on convenience food will leave you with more money to spend on other essentials of student life. It may even win you friends, keen to share your home-cooked suppers, which will taste better than takeaways as well as costing a lot less. If you can get them to contribute financially, or in a shared cooking rota, all the better.
Former business-studies student Tiffany Goodall launched a career in cooking and food writing from the success of Tiff's Tuesday's, weekly themed dinners she organised while studying at Newcastle University. With a budget of £5 a head, Goodall served up feasts that she got her friends involved in shopping for and helping to prepare. Her first book, From Pasta to Pancakes: the Ultimate Student Cookbook, was published last month (Quadrille, £9.99). Of course, it helped that Goodall spent part of her gap year doing a course at the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Cork.
Another cookbook aimed specifically at students is The Ultimate Student Cookbookby Fiona Beckett (Absolute Press, £10). Beckett enlists the input of three student cooks to give her book street cred, and includes valuable tips on important things such as "How not to poison your friends".
If your culinary skills are a bit rusty, or non-existent, doing a short, hands-on course is a good idea. The Kitchen in the Castle cookery school in Howth, Co Dublin is running a beginners’ course on four consecutive Tuesdays (7-9.30pm), starting on September 15th. It costs €220, including dinner and a glass of wine after class, each week.
So you’ve bought the book, done the course, and college life beckons. Firstly, assemble a tool kit of basic ingredients to take with you to your student digs – a parent’s well-stocked larder is a useful starting point, but you might also want to visit a supermarket and an Asian grocery. The website cheapeats.ie is a useful source of information on shops running special offers.
The starter kit should include the following: dried pasta; long-grain rice; noodles; stock cubes (for making big pots of cheap and filling soup); soya sauce; curry powder; chilli powder; sweet chilli sauce; a tub of Thai green or red curry paste (from an Asian food store); tins of tomatoes; chickpeas; kidney beans; coconut milk; tuna; olive oil; flour; and salt and pepper
Your starter kit should also contain a tin opener, a sharp knife, a couple of pots, a frying pan, and a chopping board.
A casserole, for slow cooking cheaper cuts of meat and root vegetables, and a big oven-proof dish, for cooking and serving baked pasta dishes and pies, are good add-ons.
With the addition of a few fresh ingredients – onions, garlic, potatoes, minced meat, chicken thighs, peppers, butter, cheese and milk – the starter kit has everything you’ll need to cook the staples of the student diet, including Spag Bol, curries, shepherd’s pie, mac’n’cheese, stir-fries, chilli con carne, and tuna bakes. For recipes, check the internet.
A word or two about about mince – make friends with it. Cheap, nutritious and versatile, it’s going to be your new best friend, but don’t always buy beef, as lamb, pork and turkey are interchangeable in many student-friendly recipes and will help you add variety.
Mince: 100 Fabulously Frugal Recipes, by Mitzie Wilson (Absolute Press, €12.99), is a great source of inspiration when faced with a small budget and a big appetite.
