I like my food. I like tasty things. If you see me sitting in the
library, typing with a serious face on, or staring intently at a screen,
it is likely I'm thinking about food. Specifically, I am perpetually
perplexed and obsessed with the question - "What would be The Best thing
to eat right now". I'm also a graduate student at a posh-ish
university. This means whilst I have the general mindset of 'I Am Poor.
Put It Down', I have a whiff of bourgeois about me and like looking wistfully over and around cheese counters in the covered market. I have Googled 'gurnard'.
So what's all this about? I've decided to have a bash at doing something semi-regularly - writing about the food I cook in my student kitchen (sparse, electric cooker, strip lighting, bleak and Le Creuset-less).
And here we go. Tonight's Lazy Creation? Soya Mince Bolog!
"WHY BUY SOYA MINCE??" I hear you cry! Well, it's cheap. And new (to me). I have a friend who likes cooking healthy things and she mentioned it to me. Feeling puckish in Tesco I bought some and Tonight is the Night when Mince Gets Rehydrated (to be sung - with difficulty - to Spice Girls 'Two become One').
Le packet says to rehydrate mince before cooking but I, devil-may-care, cad-around-town that I am disregard. Two smallish onions chopped, four cloves of garlic (it is soya mince after all - it'll need some punch), three smallish carrots cut up small all into some olive oil in a big pan. Soften them bad boys up and then IN with the MINCE! 200g of dried mince plus 750ml of hot veg stock = something resembling very gross things. Help is at hand in the form of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and a daring grating of nutmeg. The mince begins to expand and I am not very encouraged by the smell of pot noodle emanating from my cheery red large saucepan. The contents are far from red or cheery.
TO THE TOMATOES. A carton of tesco passata, what feels like a quarter of a tube of tomato paste, a fork-ful of marmite (I ent got no Bovril), thumb-and-fingerful of maldon sea salt (I took the intro to Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries very much to heart), scrobbling of black pepper, vigorous stir, and finally, the last third of bottle of red wine that's been sitting near the cooker for the past four weeks. I really hope it is mine. I have assumed. The flatmates and I don't really talk extensively. I begin fantasising about what anyone would do if they walked in and I was sitting on the floor surrounded by everyone's food and stickily licking out yoghurt pots and smoothie cartons. May or may not attempt this if things get really lonely.
And Lo! We have a bubbling pot full of something that may resemble bolog! I have no spag so it'll be conchiglie bolognese this eve. Amid the fantasy of gorging self on the leftover pizza on fridge shelf below mine, I have managed to turn on the nasty electric hob thing so its heated up in time for the boiling of water for pasta - and in that goes.
I have a lovely sister (one of three) who is fantastically conscientious about vegetables and so, remembering that my health is dependent on veg, I try a new method of preparing spinach. Post washing authentic-looking mud of the leaves I put it in a bowl with a wee bit o water in the bottom and microwave for 2mins. Brilliante! So overjoyed with success of this new cooking method, I don't use a sieve and attempt pouring the water out of the bowl without, resulting in spinach falling out of bowl into sink, as it is wont to do when tilted in such a way. I've just done the washing up - I'm sure the sink is clean. The spinach bowl is now to be the serving dish for dinner. It is larger than a cereal bowl and heavier too, but not in the realms of mixing bowl. It is characteristic of the student kitchen - odd and ugly.
Slurp of olive oil onto now cooked pasta, swirly swirly in the pan (a conchigli makes a bid for freedom - I hope it enjoys its life on the kitchen floor) and onto the spinich. A final tast of the soya mince bolog prompts more tomato paste, salt, pepper and a bolder grating of nutmeg, with the result it doesn't taste like pot noodle.
Lashings of parmesan and boom. We have a saturday night supper.
Final word from this lazy student cook: soya mince - don't buy it unless you have to... I have a whole pan-full of the stuff now to freeze and eat. Remember me comrades....
If you have had success with soya mince, or if you are a lazy student cook, let me know. We can vibe.
So what's all this about? I've decided to have a bash at doing something semi-regularly - writing about the food I cook in my student kitchen (sparse, electric cooker, strip lighting, bleak and Le Creuset-less).
And here we go. Tonight's Lazy Creation? Soya Mince Bolog!
"WHY BUY SOYA MINCE??" I hear you cry! Well, it's cheap. And new (to me). I have a friend who likes cooking healthy things and she mentioned it to me. Feeling puckish in Tesco I bought some and Tonight is the Night when Mince Gets Rehydrated (to be sung - with difficulty - to Spice Girls 'Two become One').
Le packet says to rehydrate mince before cooking but I, devil-may-care, cad-around-town that I am disregard. Two smallish onions chopped, four cloves of garlic (it is soya mince after all - it'll need some punch), three smallish carrots cut up small all into some olive oil in a big pan. Soften them bad boys up and then IN with the MINCE! 200g of dried mince plus 750ml of hot veg stock = something resembling very gross things. Help is at hand in the form of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and a daring grating of nutmeg. The mince begins to expand and I am not very encouraged by the smell of pot noodle emanating from my cheery red large saucepan. The contents are far from red or cheery.
TO THE TOMATOES. A carton of tesco passata, what feels like a quarter of a tube of tomato paste, a fork-ful of marmite (I ent got no Bovril), thumb-and-fingerful of maldon sea salt (I took the intro to Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries very much to heart), scrobbling of black pepper, vigorous stir, and finally, the last third of bottle of red wine that's been sitting near the cooker for the past four weeks. I really hope it is mine. I have assumed. The flatmates and I don't really talk extensively. I begin fantasising about what anyone would do if they walked in and I was sitting on the floor surrounded by everyone's food and stickily licking out yoghurt pots and smoothie cartons. May or may not attempt this if things get really lonely.
And Lo! We have a bubbling pot full of something that may resemble bolog! I have no spag so it'll be conchiglie bolognese this eve. Amid the fantasy of gorging self on the leftover pizza on fridge shelf below mine, I have managed to turn on the nasty electric hob thing so its heated up in time for the boiling of water for pasta - and in that goes.
I have a lovely sister (one of three) who is fantastically conscientious about vegetables and so, remembering that my health is dependent on veg, I try a new method of preparing spinach. Post washing authentic-looking mud of the leaves I put it in a bowl with a wee bit o water in the bottom and microwave for 2mins. Brilliante! So overjoyed with success of this new cooking method, I don't use a sieve and attempt pouring the water out of the bowl without, resulting in spinach falling out of bowl into sink, as it is wont to do when tilted in such a way. I've just done the washing up - I'm sure the sink is clean. The spinach bowl is now to be the serving dish for dinner. It is larger than a cereal bowl and heavier too, but not in the realms of mixing bowl. It is characteristic of the student kitchen - odd and ugly.
Slurp of olive oil onto now cooked pasta, swirly swirly in the pan (a conchigli makes a bid for freedom - I hope it enjoys its life on the kitchen floor) and onto the spinich. A final tast of the soya mince bolog prompts more tomato paste, salt, pepper and a bolder grating of nutmeg, with the result it doesn't taste like pot noodle.
Lashings of parmesan and boom. We have a saturday night supper.
Final word from this lazy student cook: soya mince - don't buy it unless you have to... I have a whole pan-full of the stuff now to freeze and eat. Remember me comrades....
If you have had success with soya mince, or if you are a lazy student cook, let me know. We can vibe.
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