Sweet Potato

Sweet potatoes are fast becoming my favourite vegetable. Their starchiness makes them excellent accompaniments chipped, mashed or roasted in cubes. However their sweetness and soft texture mean they can stand as a vegetable in their own right in a stew, soup or salad.

One of the best combinations that you must try is sweet potato, blue cheese and cos lettuce leaves:

There is crunch and soft and sweetness and creaminess - it’s really lovely. Jumble it all up for a wondrous salad or load up the cubes of filling in a lettuce leaf boat for some hand to mouth eating. 

Even though it’s an effortlessly easy construction it actually seems and tastes rather sophisticated and could be pulled off as a fancy starter or canapé. Perhaps with the addition of some toasted walnuts or frazzled bacon bits?

I prepared mine by baking a few sweet potatoes and then scooping the softened flesh on to the lettuce leaves, crumbling over the blue cheese and drizzling with some reduced balsamic vinegar. Wishing I’d bought some bacon to scatter over the plate I snipped up some of the crisped potato skin instead. It was an ok addition but bacon would be better.

My other favourite sweet potato dish is a spanish stew. A tomato, paprika spiced base is home to nuggets of salty, chewy chorizo which is lovingly complimented with soft butter-beans and the star - roasted sweet potato. We ate ours with a mountain of torn chunks of crusty bread, but it could also have been served with mashed potato, cous-cous or a green salad. Very nice and warming it was. A nod to autumn but embracing the coming winter also.

Spanish Stew

serves 4

3 large sweet potatoes, cubed

1 red onion, roughly chopped

4 garlic cloves, sliced

1 chorizo sausage sliced in to coins

1x400g tinned tomatoes

1x400g tin of butter beans

1tsp - paprika

1. Preheat the oven to 180’C.
2. Peel and chop the sweet potato then drizzle with oil and sprinkle with paprika and seasoning in a baking tray. Roast for 20-25 minutes or until soft and slightly caramelised.
3. Meanwhile, chop up the onion and garlic and fry gently in a large saucepan.
4. When softened, add the chorizo and fry for a further 5 minutes.
5. Pour in the chopped tomatoes and the drained butter beans and let everything bubble for 5 minutes. 
6. Then add the sweet potato and a splash of water. When reduced to desired consistency serve piping hot!

Apple Cake

Sundays can be tough as a student. Campus is dead. Everyone’s asleep. You feel a nasty, nagging pressure to do some work. You don’t do any work. It’s usually the day a family member rings you from your favourite cafe back home, munching on a baked good. Or from the sofa tucked up with the cat, casually mentioning that there is a roast chicken in the oven…

Such homesickness, boredom and just plain hunger incited me to bake a cake today. Inspired by the spectacular autumnal produce at London’s Borough food market - which I made my first visit to last Friday - I settled on the idea of baking a toffee apple crumble cake. A recipe that has been floating around in my head since the beginning of October.

The market got me so hot and excited. I lunched on the plentiful free samples; cheese cubes, saucisson, lumps of bread dunked in different oils and vinegars, slithers of smoked fish, crumbled fudge, granola clusters and hot, lemongrass tea.

Other than baking a cake, I think the next best homesickness cure is to get out of town for a day or two. Get a bit o’ culture down you - some art, music or food from somewhere new. Then going to back to uni can sort of feel like you’re coming home again…

I am sorry, but this cake is bloody sublime. The soft, vanilla spiced sponge suspends sweet, translucent and almost jelly-like cubes of syrupy apple. All these varying layers of soft contrast with the crunchy topping; a crumble that melts in the mouth like honeycomb and the edges of the cake that touch the sides of the tin have crisped into a golden, buttery crust. Oh. My. Lord.

Toffee Apple Crumble Cake

Cake:

2 Apples, peeled and cubed

Half a lemon

4 tbsp - Soft brown sugar

1 big lump of butter

200g - Sugar

200g - Butter

2 Eggs

200g - Self-raising flour

1tsp - Vanilla extract

Crumble:

100g - Flour

50g - Butter

50g - Soft brown sugar

1. Preheat oven to 180’C
2. Heat about 50 ml of cold water in a sauce pan. Add the apple and squeeze over the lemon. When the water begins to boil, chuck in the butter and sugar. Let it bubble away for up to 10 mins then leave to cool.
3. Cream the butter and sugar. When smooth, add the vanilla.
4. Beat in the eggs - It’ll go lumpy like scrambled eggs - then mix in the flour until smooth once more.
5. Stir in the cooled apple, reserving the syrup. 
6. Pour mixture in to prepared cake tin (I used a rectangular 20cm x 10cm tin, but your average circular tin will work too.)
7. In a bowl, rub the butter into the flour and sugar to make the crumble. Make it as fine or as pebbly as you wish.
8. Sprinkle the crumble over the cake evenly. Then drizzle over the reserved syrup and bake for 25-30 mins or until a skewer comes out clean.

Chilli

Inspired by a lively and colourful Mexican restaurant in Brighton’s North Laine, I decided on a big, vegetarian chilli con-carne to feed my lovely cousins who travelled all the way down the country to see me this weekend.
Bold, bright and spicy; this dish emulates the food and the decor of La Choza - that fabulous Mexican. And my wonderful guests. 

The leftovers are very plentiful and improve in flavour if left to their own devices overnight. It was bloody tasty re-heated and dolloped on hot baked potatoes covered in plenty of grated cheese the next day.

Beans are the star of a chilli. They’re protein-packed, squishy, flavour-absorbing bursts of loveliness. An ultimate frugal ingredient too. I used kidney beans because I think they have a smoother interior than cannellini or pinto but all are good. Chickpeas would be welcome too.

It’s the colours of this meal that make it so good. That, the endless G&T’s that were being poured, and the music and dancing made the evening we ate this one of the merriest I’ve had for ages! 

Veggie Chilli

2 sweet potatoes

1 red onion, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

1 green pepper

2 cloves of garlic 

2x 400g tins of beans

2x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes

1 tsp dried chilli flakes

1 or 2 tsp of spice - cumin, cayenne or paprika

1. Preheat the oven to 200˚C/400˚F/gas 6.
2. Peel the sweet potatoes and cut into bite-sized chunks. Sprinkle with the spices and some salt and pepper. Drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat, then spread out on a baking tray and set aside.
3. Peel and roughly chop the onion. Halve, deseed and roughly chop the peppers. Peel and finely chop the garlic. 
4. Put the sweet potatoes in the hot oven for 40 minutes, or until soft and golden.
5. Meanwhile, put a large pan over a medium-high heat and add a couple lugs of olive oil. Add the onion, peppers and garlic and cook for 10 minutes or so. 
6. Drain the beans, then tip them into the pan with the tinned tomatoes. Stir well and bring to the boil, then reduce to a medium-low heat and leave for 25 to 30 minutes, or until thickened and reduced. Keep an eye on it, and add a splash of water if it gets a bit thick.
7. Serve with chopped coriander if you’ve got it, atop some steaming rice and dolloped wit sour cream, salsa and or guacamole.

Soup

Apparently we should be eating up to three liquid meals a week. To give our tummies a rest from all that digesting I guess. Often, us silly humans think we’re hungry when really, we’re just thirsty. All we’re actually craving is something substantial and preferably warm to keep us satisfied.

At this lovely time of year, a good soup provides a warming and nostalgic alternative to another heavy meal. Not only is it easy on the stomach, but it’s also good for the soul. Nothing says homemade with care better than a heartily crafted soup.

In my view, butternut squash soup is the king of all soups. The flesh, when roasted, sweetly caramelises like no other vegetable. When blitzed, it collapses in to the silkiest consistency and becomes a smooth and delicious pleasure to eat.

As with the risotto form last week, and for every time you want to make a soup, a good stock is required to take everything to the next level. However,another reason why I’ve crowned this soup king is because; as the roasted vegetables are so pungent, your basic vegetable stock-cube will do just fine.

Butternut Squash Soup

1 small squash - Butternut or acorn

1 or 2 onions - roughly chopped

2 cloves of roughly chopped garlic

500ml (ish) - stock

1 or 2 carrots and/or sweet potato - peeled and chopped into chunks (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 220’C.
2. If you have a big squash, cut it into wedges. If it is fairly small then just chop it in half. Drizzle with olive oil and season - I used salt, my herbed pepper and some ground cumin.
3. Roast in the oven for 30-40 minutes or until golden-brown and soft when prodded with a knife.  Do the same with the sweet potatoes and carrots if using or add to the boiling stock in step 6. 
4. Meanwhile, chop the onions and garlic and gently fry in a large saucepan in a knob of butter for 20 minutes.
5. Take the squash out and leave until cool enough to handle. Then either peel the skin off the wedges and cut in to chunks or scoop the flesh from the halves and plop them in to the pan of golden onions.
6. Now add the hot stock so that it covers the vegetables. Pour in more hot water or some full fat milk if you need to.
7. Simmer gently for 20 minutes or so then whizz in blender in batches. If it still looks a bit on the thin side, pour it back in the pan and reduce until the desired consistency. 
8. Serve with a drizzle of creme fraiche or cream, and a scattering of dried chilli flakes.

Risotto

This decadent and luxurious meal is the perfect example of how wonderful leftovers can be. On Sunday we had our first roast. Six of us got together, harmoniously prepared the bird and veggies then sat, drank wine and played board games whilst the oven did allll the cooking.

Between us, a pound of potatoes, a pound and a half of parsnips, a bag of carrots, a big bunch of curly kale and one organic chicken cost us £1.80 each. (The wine was a further fiver each but that’s an additional extra.) For the risotto, you only really need some arborio risotto rice but you can add anything else to make it go further from extra bits of cooked chicken to any bits of veg that need using up.

Risotto seems such an elegant and refined meal but it’s really just peasant food - cooked up by Italian mammas for their families for generations. It’s a very versatile dish, and is happy to have anything from shredded lobster to frozen peas folded into its silky depths.

It's not difficult to cook but it does require two things; patience and a damn good stock.

I used the carcass from the roasted bird to make this basic chicken stock. Very simply you cover all the bones and bits of skin (after you have picked it clean of every morsel of meat) with water and simmer it up with a peeled carrot, half an onion and some peppercorns. Chuck in any herbs you have as well. Simmer for an hour with the lid on, then skim off any impurities, strain it through a sieve and store in the fridge - or the freezer if you’re not going to use it in the next couple days.

For a veggie stock forgo the carcass and replace with more vegetables! Mushrooms are good to give it some depth - as are the stalks of herbs such as parsley or rosemary sprigs.

If you don’t fancy a risotto then this magic stock could be... a base for a healing chicken broth with dumpling perhaps, or maybe a warming stew with loads of autumnal veg. A chicken noodle soup would also be a comforting upgrade from the classic student stir-fry, and a good use of this magical golden stock.

Risotto

Serves 6

1 onion - finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic - crushed

1.2 litres of homemade chicken stock ( Make up the amounts/ replace using some veg stock powder and hot water)

400g of Arborio risotto rice

Leftover chicken scraps and veggies

2 handfuls of frozen peas (optional)

1. Fry the onion and garlic for about 5 minutes in a lump of butter or olive oil.
2. Add the risotto rice and stir until the grains are glossy (about 1 minute.)
3. Splash in a glass of white wine if you’ve got it and let it bubble for another minute.
4. Put your stock in a saucepan and keep it very gently simmering. Then add it to the rice a ladleful at a time - ensuring each one is completely absorbed before the next. Stir constantly.
5. With the last ladleful, add your leftover chicken bits, veg and frozen peas. Season with salt, pepper and a bit of lemon zest.
6. Serve with a grating of cheese. 

Vegetables

Meat is the most un-frugal of all ingredients. On a student budget you can only realistically afford two or three meals a week with good quality meat, or five/six meals with bad quality. Luckily, my lovely mate Connie is a vegetarian and, as we eat most of our meals together, I’ve saved a fair bit of money adhering to her diet.

Cooking vegetarian meals does call for a little bit more creativity in the kitchen, but we see it as therapy. You’re always happier of an evening after you’ve eaten a home-made meal. With some help from the spices and seasoning mentioned in last week’s blog, your frugal veggies can be elevated to an exciting and substantial level. Plus there always seems to be loads of leftovers that provide easy lunches for the days that follow.

In Brighton there are many, many fruit and veg markets every day of the week. I usually head in to town every week to stock up - and go towards the end of the day when they're giving away things cheaper or even for free. Most shops or markets have a bargain basket or half-price shelf that are perfect for students - you can make the easiest soup in the world by boiling up whaterver’s in that basket with a veggie stock cube...

Shopping in markets also help you to be seasonal in your shopping. Not only is this better for the environment - as we are eating what’s grown on our shores, but it’s also generally cheaper and healthier as they haven’t had to be shipped over from some far corner of the world.

My recipe this week is for a vegetarian curry. A lovely lentil dhal to be exact - pimped up with some autumnal, iron-rich kale, and the easiest side dish of India. This one’s a good-un I promise.

Lentil Dhal

Kale - 3 big leaves the size or your forearm (or a bag of spinach would be more traditionally Indian)

1 onion

5 cloves of garlic

1 thumb-size piece of ginger

250g - Red lentils

1 veggie stock cube

450ml - Boiling water

Any spices you can find (I used ground cumin,turmeric and dried chilli)

For the Chapatis:

100g - plain flour (Or 2 tbsp per person)

3 (or so) tsp of cumin/mustard/caraway seeds

1/2 tsp of salt

Cold water

1. Wash the kale then chop off the woodiest part of their stalks. Roughly chop and stir-fry briefly (about 5 mins) in a little bit of oil then set aside for later.
2. Next, chop up your onion, garlic and ginger. Get a big saucepan hot, lug in a bit of sunflower oil an gently fry your magic 3 ingredients.
3. Soak the lentils for 5 minutes in cold water whilst the kettle boils. Drain them, then add them to the onion etc. Stir for a bit then add the stock cube and the boiling water.
4. Boil for 5 minutes then turn the heat down to simmer for 30. Add your spices now, give it all a quick stir then leave it be.
5. When the curry’s blipping away, it means it’s chapati time. Put the flour and seasoning in a bowl and trickle in a little cold water and stir with your fingers until you make a little ball of dough. Knead it around the bowl until it’s clean then leave it to rest until the curry has but a few minutes left.
6. Then get a frying pan hot with a little oil in. Roll out nuggets of the dough in to whatever size and thickness you like - then fry in the pan until golden on both sides.
7. Serve the dhal and chapatis with rice, yoghurt, mango chutney and whatever accompaniments take your fancy.

Spices and Seasoning

The most basic of ingredients can be made to taste more interesting with the careful and measured addition of spices and seasoning. Although they are often over-looked in terms of student cooking, as they are rather an expensive investment, I believe they are vital for success in frugal cookery.

In Brighton there is a beautiful spice shop called; ‘The Spice Shop’, It smells incredible - like a bend of every exotic culture. The shelves are lined form floor to ceiling with little yellow and red tins filled with every kind of herb and spice you can think of. I found this lovely little shop, which I believe originated in London on Portobello Road, in my first week at uni. So, before I even owned salt and pepper, I brought a small tin of their ‘Herbed Pepper’ and have used it almost every day for the five weeks I’ve been here.

I use it with everything from tomato sauces, to a chicken coating, to enhancing some cheese on toast. Obviously not everyone is as lucky to have access to such a wonderful shop, but it is so easy to create your own multi-purpose spice. My little tin has a blend of dried rosemary, thyme, parsley, marjoram, chives and peppercorns. Create and adjust your own for uni with a little help from your mum’s spice rack..

A little step up from the herbed pepper is a wonderful thing called dukkah. It’s an Egyptian spice used in many middle-eastern recipes but I sprinkle it on everything. Again, you may need a little help from the your family's kitchen back home, as most students’ spice racks tend not to be the most bountiful store of ingredients - especially not in your first year. However, perhaps you and a few friends all have a little something to offer and you could get together, mix what you’ve got, and share out the result.

You can literally use anything for this recipe; any nut, seed or spice you can get your hands on. This is mine at the moment: (but use it just a as a guide, elaborate on and embellish it freely)

Dukkah

5tsp - Cumin seeds
5tsp - Sesame seeds
3tsp - Caraway seeds
3tsp - Mustard seeds
50g - Flaked almonds
50g - Pistachios
25g - Cashews
25g - Dry-roasted peanuts
25g - Whole peppercorns
Sea-salt - to taste

1. Firstly, toast all the seeds in a dry frying-pan. You need to do this for about 3-5 mins, just until you can start to smell the spices’ aroma rising from the pan. I took mine off the heat just as the mustard seeds started popping.
2. Remove all the spices from the pan, (don’t leave one or two seeds in there to burn and make your whole dukkah mix taste bitter) then toast the nuts and peppercorns in batches so that the pan always has one, even layer.
3. Whiz everything together in a blender or crush it all in a pestle and mortar if you can be bothered. When the mix has been crushed to your desired consistency, lick a finger, dip it in, have a taste and check for seasoning! 
4. Add some sea-salt and more of anything else you fancy.
5. Store in an air-tight tin, jar or small tupperware and it’ll keep for a good few months in your cupboard.

 *Dukkah is lovely sprinkled over salads, with bread and olive oil, to coat fish and chicken, with eggs of any kind or to add interest to any simply boiled or steamed vegetable. Here it is in my current favourite form; with poached eggs and fried tomatoes on hot, buttered toast.

Breakfast

THE most important meal of the day. Admittedly at uni it is hard to make time for it when by choice; you usually wake up around 2pm and, not by choice; you wake up 20 minutes before a lecture. Most of my breakfasts could more be considered brunches. However they are still a vital part of my day and affect how I go about it.

Recently these breakfasts of mine have been the first thing I think of on waking and the last thing I’m planning as I drop off to sleep... This breakfast bruchetta is one I am particularly proud of.

Everyone I’ve described it to so far has gone ‘Oooh!’ when I mention the figs but, at this time of year, they are so cheap and plentiful - I picked up 4 for a pound at the market.

All you need to do is lightly toast some bread whilst the grill heats up. I used slices from another home-made loaf that lives happily, sliced, in the freezer. Then you spread your toast with a layer of crunchy peanut butter, top with the sliced figs, drizzle with honey and grill for about 5/6 minutes.
It’s a texture sensation let me tell you; with the toast, peanut nibs and popping seeds of the figs you’ve got three layers of crunch going on. And the sweet honeyed figs and salty peanut butter compliment each other perfectly. Don’t knock this guy ’til you’ve tried him.

I next constructed a bowlful of breakfast delights. 

You begin with a good, live, plain natural yoghurt, top with your choice of some chopped fruit, then - here comes the clever bit - crush some ginger oatcakes and sprinkle over with a drizzle of honey. Oatcakes are a great student snack; they come in all flavours from pumpkin seed to dried berries they are cheap, plentiful, substantial and perfect for filling a biscuit shaped hole with half the calories.

Finally, the mother of all breakfasts: granola. Coincidentally discovered and adapted by my lovely mother - I dedicate this star of a recipe to her. 

Nutty Granola

100g - Jumbo oats
100g - Mixed chopped nuts (cashews, pecans, almonds, brazil nuts etc.)
50g - Dried figs/dates/apricots/prunes (or a mixture of)
3 tbsp - Olive oil
2 tbsp - Maple syrup/honey
25g - Pumpkin seeds

1. Preheat the oven to 160’C.
2. Cover the dried fruit in a little water and bring to the boil in a saucepan. Simmer gently for 5 minutes.
3. Pour of some of the water then blitz to a paste in a food processor or with a stick-blender.
4. Mix the oats, nuts, seeds, oil and syrup in a bowl.
5. Add the fruit paste and mix really well - so everything is nice and well-coated.
6. Spread the mixture over two lined-baking trays. Cook for 15 minutes then remove from the oven.
7. Turn the temperature down to 110’C.
8. Shuffle everything about on the trays and turn it over with a spatula then bake for a further 30 minutes.
9. Cool completely then store in a tin, jar or air tight tupperware. 

*I almost always double the recipe as it lasts so well. Serve with a dash of milk, a large, silky, splodge of yoghurt, a scattering of blueberries (frozen is fine) and one last drizzle of honey.

Home-made Pizzas

I’m sure that most students would agree that, initially, it takes a while to strike a balance between pre-guessing your hunger and satisfying it. I’ve discovered the pattern of a typical evening; the plan is to meet at someone’s kitchen at about 7. You meet 20 minutes later than that. You start to feel hungry at half 7. You get very hungry at 8. You start eating strange snacks such as peanut butter and sugar sandwiches or raw mushrooms and ketchup. You get in to a weird ‘hangry’ mood where either a mad energy or acute tiredness washes over you. Then you finally sit down to eat at gone 9 with exasperated enthusiasm.

These evenings are the thanks we get for trying to cook all our meals from scratch. Pizza Night was something we had planned for a good week. Excited to continue using the bread flour and yeast from the baking last week, we knew we would have to leave the dough to rise for an hour whilst we made the other toppings. Toppings which had also been enthusiastically planned. Still, that hour knocked us back a bit and we regretfully plodded back through the typical pattern described above. 

It was a funny evening though; with people arriving for prinks (pre-drinks) whilst our precious babies were still cooking. The mood lighting was set and rave music began blasting from the speakers on the table just as we sat down to eat. All the people that hadn’t eaten an evening meal (so the alcohol would have a more immediate effect) were wistfully sniffing at our glowing, oozy, cheesy pizzas.

It was a oddly nostalgic meal. Home-made pizzas being something my mum became an expert at with the help of the bread-maker, and frozen pizzas being the go-to meal with friends since the beginning of teen-age hood. It felt good to blend the two and to produce these beautiful half-way pizzas; not quite at my mum’s warm and cosy home-made standard, but far beyond the expertise of ordering a take-away with friends. 

I can’t lie and say that this recipe is all my own. A big shout-out to the lovely Connie and her dad.

 Pizza (Makes 4)

White bread flour - 500g

Yeast - 1 sachet

Salt - 1 tsp

Sugar - 1tsp

Olive oil - 2 tsp

Warm water - 300ml

For the tomato base:

Tinned tomatoes - 400g

Garlic - 2/3 cloves

Salt and pepper + oregano, thyme or any other appropriate herbs.

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl then slowly add the oil and the warm water - mixing all the time.
2. When a ball of dough is formed, knead it well for 10 minutes on a clean surface.
3. Place the ball back into a floured bowl, sprinkle with more flour, cover with the-towel to rise (we left it on top of the microwave) for one hour.
4. Whilst the dough rises you can get on with your toppings. Connie's recipe was caramelised red onions topped with sliced boiled potatoes and blue cheese. Mine was a tomato base with sliced, raw red onion, mushrooms and mozzarella. 
5. To make the tomato base, gently fry a couple of chopped cloves of garlic in a bit of olive oil. Add a whole tin/carton of chopped tomatoes. season with plenty of salt and pepper and leave to simmer for twenty minutes or so. If you're feeling lazy you can just use the unadulterated tomatoes straight from the tin/carton but beware - as the liquid hasn't cooked off your pizza base may become a bit soggy!
6. When the dough is well-risen, knock it back by kneading for a few more mins. Split it in to four and roll each lump as thin as you like (we used a vodka bottle) and top with your desired toppings.
7. Bake in an oven preheated as hot as you dare on a floured baking tray for 10-15 minutes.

Baking Cont.

Usually, I'm a savoury cook. Back home, the times when I’m most happy in the kitchen are when the music’s on loud and I’m raiding the freezer, fridge and cupboards for inspiration. Plus my Mum loves it when I produce a ‘using what we’ve got' meal.
Unfortunately, my stores at my flat at uni are not quite as well stocked as yet, and almost every meal has to be cleverly thought out and carefully shopped for. Even then it is almost too expensive to not cheat here and there to make your meal that little bit easier to produce.

So, right now, as my freezer, fridge and cupboards slowly stock up, baking feels like the only true bit of cooking I’m doing. Where it’s totally mine from scratch to end product. And, like last week’s brownie’s; it’s so bloody cheap, easy and satisfying to make.

My new study timetable has thankfully dictated that I have every Friday off. However, I was actually a bit worried about how to structure this new free day without getting a bit flat/campus bound or letting the guilt rise alongside the amount of work I’d been issued. Baking this loaf (Walter is his name) neatly side-stepped these issues by giving me an undemanding, stress and boredom avoiding project.

Shopping for the basic ingredients got me out of the flat first thing, making and kneading the dough gave me a little work-out and was thoroughly therapeutic. During the first prove I dedicated myself to a straight hour of work. Then I padded back to the kitchen to tend to my baby, knocked him back, made some lunch, then happily applied myself to another hour of work on a different topic. 

And here he is, after his stint in the oven:

There is something about the smell of baking bread that is so entirely homely. It lingers on more than the penetrating smells of other baked goods, and it softly cloaks you with it’s warming comfort. Walter smelt just delicious. And, let me tell you, he tasted even better - knowing he was raised by hand.

Basic Bread

Strong white bread flour - 500g
Salt - 2tsp
Yeast - One 7g sachet 
Olive oil - 3tbsp
Warm water - 300ml

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the wet ingredients and mix with your hands until it all becomes a raggedy mess. Keep mixing until the mixture forms a dough, clean the bowl with this dough then tip out on to a lightly floured surface and knead for about 10-15 minutes until all is smooth.
2. Drizzle your mixing bowl with a bit more olive oil and then put the dough back in, cover loosely with lightly oiled cling film and leave to rise for one hour. (As my flat isn't particularly warm I filled a large tupperware with hot water, sat the bowl on top and covered them both with a tea-towel)
3. Line a large baking tray with baking paper (you really can't avoid getting some this time - buttered foil just ain't gonna work) then knock back your dough.
4. At this point you can add some extras if you wish. I used chopped walnuts to add an extra bitter but buttery crunch, but any nuts seeds or flavourings would work well. But make sure you don't add any more liquids as this will affect the rise.
5. After gently kneading for a few minutes. Shape your lovely dough in to a ball and place on the lined tray to rise in a warm place for another hour.
6. Heat oven to 220'C/200'C fan/gas mark 7. 
7. Slash the top of your risen dough with a cross of about 6cm in length. Then bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden-brown and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.
8. Once cooled I sliced and froze Walter so I could enjoy him toasted with jam and peanut butter for weeks to come! Of course you don't have to freeze your loaf, but remember the bread will go stale rather than mouldy as it was freshly made, and then you can whizz it up in to bread crumbs to sprinkle on top of a cheesy pasta bake, or to mix with herbs and spices beaten egg to coat some chicken pieces for goujons... I could go on!

Comfort Food

Baking is a wonderful thing. Not only is it comforting to eat but it is comforting to cook. It should never be cast aside as some frivolous and unnecessary activity; it holds comforting and mediative qualities that calm your thoughts and regulate your heartbeat - like stroking a cat. As Nigella says; ‘baking is a mixture of chemistry and poetry’, which I interpret to mean that it connects and balances the left and right side of your brain and therefore centres you.

The magic of baking aside, I believe that by starting up this blog with a post about baking, I am establishing my new uni larder with essentials that I now need to replenish continuously. Flour, butter, eggs and sugar are vital frugal staples. From them, countless savoury meals can be made, as well as some comforting baked goods. 

My chocolate brownie recipe, that originated from a basic vegetarian cookbook, produces - in my eyes - the perfect brownie, and I have eaten quite a number in my time. It emerges from the oven a dense but gooey slab, with a crisp and shiny surface that crackles as it's cut. The other geometric-style layers include the dark and squidgey interior, the just-set, fragile and almost dusty base and the chewy crust that forms around the border.

A group of me and my new uni fwends got together to watch this weeks episode of The Great British Bake Off together. Although we’re still just getting to know one another, I think we all found it thoroughly comforting to watch such a genuine and simple programme, drinking tea and eating cakes and brownies. At this gathering, no pre-drinking was involved, we weren’t doused up in make-up or feeling apprehensive about the night ahead. Everything was eeeeasy and comfortable and I for one was real happy. This is Conman (below) without whom this blog or, indeed myself, would not be in such a healthy looking state!

Freshers week has been testing to say the least. The best times have been when I have been surrounded by people, drinking, eating and laughing. The worst times have been when I have skipped a meal, eat alone or over-indulged on booze or shit food. What Freshers lacks is structure. Next week I am going to find a rhythm to this strange new life of mine and this rhythm will be found in the regular cooking and eating of 3 healthy meals a day with enough energy used up in between to keep me hungry! But it has been baking that has kept me afloat this strange, strange week. It has forced me to stock up my larder, get to know my kitchen and share; which has therefore got me in the good books with some thoroughly lovely people.

Epic Brownies

Chocolate - 3oz/85g

Butter - 4oz/115g

2 large eggs

Caster sugar - 8oz/225

Self-raising flour 2oz/55g

1. Preheat oven to 180'C/350'F/gasmark.
2. Grease a 12inch/30cm tin, ideally about an inch deep. I didn't have any baking paper so instead I lined tin with foil and rubbed it liberally with butter. Don't hold back on the butter.
3. Melt the butter and chocolate together. I do this carefully in the microwave but you can do the whole bowl over hot water shit if you wish.
4. Whisk the eggs in large bowl and beat in the sugar till pale yellow.
5. Stir in the melted butter and chocolate in to the eggs and sugar mixture, then sift in the flour.
6. Mix well and pour in to tin.
7. Bake for 20-25 mins until almost completely set then leave to cool and cut in to lil squares.
8. Serve with tea or glasses of milk and if you are at home your family will cherish your existence and if you're at uni..... go make some friends bruddah!