I've been home for Christmas...

And it has really been lovely not having to cook for myself, as selfish as that sounds! Tonight was the first night since the 22nd that I've had to think about what I'm going to cook, and it was quite a struggle!

As can be expected with it only being three days since Christmas, our family is totally swamped by turkey, and there is a limit to how many years you can smile through turkey curry, turkey and ham pie, turkey turkey... But, with it only being three days since Christmas (and having had venison at my grandmother's for Boxing Day), I haven't quite reached the stage where the sight of turkey makes me want to weep. My parents have gone to a pub quiz with a couple of their friends, so it was up to me to cook. Brilliant, I thought at first. A massive kitchen with properly clean dishes, loads of food in the fridge, more kitchen gadgets and saucepans than a student could dream of, what could be better? Well, having some clue of what I was going to cook would be a start...

I don't know why I think that if I open the fridge and see nothing that inspires me, if I open it thirty seconds later I'll suddenly have an epiphany and will be able to whip something amazing up, because in all the times I've done that, it has never happened that way. Instead, I end up staring at the food, all of which is delicious, but none of which I can imagine going together, closing the fridge, wandering around the kitchen, opening a couple of cupboard - then repeating the entire process. If nothing else, it kills the time.

In the end, I decided that I had to cook something because, even with it just being me in the house, I couldn't actually justify skipping straight to pudding! I grabbed some double cream, an onion, some diced chorizo, pasta and the obligatory basin of turkey!

I gently fried the onions in a frying pan while the pasta was bubbling away, and just at the point when the onions were starting to soften, threw in some chorizo to colour the onions and get some of the lovely, intense oil into the pan. By the time the onions were totally softened, the pasta was pretty much al dente, so I turned the heat on the frying pan way down and added some of the turkey, shredding it into the pan, and stirred well so the oil from the chorizo coloured and infused it. Once the pasta was done, I drained it, added it to the pan with the turkey, chorizo and onion, and poured some double cream into it, then turned the heat up a bit so the cream had a chance to coat everything in the pan.

Simple, quick, delicious. Looking forward to tomorrow's turkey offering before I head back to Reading for work!

Monday is for Mulled Wine and Much too much to eat...

I sort of abandoned this for a bit towards the end of the week, essay deadlines, long days at work and lack of effort has led to an awful lot of food that can just be bunged in the oven from frozen, although I did go to the effort of making my childhood favourite - cinnamon chicken, on Saturday.

Today, however, was a totally different story. Despite having a bit of a wobbly moment at work when I just lost the enthusiasm for being anywhere but home home, the end of the day took a sudden turn for the best and I left cheerful and ready to hit Sainsbury's to get the makings for my first me-made Christmas dinner for myself and Georgia (who had bought some gorgeous festive chocolates from Hotel Chocolat).

This was the result of about an hour's cooking - and a helping hand from Mr. Sainsbury's!

I got a ready-seasoned turkey leg joint, some of the Basic's sage and onion stuffing, parsnips, and some mini-sausages wrapped in bacon, and we had some frozen broccoli, carrots in the freezer and some hefty potatoes for roasting, which meant that the most expensive part of the dinner was actually the mulled wine! The total bill came to just over £9, and with £3.99 of that being the wine, I'd guess that per head the meal came to probably less than £3.

Although it was all delicious, I'm going to be very immodest and say that my roast potatoes were a highlight for me. I parboiled the potatoes, then put them on a shallow roasting tin with some vegetable oil drizzled, a nob or two of real butter (which I think made all the difference) and a couple of shakes of rosemary. I rolled the potatoes around in this, then stuck it in the oven at about 180 degrees for around 45 minutes - 15 minutes in, I added the sausages, then once everything was cooked and crispy, just turned the oven way way down to about 150 degrees, just so that everything stayed warm without cooking it too much. I was so proud that I had Georgia take a picture of me getting my Nigella on:

The turkey was something I was quite nervous about, I'd never cooked a big joint of meat before, and was concerned it wouldn't cook properly and could end in food poisoning for me and Georgia - not exactly the Christmas I'd been hoping for, although it would provide the ideal excuse for the two of us to skive work tomorrow! The instructions said to cook it at 160 for a fan oven for an hour and a quarter, with ten minutes to rest, but after the hour and 15 minutes the juices were still a bit pink, so I put it in for another fifteen or so and left it to rest for about five, and it was really really good. It's also given me more confidence to cook something like that again.

Without much doubt, that was one of the best meals I've cooked, and the most rewarding, because it wasn't just me eating it, and Georgia certainly seemed to enjoy it!

I can't imagine cooking anything that massive in the immediate future, but it's nice to know that when I do decide to, I'll be able to do it justice! Now, what to do with those leftovers...

Wednesday essay writing

It's the final countdown. 46 hours and 17 minutes until my two assessed essays are due. Fortunately, this being the final week of term and lecturers being fully aware that students will have left it until the last minute, the English department cancel all lectures and seminars for second years in week 10, so we have time to write the essays we've had about a month to do. This also meant that I was able to get a Sainsbury's order delivered - a bonus to the week I hadn't been expecting! My cupboards, fridge, and freezer are all looking a lot more cheerful now, and I'm already planning some slightly more adventurous dinners for next week.

As I've got something on this evening, I thought I'd go for a main meal at lunchtime again today, and for preference one I could leave bubbling on the hob while I get back to writing about realism in the nineteenth-century novel. Using those cannellini beans from yesterday was another important part, as was finding something that wouldn't be too strong, as the sudden end of term panic has made my tummy quite grumpy!

With a fresh stock of chopped tomatoes and some diced chicken back in my arsenal, I decided to be a bit creative for lunch today. The end result was pretty delicious, if I say so myself...

Firstly, I heated some vegetable oil with a chopped up clove of garlic (having first removed the green shoot that causes the feared Garlic Breath) and some dried rosemary. Once the garlic was lightly toasted and the oil good and hot, I added the diced chicken breast and a bit of salt, and gave it all a quick stir. I didn't want the chicken to go too golden, but I did want it to have a headstart on being cooked before I added anything more.

After that, I tipped in about half of a tin of chopped tomatoes (around 200g at a rough estimate), a pinch of sugar and a splash of water, got it up to a simmer, then popped my makeshift lid of the dinner plate over the top, turned the heat down and left it to cook for about 20 minutes.

(I'd like to pretend that the 20 minutes where my dinner was cooking were productive, but I shouldn't lie...)

Then, about 15 minutes into this, I got my bowl of cannellini beans from yesterday out of the fridge, drained, rinsed, and left them for the remaining five minutes before I removed the plate/lid (now nicely warm for putting my meal on), tipped them all in, stirred until the beans were all cooked, and served it up.

Very, very pleased with the results. It was warm and comforting, just what I need when I'm brewing a cold. The garlic, I'm told, will be good for sorting out my cold, so that's always a plus, and cooking the chicken in the tomato sauce meant that it was beautifully tender and not as tough as it can be when you just fry it. As with the casserole from yesterday, another plus was that there's only one dirty pot to clean - and with having bought already-diced chicken, there's not even a knife or a chopping board to clean, either. A variation on this would be to omit the cannellini beans and instead serve this with a generous helping of my dad's indulgently creamy mashed potatoes, which would be a good way of mopping up the delicious sauce!

Now, I'm stuck with the eternal dilemma of a student: put off getting back to this essay by doing my washing up, or put off doing the washing up by getting back to the essay? Difficult. Very difficult...

Tuesday rush

It strikes me that there will be one day every week where you struggle to find time to fit in dinner. For me, this is Tuesday. It's not that I'm particularly busy, it's that working at an awkward time makes it difficult to know what and when to cook. Today, I plumped for cooking the main meal at lunch so all I need is to pick up (or make, if I had anything in my fridge) a sandwich to eat during my break at work, and then indulge in some marmite on toast when I come home - alternatively, I might be very naughty and call into Tesco's on the way back and pick up a little something as a reward!

I'd had in my head the idea of making a different version of the sausage casserole I always do. I tend to make a very improvised casserole and have it with mashed potato or rice - a couple of sausages, a tin of chopped tomatoes and some tomato purée, garlic, onion and chopped peppers, all into the oven for about 45 minutes. But I've had a tin of cannellini beans lurking about in the back of my cupboard since I moved into the house in September, and I really fancied using them in something so I wouldn't need to wait for the rice or potatoes to boil. So this morning, when I really should've been doing something more about my essays, I trawled the internet looking for a good casserole recipe that wouldn't require putting anything into the oven. Unable to find anything that didn't require an oven or lentils (seeing as I'd used the last tin of green lentils on Sunday) online, I turned to one of the M&S recipe books my parents bought me last year for Christmas.

Amazingly, there was something in there that was exactly what I was after: a sausage and bean casserole that only needed one pot and could be done just on the hob in about 20-30 minutes. Even better, I had all of the ingredients apart from the tin of chopped tomatoes, but I did have a ramekin full of tomato purée that needed using up, so I thought I could improvise. In the future, I'll definitely leave this one for when I've got some chopped tomatoes (which will be after tomorrow when my shopping arrives) because the purée was just a bit too rich, and even with adding a fair amount of water, the sauce was still quite thick. I think having the chopped tomatoes would sweeten the meal a little bit and also then, you've got the lovely chunks of tomato in addition to the green pepper, onion, garlic, sausages and beans.

The cannellini beans make this really filling and means that you don't have to get another saucepan messy by having to cook rice or any potato - I didn't even need any bread to bulk up the dinner, although I think that if you did have the chopped tomatoes in there, even with using some tomato purée to thicken everything, you might want something to mop up the sauce afterwards!

Another success, although definitely one to save for when you've got all the necessary ingredients. Now, to try and find something I can make tomorrow with the cannellini beans that are left - and the new additions to the kitchen with my Sainsbury's order...

Monday madness

My Mondays are absolutely horrific. On a good day, I'm on campus between 10 and 11 for a lecture, then I have my Monday Mondial (the café on campus) with my coursemate, Jack, before heading home for lunch. Then it's back on to campus for 3, another break at 4, a lecture at 5, and then a meeting for the Erasmus committee from about 6 onwards. On a bad day, I stay at Mondial too long with Jack watching YouTube videos so we end up lunching, and then I head for my 3 o'clock lecture. Today was arguably worse. Replace the morning lecture with selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts for the Erasmus society in the bitter cold between 11 and 1 and having a panic about an assessment at my friend's house between 1 and 2.30 and you've got the day I had today. Coming home and having to think about cooking is, frankly, the only thing I don't look forward to about coming home. The temptation to just order a takeaway or, even worse, not eat anything, is utterly overwhelming. Particularly when it's too cold to run to the shed where the freezer is to grab something that's a quick fix and Mr Sainsbury's isn't coming for another two days.

But today, while standing around in the cold outside the main lecture building on campus, I started chatting to my fellow Erasmus committee member, Olivia, about, of all things, pesto. We were sharing a mutual appreciation for pesto and cheese sandwiches, when suddenly, I remembered a recipe I'd seen on Nigella's most recent TV programme.

Pesto alla genovese

Now obviously, Nigella advocates making your own pesto, and while I have no doubt that this adds something really special to this dish, ultimately, I am a student and the last thing you'll find in my kitchen is a food processor (although I do have a stovetop espresso maker to make the 9am lectures more bearable...).

The most interesting and unusual aspect of this meal is the idea of adding potatoes to the pasta. Well, personally, all I can say is that I am a total convert. It turns fairly typical student fare, pesto pasta, into something that is much more filling and just something a bit different. The potatoes break down beautifully and get all mushy, just bulking up the pasta. Or, at least, I'm sure they would if you put the potato, peeled and diced into approximately 1cm cubes, into the bubbling, salty water about five minutes before you add the pasta. It's not that putting them all in together doesn't work, I can testify to how nice it was, but the potatoes don't break down as much as they would if they'd had a bit more time to boil.

After draining the pasta and mushing down the cooked potatoes a bit, I added a couple of fairly generous teaspoons of ready-made green pesto (thanks, Georgia!) and stirred it through the pan while off the heat, as the saucepan was still quite warm from having been on the hob. One thing I can strongly advocate is keeping a little bit of the starchy water the pasta and potato was cooked in before you drain it, and adding this just after you've put a couple of dollops of pesto into the pan. I'd read in Jamie Oliver's tried-and-tested Jamie's Dinners that this is something I should get into the habit of doing, as when you put it back into the pan, it really helps to coat every bit of pasta with whatever sauce you're using. Again, this is something I've definitely become a convert to, especially with pesto (I can't imagine an even coating really being a massive problem with using a tomato sauce, for instance). When I usually make pesto pasta, I find that the pesto tends to cling to some bits of pasta but I'm left with a couple of totally bare pieces. With this simple trick, the sauce thickened and it really did cover every bit.

I'm definitely a fan of this recipe, it really helps to welly up an already simple and delicious meal. Without doubt, the best part of this recipe is the fact that it really doesn't matter if you've barely got anything in your cupboard, you're bound to have the ingredients for this one. We always seem to have pasta coming out of our ears, I always have a couple of different varieties of potato in the house (blame it on the Irish genes), and Georgia tends to have some pesto in the fridge and she's quite easily convinced to let me nick some - I don't even have to pay her back in Haribo Tangfastics most of the time!

Without much doubt, whenever I'm making pesto pasta without any meat like chicken in it, I'll be adding the potato just to beef up (for want of a better word!) this classic student favourite. Beans on toast be damned, it's pasta alla genovese for the next time I need a quick fix!

Hello, I'm Becky, and I'm a student foodie.

It seems to me that the idea of being both a student and enjoying cooking good, hearty food is not the myth it once was. I know that in my house, there are no Pot Noodles, no tins of pasta, and (on my part, anyway), no frozen mash.

I think I can blame an awful lot of my love for food on my parents. My mum and dad raised me with an appreciation for food, and it was expected that I'd be able to cook for myself well before the prospect of university began to loom over us.

I'm in my second year now, and have all but finished my first term - and just about managed to share a kitchen with my two housemates, Izzy and Georgia. We're quite lucky in that living in such a small unit (and one I'm very used to, being an only child) means that it is possible for the three of us to cook meals all together, when many of my friends who are sharing a house with four or more other people simply can't. Nonetheless, with schedules varying so differently for each of us both in terms of lectures and when we like eating, nine times out of ten we're cooking separately - but we do manage to share in that all important area: ice cream!

Personally, I'd choose cooking something from scratch over a microwave meal any day, and when I'm back at home, there is nothing I love more than standing over the hob, stirring a massive casserole dish that's bubbling away. But in a kitchen that's only just built for three, and having to share this space with two others who might not appreciate a Le Creuset pot taking up the largest ring on the hob (not to mention my sudden awareness of just how much food costs - who knew a block of normal cheese could be so expensive!), I've been forced to dial down my gastronomic aspirations, and settle for good tasting, filling food that doesn't cost the earth, doesn't take forever, and doesn't create lots of mess.

This blog is going to be my diary of food that I cook for myself as a student that is cheap but doesn't compromise on taste. I'll document both the good and the bad, old favourites and new experiments. Ultimately, this is my chance to express my inner Nigella - only with significantly less space and money to spend.