The start of a whirlwind romance

Once upon a time there was a 21 year old student called Rebecca. She loved cooking, she loved being with her friends, and she loved surprises. Then, one day, she met a slow cooker. And it was the beginning of a lifelong romance.

A few days ago my parents bought me a slow cooker to take to uni. I don't know why I'd been hesitant about using one - maybe because I kept confusing it with a pressure cooker which still frighten me a little bit. It is potentially the best investment I've ever made. I'm a big fan of anything where you just throw food into something, forget about it for a few hours and then suddenly go, "oh, there's something in there" and then are presented with a meal you've made without even realising it. Suddenly I can see myself heading out of the house for university having put, I don't know, stuff into the slow cooker, working all day, then coming home and having a meal already made. If that's not the perfect scenario then I really don't know what is.

I'm moving back to university in about a months' time, so I thought I should probably get acquainted with the slow cooker. After meeting up with someone for a very long coffee and planning session, I came home and added sausages, bacon, the remnants of some chorizo, two tins of chopped tomatoes, a tin of cannellini beans, an enormous clove of garlic, and half an onion to the slow cooker, seasoned it, gave it all a stir, then turned the heat right up, stuck the lid on and forgot about it for almost four hours until my parents came home making all the appropriate "yummy" noises as they walked through the door.

I'd consider anything that gets cooked in a slow cooker to be fast, although you could easily argue that anything that takes four hours to cook is hardly quick - but to my mind, if it's something you can get started and then leave for anything from three hours to overnight without constantly needing to poke and prod at it - it's fast food. And it really does fit in perfectly with a student lifestyle - throw the ingredients in and stick the cooker on when you leave the house to go onto campus (high if it's, say, a lecture or a seminar; low if you're going to be particularly studious and go to the library afterwards), come home and dinner's ready. I think that it really should make the list of student necessities. With hindsight, it probably would've made mine - although, my list three years ago (when did that happen??) included a corkscrew, a cafetière and a garlic press so maybe I'm not the best frame of reference for a typical student...

Falafel

It was exactly a year ago yesterday that I arrived in Montpellier, absolutely terrified out of my wits as to what the coming year would entail. I don't think I've quite processed the fact that not only is my year abroad over; it's been over for nearly two months.

Opposite my university was a little falafel place that did falafel wraps and chips for the princely sum of about 4€. I only ever tried it once, which is possibly my biggest regret of the year. There is something incredibly satisfying about a flatbread filled with salad and falafel, and it's hard to describe how it feels to be sitting in a foreign country where you speak the language - but not the language that the owner of the restaurant was chatting to his friend in. It feels more authentic somehow, to be sat eating a traditionally Middle Eastern food surrounded by people speaking Arabic.

What I had for lunch today was somewhat less authentic, but no less satisfying. A while ago, on one of the weekly trips to the deli, I spotted a box of falafel mix and decided I had to buy it. It was simplicity itself to make - just add water to the dried mix and give it a good stir, leave it for 2-3 minutes then fry for about 30 seconds in hot oil. In the absence of pitta bread, I decided to have my falafel as part of a salad, and dressed it with a yoghurt and mint dressing. The mint was sourced all the way from our back garden, and pre-washed by the sudden shower that lasted just long enough for the laundry on the line to get soaked and for me to rush out into the rain to get it in.

While I'd love to find a tried-and-tested, genuine falafel recipe, a mix like this definitely fits the bill in the interim.

Fruit salad

I have, as my parents will doubtlessly testify, always been a bit of a magpie. This is particularly true for food. And now that it is moving towards summer and the fruit section of my local supermarket is full of beautiful, fresh, local produce, the only logical thing to do seems to be to make fruit salad - and lots of it.

Kiwi, strawberries, mango and apple - all, apart from the mango, from France. It's the perfect thing to have in your fridge in the summer, and is gorgeous either as it is or with a dollop of Greek yoghurt on top as breakfast or even as a virtuous pudding. This was also my first attempt at preparing - or, as my friend's family calls it, "hedgehog-ing"- a mango. I had a quick look online to see what was the best and easiest method of getting the fruit out, and it turned out that hedgehog-ing it was the most popular and simplest way. Delia told me to slice down around the stone, then to score into the flesh, being careful not to cut through the skin, then push it and cut the cubes of mango off the skin and into a bowl, making sure you have something to hand to catch all the juice. 

It seemed simple.

It isn't. 

When Delia said "stone", what I didn't realise she meant was "massive flat thing that's as big as the mango itself and impossible to locate when you're cutting down through the fruit". After butchering the poor mango trying to find where the stone finished so I could have as much fruit for my fruit as possible, I then failed to avoid cutting through the skin, forgot to put a bowl underneath to catch the juice, and generally made a bit of a hash of it.

Word to the wise - mango juice stings if it gets into cuts. I found this out the hard way.

Despite my apparent inability to do something that should've been pretty simple, I did eventually succeed in getting the mango from the fruit into a bowl and then added my strawberries, kiwi and apple - all of which were much easier to prepare, poured in some orange juice, and gave it a stir.

Et voilà! Pudding/breakfast/part-of-your-five-a-day all in one very pink bowl. It is officially summer.

Ratatouille

I'm about as good at eating my vegetables as I am at updating this blog: sometimes, I'm all about making sure I get my 5 a day, and sometimes I sort of... forget.

It's a lot easier now it's heading towards summer and the idea of salad is particularly appealing, but last week my friend Ellen cooked for me in a bid to get shot of her vegetables before she went off for her weekend in Paris (lucky thing). It was based off a Turkish dish, but essentially what it amounted to was ratatouille with chorizo and couscous, and it was delicious. As I was doing my food shop this week, I thought to myself, why not make that? It's quick, it's simple, it's cheap, and it's delicious. Basically, it's everything I want when I'm cooking. Plus, it's easy to make extra so you have another meal or two already made!

So make it I did. There are probably as many different recipes for ratatouille as there are people who eat it, but this is how I made it.

1. Chop up a red pepper, an aubergine, a courgette, half a large onion and two cloves of garlic, and add to a big saucepan (a casserole-style pot would be perfect).
2. Heat this for about five minutes on the hob - this helps to soften the aubergine and courgette, and makes space for the next step!
3. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes, a little bit of water and bring to the boil, then put a lid over it and let simmer for another 5-10 minutes.
4. For the meat-eaters, whilst the ratatouille is simmering away, chop up some chorizo into rounds (the ready-cooked type), and heat in a frying pan. Once it's golden and slightly softened, tip into the pan and stir through - try to get as much of the oil that comes out of the sausages into the ratatouille for an added paprika kick.

And that's it! I'd reckon that will make between 3 and 4 portions' worth (not including the chorizo), depending on how hungry you are. The last thing to do is to make the couscous, which is perhaps the easiest thing ever, particularly when you do it my way. I know you can make it on the hob but this is much easier.

1. Take a mug.
2. Boil the kettle.
3. Fill your mug with as much or as little couscous as you want.
4. Pour boiling water over the couscous - the optimum amount is so that the water level is just a fraction over the couscous. Too much and it'll be watery, too little and it'll be dry.
5. Put a lid over the mug to trap the steam.
6. Take the lid off after about 2 minutes and fluff up with a fork.
7. Add butter if wanted.

Couscous added to ratatouille is perfect as it soaks up all that yummy liquid, and some salad because... well because why not?

Possibly the healthiest meal I've eaten since I got here - the only 'naughty' bits would be the sausages, the tiny bit of butter I added to the couscous and the dressing on the salad. And, I've got leftovers that will do for later in the week.

Bon appetit!

Forward planning

This is my last week in Montpellier before I make my triumphant (and long-awaited) return to good old Blighty. With that in mind, a bit of forward planning with regards to dinner has been needed - the last thing I want is to come back to a fridge full of food that's gone off. I've got a meal plan until Thursday - and Monday night was sausage casserole night.

It's amazingly simple and quick to make and is lovely and filling. All you do is cut sausages into small rounds and cook them with a tiny bit of butter in a pan. Once they're cooked, add a drained and rinsed tin of cannellini beans (which, in case you're interested, are haricots blancs in France), and then as much sauce as you fancy. Cook on a low heat until everything's warm through, then serve. That's literally it. And I made enough for two evening's worth, so after I return from my final exam on Wednesday I won't have to think about cooking anything as it'll be there already. I will admit to being a little bit naughty and eating some from the portion I set aside for dinner another night - so I might have to add something to supplement it then - but it was too delicious to resist.

Po-ta-toes

I have my father to thank for many of my traits. The ability to burn in cloudy weather. The gift of the gab and with it, the ability to talk myself out of or into seemingly any situation. And finally, my insistence that "if a meal doesn't have potato in it, it's not a meal."

My father's from Ireland, can you tell?

All of the people I've lived with have found my deep-seated belief that potatoes a meal make amusing. The Spanish people I was fortunate enough to have shared my kitchen with back in first year seemed pretty impressed by how many different ways of eating potato I could find in the ten months we lived together. Speaking of which...

As you can probably imagine, being a student and part-time potato fiend has its drawbacks. They take a long time to boil, it's not easy to make mash for one person and they're never as good as your mum/dad's. So discovering gnocci was something of a revelation for me.


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Look at them! Beautiful, potato-y pillows of goodness. The French seem really keen on frying them so they turn into mini-roasties, but I prefer to cook them the more traditional way. I think what I love the most about gnocci is the fact that they are so insanely quick to cook. About five minutes in a pan of boiling, salted water and they all start to congregate together (they're very sociable) and float to the top. And that's it, they're ready.

What I've been doing recently is then draining them, but keeping them in the pan, then adding some bacon lardons and tomato sauce. Once the bacon's cooked, I take them off the hob and - I really do think this is the secret - I add a bit of Boursin. It doesn't have to be a lot, but it just adds even more depth to the flavour of the sauce and makes it beautifully creamy. Best served in a bowl with a slice of fresh bread to mop up all that yummy sauce. Or just to enjoy the bread. Well, when in France.

It's so filling and warm and is just perfect comfort food. I made this last night, after I came home from my lecture. I was tired but I didn't want to eat straight away, so I decided to wait a bit. About an hour after I got in  I was hungry, but I wanted something quick so I wouldn't be eating dinner too late. And good old gnocci saved the day again.

Plus, it was a meal with potato which meant it was an actual meal.

"Houmous on bread, it's the future. I've tasted it."

The fastest and most immediately satisfying lunch/snack (depending on how strong your willpower is) has to be this:

It really has become my most recent food obsession. Grilled 'petits pains' dipped into a tub of plain houmous. Incredibly more-ish but, all things considered, not actually all that bad for you. I first tried this last Friday, when I went to the zoo with some of my friends here and we had a picnic. I can't believe it had never occured to me that grilled bread + houmous = three bites of heaven, but it is.

Thursdays are pretty hard going for me. I have one lecture from 11.15-12.45, then have a coffee and panini in the canteen with my friend, then I go home for a couple of hours to pick up the work we're going to do when I come back onto campus to meet her and our other friend at 3.15 after their lecture. We have a two hour natter - I mean, work session - before our (give me strength) three hour lecture from 5.15-8.15. Needless to say, by the time I do eventually crash through the doors at about 8.30 the idea of cooking anything is pretty unappealing, but if I eat a big meal just before the lecture, I'll get even sleepier than can be naturally expected of a person in a hot lecture theatre being droned at about "les sciences du langage" for three hours. The solution seems to be to have a coffee before I go to the lecture, something sugar-y to give me energy in the break we're given halfway through, and then have something like this when I come back in. That way, even if I cannot summon up the energy to cook, at least I've eaten something.

A heads-up for anyone thinking of coming to France: make sure you come with an open mind when it comes to carbohydrates because this really is a country built on bread. And what good bread it is, too...

Oh, and, happy December! I'd be opening the first door of my Advent Calendar, only I haven't got one. If it's not Dairy Milk, it just doesn't feel the same :( Psst, Mum that's a 'subtle hint' for  my triumphant return...

Easy like a Sunday morning

I think that there is no better way to start my Sunday than by a long lie-in, preferably with people bringing me cups of coffee, gloriously buttery toast and allowing me free reign of the remote control. However, I am living the student life, so the coffee and toast has to be made by me - quelle dommage!

But, I had the next best thing this morning - half a carton of eggs left to me by my housemate and the offer, nay, the instruction, to use them up before she comes back from visiting her father. As you can imagine, it was a real struggle to think of something to cook, and after I puzzled for about thirty seconds, I got the necessary accoutrements together to make a fluffy cheese omelette.

Like a lot of things I cook, I judge whether it is a success or a failure based on how much like my mother's the end product resembles, and omelettes are absolutely no exception. My favourite dinner when I'm home is when Mum can't think of what to cook, none of us have anything in mind, and there's plenty of eggs in the fridge. Cheese, ham, bacon, occassionally potatoes and onions to make a traditional Spanish tortilla - omelettes would certainly be a contender for my last meal on earth.

The key with making a perfect (read: my mother's) omelette is to make it really, really fluffy, keep the pan well-oiled but the heat not too high, and to wait for the open top to cook before you fold it, and flip it. Getting a good non-stick pan that's not too wide across is also important, as if you get one that's too wide, you really need an obscene quantity of egg to be able to cover it from side to side but also have a bit of depth. Luckily, my housemate has provided us with a pan that is absolutely perfect for this.

So, with your pan on the hob and a glug of olive oil in it, spread all across the pan so the majority of the pan is covered, you need to beat your eggs, seasoned with a little pepper (2-3 for one person), and preferably prepare any fillings so it's nice and quick to throw the fillings in once it's ready. Once the eggs are beaten, pour them into the pan and as soon as it starts to cook around the edges, take your fork and drag some of the edge into the centre, then tilt the pan so that the raw egg covers the space. Keep doing this, working all the way around the pan until there's a pile of fluffy egg in the centre. This is why it is crucial to keep the pan on a medium heat - if it's too high, the egg will cook too quickly and you won't be able to make it gorgeously fluffy. Once the top's cooked and there is no more runny egg, add the filling, then get a fish slice under the omelette, and fold it in two. Press down so that any remaining raw egg seeps out and can be cooked, then once you're happy everything's cooked, carefully flip the omelette to cook the other side. This is where experience pays off! Once that's cooked, slide it onto a plate and enjoy - preferably while watching "Saturday Kitchen" on the iPlayer ;]

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!