Student recipes competition: Send us the recipes and culinary tips you would pass on to new students and win a copy of The Ultimate Student Cookbook

[RachelMumsnet]

To tie in with the launch of The Ultimate Student Cookbook from Studentbeans.com, we're running a comp to find out the best tips and recipes we can pass on to young adults as they head off for the first time to university.

Whether it's the perfect recipe, a skill or tip we want your suggestions. The 10 winning tips and recipes will be published and the winners will each get a copy of The Ultimate Student Cookbook.

We'll also be putting up some great recipes from the book that you can print off and pass on to the young students as they head off to start a new life (we're going to start welling up...)

Post your tips and recipes before midday on Tuesday 17 September and we'll posting up the carousel of winners and recipes on Thursday 19 Sept.

[RachelMumsnet]

Thanks all so much for your fabulous suggestions. We've put together a gallery of our top ten tips and recipes for hapless students. Please do share with all your student friends and family, particularly those setting off to Uni for the first time this weekend.

Congratulations to those whose tips made it to our top ten, you've each won a copy of The Ultimate Student Cookbook. We'll pm you later to get your details. For those who didn't make it, Orion books have kindly allowed us to reproduce two recipes from the book to give you a taster.

[17leftfeet]

Never order in from domino's Pizza Hut etc

The local independent pizza/curry/kebab house is your friend where you can pick up a pizza to feed 30 for a fiver that may or may not be a slight exaggeration

[SilverApples]

Dr C, we have a vegetarian version of that called Smoosh.

Cold boiled potatoes, fried in a frying pan.
Add turmeric, paprika, 1/2 tsp of dry mustard.
Keep stirring and flipping the mixture over
Add a couple of handfuls of grated cheddar and a splosh of lemon juice.
Turn down the heat and add sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and sesame. but watch them carefully because they burn quickly
Turn it onto a plate and scoff.

[DrCoconut]

Pizza toasties. Use tomato sauce, cheese and whatever bits you have eg ham, chicken, tuna to make toasted sandwiches. Cook under a grill if you have no sandwich toaster.

[DrCoconut]

Cook a couple of potatoes and mash. Meanwhile fry up some chopped bacon, onion and optionally mushrooms. Mix with the mash, top with grated cheese and brown under a grill (or not if you don't have one. Serve with beans.

[Sherryfortea]

Tuna rice and sweetcorn. Cook basmati with a veg stock cube. Add drained tuna and sweetcorn and serve. I can't stand it. Teenagers seem to love it.

[Nadienoo]

Probably not the healthiest, but there are a few things I used to live on...

Pasta and cheese
Chips, cheese and beans (makes everything better!!)
Sometimes I'd mix it up and have a jacket potato
Oh and I used to make a batch of coronation chicken every now and then when I had time, this is the recipe I use now..

Easy Coronation Chicken

But I'd have it in sandwiches, baked potatos- pretty much anything...

And Spag Bol

[milk]

Baking fun for 6 friends- Rainbow fairy cakes

Each person must have their own bowl. They mix together 100g soft butter and 100g caster sugar. They then mix in 100g self raising flour and 2 eggs. They then add a drop of vanilla extract. Each friend then adds the food colouring. Each friend has either: yellow, orange, red, green, blue, or purple.

The colours are then added separately to the fairy cake cases, forming layers of colour.

They are then baked on gas mark 4 for 20-25 minutes.

[milk]

If any of my recipes get put into the book, please message me for my real name :) It ain't milk :P

[milk]

Easy Spanish Omelette

Ingredients:
• Potato
• Carrot
• Onion
• Peppers (your choice which colour, I prefer orange and yellow as I have a sweet tooth)
• Oil
• A beaten egg

1. Wash the potato and prick holes in it with a fork.
   
2. Cut a carrot into three pieces.
   
3. Put the whole potato and carrot pieces in the microwave for 6 minutes.
   
4. While you are waiting for the microwave to finish, let out some anger by chopping up some onion and peppers separately. I like to put them on a chopping board and go at them with a large knife- great at the end of the day when many people may not have lived up to your standards, or for that matter any standards.
   
5. When the microwave has finished, take out the potato and carrot, and slice them.
   
6. Put some oil in a frying pan, and heat on a low light.
   
7. Put the onion in the pan for a few minutes to brown.
   
8. Place in the frying pan a few carrot and potato pieces, as well as some crazy cut up peppers, then cover with a beaten egg.
   
9. Fry on one side, then turn it over to cook the other side. If you are unable to turn it over, just stick it under the grill.
   I like to garnish the dish with a sliced up tomato.

[milk]

5. Sprinkle the walnuts over the dough.
   
6. Roll the dough up into a long sausage shape
   
7. Press fork over edges to seal
   
8. Brush egg over strudel
   
9. Cook as pastry packaging says so (Sainsburys says Gas mark 7 for 20 minutes)

[milk]

Chocolate, Cinnamon, and Walnut Strudel

Ingredients:
• Readymade puff pastry
• Nutella
• Cinnamon powder
• walnuts
• 1 egg, beaten

1. Get a rectangular chopping board, and roll out the dough until it fits the shape
   
2. spread Nutella over the dough
   
3. Sprinkle cinnamon powder over the dough and spread
   
4. Place the walnuts in a food bag, then roll over using the rolling pin to crush them
   
5. Sprinkle the walnuts over the dough, spread, and cinnamon
   
6. Roll the dough up into a long sausage shape
   
7. Press fork over edges to seal
   
8. Brush egg over strudel
   
9. Cook as pastry packaging says so (Sainsburys says Gas mark 7 for 20 minutes)

[milk]

Cinnamon and Syrup American Style Pancakes

Ingredients:
• One packet of Scottish pancakes
• Cinnamon powder
• Icing sugar
• Canadian Maple Syrup/ golden syrup

1. Toast the pancakes under the grill or in a toaster until golden brown.
2. Place two teaspoons of cinnamon powder with two tablespoons of icing sugar and mix together.
3. Coat the pancakes in the "cinnamon sugar" mixture, then shake excess off, then put on a plate.
4. Cover the pancakes with the syrup of your choice.

I personally like to turn this into a "meal" by adding scrambled eggs.

[milk]

Smoked Salmon Spaghetti

• 250g Spaghetti
• 1 large onion
• around 150g trimmings/cut up strips of smoked salmon (My 93 year old Nana says you should use "Sainsbury's Smoked Salmon Trimmings, Basics 120g" for £1.50)
• 25g chopped dill
• 150ml single cream
• 1 table spoon of mayonnaise
• salt, pepper, lemon juice.

1. Boil spaghetti until it is soft enough to eat.
   
2. While the spaghetti is cooking, chop and fry the onion.
   
3. When the spaghetti is ready to eat, drain the water and put it back in the pan on a low heat.
   
4. Add the onions, smoked salmon, dill, single cream, mayonnaise and give it a good stir.
   
5. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste.

[SilverApples]

How long ago were you at uni though?
I was at the quality and resources in most of the accommodations I saw. very different to my digs back in the dark ages.

[hatsybatsy]

not sure where you all went to university but none of the places I stayed in had decent ovens or freezers? baking anything (let alone brownies) would never have occurred to any of us! (let alone been feasible)

best think to learn to make would be curry sauce. then you can add whatever you like to that.

fry 2 onions (and 2 cloves of garlic of you have any) - until soft and golden.
Add 1-3 tablespoons curry powder (depending on your taste) and 1 table spoon plain flour. fry for one more minute.
Add one pint chicken or veggie stock and stir until thickened.
Simmer for ten minutes.

For chicken curry, add cooked chicken and a tin of peaches before you simmer.
For veggie curry, add mushrooms/peppers/cauliflower to the softerned onions.
For lentil or chick pea curry, cook dried pulses in stock separately and add wet mixture in place of stock, topping up where necessary.

[Pawprint]

I had a great book by Delia Smith called One Is Fun. Yummy recipes and not expensive meals.

My advice to any student is cook from scratch. It is much tastier and better for you. Student life can be tough and sometimes depressing and having nice food helps a lot.

[DwellsUndertheSink]

Buy:
Tube of garlic puree - or fresh garlic
Tube of ginger puree - or fresh
Tube of chilli puree - or fresh
cheap dry noodles
tinned sweetcorn
couple of Mushrooms
stock cube
1 chicken breast (or leftover chicken from roast).
SOme spring onions, chopped.
Soy Sauce.

Make a broth from a squeeze of garlic, ginger, chilli (i use about 1.5inches worth) plus stock cube and water - chilli to taste. But be generous with garlic and ginger. simmer.

Chop the chicken and poach.

Add onions, noodles, mushrooms (chopped) and some sweetcorn. simmer until noodles done.

Add a tablespoon of soy sauce. and serve.

cheap, filling, quick and easy.


Variations:
You can add a handful of coriander leaves if you can get them cheap

You can also add a couple of Kafir lime leaves at the broth stage, and substitute fish sauce for soy sauce for a thai taste. You might also need a half tsp or so of sugar.

[bucylen]

Lurk in the local supermarket about an hour before they close. As the fresh stuff is reduced, swoop.
Don't forget to eat fruit. Apples, grapes, easy peel satsumas etc.
Wards off Freshers' Flu.
Jar of peanut butter, good on toast and nutritious.
All of other threads, especially potatoes.

[Ruby6918]

go to a large supermarket just before it closes on a saturday is probably the best and then you will get all the stuff going out of date soon at bargain prices, freeze it, you will save loads, and go to a local market for veg and fruit and only buy what you need

[RabbitsarenotHares]

If you're in halls and your only fridge is in a communal kitchen, get some food colouring to put in your milk. No one else will touch it!

[MollyBerry]

A flask is a lifesaver in the winter. It means you can take in hot food ie soup or stew or something and not stray over to the coffee shop/cafe for something hot when it's freezing outside!

[totallynaive]

Establish a kitty early and require double for the first shop. Then, by agreement, use this to go to big cheap Indian and Chinese grocery shops on the outskirts of your university town and bulk-buy spices, noodles, lentils, rice, and dried fruit in large bags. This will save you a lot of money over the next year. Recommended: 500g sesame seeds, at least 250g paprika, cumin seeds, ground coriander, turmeric, garam masala, salt; 50g chili powder, cinnamon, fenugreek, mustard seeds, black pepper. Also soy sauce, coconut milk and a couple of concentrated sauces that you don't have to chuck after a week (read the label carefully to make sure they're the longlife kind) for those of you who find cooking quite challenging. Black bean, plum sauce and tikka paste are my suggestions.

Find out when and where the best streetmarkets are for fruit and veg and use these over supermarkets.

Agree with your housemates that, on top of the usual kitchen stuff which you may already have, each of you will provide at least one of the following: cheap hand blender, wok, kitchen scales. The slow cooker idea given above is also very good if you think you'll be in the house for the early afternoon to do the legwork for the evening meal, and you are up for it. It won't work if your college and library are a bus ride away.

Be aware that what is cheap in supermarkets is not always likely to be the best nutritionally. Real cheap "superfood" exceptions include: chicken (every chicken should make you a meal one night and chicken soup the next), carrots, lentils and beans cooked from scratch, porridge oats, free range eggs from Iceland (£1 for 6), brown rice, barley for soups.

To avoid wasting money on tasty lunchtime sandwiches, keep pittas in the house. These can be quickly filled with fingerfuls of tomatoes, onion, tinned beans, bits of cheese and leftovers, tinned tuna, etc., slathered in homemade Italian dressing (just 3:1 olive oil and balsamic mix), wrapped in clingfilm and popped in your bag in the mornings.

If any of you eat tons of carbs, it is definitely cheaper to cook a lot of porridge (delicious with bananas/dates added during cooking) than to eat bought cereals, and homemade rice pudding is also cheap and yummy. Artisan bread with proper peanut butter is really filling; so maybe one of you might try learning breadmaking...

Don't put nuts on the kitty. They are brilliant, but expensive so need to be bought in bulk (Holland and Barrett offers are best), and one of you will munch the lot and cause bad feeling. BUT they won't go off if you buy a pack of wooden clothes pegs and use them to seal opened bags, so no need for tupperware. Ditto the other storecupboard groceries.

Spaghetti is about 25p in the Asda basics range and about 3 times that in most other standard supermarket ranges. Real feta is about 2.5 times as expensive as virtually identical "salad cheese" (but I would only buy real parmesan, ungrated). I could go on... but now I have another life...

[lookoveryourshouldernow]

...ooops that should have said - Room Mates !!!