You are faced with many challenges when starting Uni; living away from home, starting a new education system, making new friends, getting to know a new place etc etc…so here a few recipes to make life a little easier and to help you overcome another challenge.

It might seem something small but having a few recipes under your belt makes life a heck of a lot easier.

To start you off, here are a few staple ingredients to get in your cupboard and keep stocked up:
— Stock cubes
— Tins of chopped tomatoes
— A couple of dried herbs (basil and oregano are good to start with)
— Worcestershire sauce
— Gravy Granules
— Olive oil
— Tomato puree
— Salt and pepper

Some of our faviourite cooking websites include:
— Epicurious
— Nigella Lawson
— Jamie Oliver
— Nigel Slater
— www.bbc.co.uk/food/

We plan to run a series of recipes, probably 1 a week so you can quickly have a good selection of sweets and saviouries to pull out when you are fending for yourself, feeding an army, have hours to spend or even just 5 minutes.
We’ll be including a rough prices per meal based on Asda’s online prices at the time of writing the articles so you know you won’t be breaking the bank.

This week’s recipe: Cottage pie
Cooking time: 1 ¼ hours
Serves: 2
Rough Price: £3.79

This recipe is a twice-bake, which means it gets created on the hob then baked in the oven to finish off.

Ingredients:
— 250g Beef mince £1.14
— 1 Tin chopped tomatoes 50p
— 1 Beef stock cube 10p
— 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce 10p
— Pinch basil
— Salt and pepper
— 1 tbsp olive oil
— 1 Garlic clove 5p
— ½ Onion 30p
— 4 Mushrooms 50p
— 1 Pepper (any colour you fancy) 50p
— 3-4 Potatoes 80p
— Dash of milk
— Bit of butter or margarine
— 50g grated cheese 50p

Method:
Here goes…get your kettle boiling and your oven on at 180 degrees Fahrenheit or Gas Mark 4.

1. Chop the potatoes into even pieces and boil in a saucepan for 15 minutes.
2. Add olive oil to the wok/frying pan and start to fry the mince.
3. In the mean time, chop the mushrooms, pepper, garlic and onion. Add to mince when it has browned.
4. Add tinned tomatoes.
5. When the veg has softened, add ½ pint beef stock, stir in Worcestershire sauce, basil, salt and pepper.
6. Cook for 15-20 minutes, then mash your potatoes with milk and butter.
7. Get yourself a shallow casserole dish and spoon in the mince. Then add the layer of potatoes gradually, use a fork to even out. Then add the grated cheese.
8. Finally, bake in oven for 30-45 minutes. And voila you’re ready to wow your flatmates.

Alternative options: lamb mince, other veg (such as carrots, peas and parsnips), use gravy instead of choppedc tomatoes and stok, parsnips mashed with the potatoes. And if you don’t eat it all, this is a great one to put in a tub and store in the freezer for another night. Easy as pie.

Categories: Food, Recipes, Focus Posted on Saturday 22nd January 2011 at 19:14 by Harriet Jones