Take one egg . . . A good food guide for students

You’ve got your clothes, your books and your portable electronic devices sorted. Personal hygiene products? Check. Sports gear? Yep. Now what? Well, you’re probably feeling a little peckish. Which may be problematic: because for many students who are moving away from home for the first time, cooking skills aren’t even on the “to do” list. And when you’re hungry and you haven’t much spare cash – never mind spare time – you’ve got yourself a recipe for nutritional disaster.

Long, long ago, when dinosaurs walked the earth and this writer was at college, dinner – as often as not – consisted of coffee and toasted sandwiches made from spaghetti hoops.

Of course, in the old days we didn't know any better. Now, thanks to years of scientific studies and an entire industry based around the business of nutrition, it's clear that if you're going to use your brain to its utmost, you've got to feed it accordingly. A diet that draws from just two food groups – caffeine and monosodium glutamate – just won't cut it. Or, as the online UCD Student Cookbook puts it, "your body needs a wide variety of vitamins and minerals to keep you healthy".

In fact, the main ingredient for healthy eating is organisation. Start with the basics: a couple of failsafe recipes, some decent stuff in the store cupboard, a few bits of equipment to make your life easier. After that, it’s a matter of getting creative, or checking out people who are creative around food already.

There are more than enough food apps, blogs and websites out there to whet your appetite. Find one whose attitude to food matches your own; there's no use looking at gourmet recipes if you want to cook the cheapest, simplest, quickest, most filling food possible. As a single parent on a budget Jack Monroe, aka agirlcalledjack.com, was particularly clued in to issues around poverty and food justice: the recipe which propelled her to blogosphere superstardom, the 9p kidney bean burger, is not only cheap as chips but vegan too, so you can help save the planet while you munch.

Marie-Claire Digby of The Irish Times recommends thelittlegreenspoon.com, a healthy eating blog by Trinity College student Indy Power; studentrecipes.com, which is written by – and for – students, and a reliable, all-purpose food website such as bbc.co.uk/food for reference. She also has an all-purpose tip of her own. "Every student should know how to make a good tomato sauce," she says. "It's the building block of so many things – a tin of plum tomatoes, a sprinkle of sugar and a little olive oil."

Family business

Cooking is very much a family business for the Wards from Co Tipperary. Parents Peter and Mary run the deli and coffee bar Country Choice in Nenagh; one daughter, Eliza, brings hip, cool food to festivals around the country, including Electric Picnic, while her sister Evie runs the Nutshed, which specialises in raw vegan and paleo.

But as Peter Ward explains, his son Jeff was a different kettle of fish. "He's now an accountant, but when he was at school he had problems with dyslexia," he says. "He wouldn't read or measure, always hated everything to do with grams, millilitres and quantities. When he was going to college I thought, whatever else a student would have he'd always have a pint glass handy. So I came up with my recipe for Pint Glass Brown Bread. I told him he didn't even need a basin; he could make it in the sink. To be fair, I don't think he turned into a baker. But he made it a few times and it worked well. And we still make it at home abut three times a week."

Parents, he says, have a responsibility to teach young people to fend for themselves in the kitchen. “If you walk upstairs for two years with a tray with food on it and your son or daughter emerges from the Leaving Certificate with 550 points but can’t feed themselves, there’s a huge level of failure there somewhere. This is a life skill that needs to be taught to students.”

Emer Gallagher from Gartan, Co Donegal, who has just finished a BA in arts and English at NUI Galway, learned about cooking from her grandmother. Even so, when she first moved into college accommodation it was, she admits, a bit of a shock to the system. She coped with a bit of help from her friends. "I ended up living with one of the girls I knew from home. We actually shared our meals; I would make three dinners a week and she would make two, and vice versa the next week. It made the cost of shopping that bit smaller."

What were their signature dishes? She laughs. "Everything really included pasta. That's being honest. And maybe once a week we'd have home dinners – potatoes and stew or something like that. That was our treat. What was great, in Aldi and Lidl, was the 'five deal' with five vegetables for under 50 cent – so we would make our meals around what was on the five deal. You can't afford to be fussy at college, the frozen foods and things like that are the most expensive. The fresh food works out cheaper."

Stew and fresh veggies; it all sounds very healthy indeed. But that’s not to say there weren’t some bad food days. “We all shared a communal fridge and one of the girls left a plate of pasta and sauce – with a knife and fork on it – on her shelf at the very back,” Emer says. “At the end of the year when we were cleaning out the fridge, it was pretty disgusting finding that plate. There was a forest growing on it.”

Clean as you go

What was the most useful thing Emer’s granny taught her about cooking? “She taught me that you clean as you go and that was something that really stood by me at college. I was living with five other people. If you respect the people you’re living with, and clean up in the kitchen, it makes it so much easier for you and eases your workload at the end of the day coming home from college.”

For those whose elders are not necessarily kitchen betters, a basic cookery course is a good idea. “I know exactly what it’s like being a student and having to cook for yourself,” says Tim Greenwood, managing director of the cookery school Cooks Academy in Dublin. “I was lucky. I knew how to cook. But I would have witnessed plenty of other students who had very bad nutrition.”

As a student, what sort of things did he cook himself? “A lot of eggs,” he says. “Omelettes and things like that. I had a really good toasted sandwich maker. I love them. I used to put eggs in them. Pasta dishes. Chilli. And inevitably, there were the cans of beans and cans of tuna.”

Cooks Academy offers more than 50 different courses, but he reckons their Introduction to Cookery course on Monday nights would be good for student cooks as it concentrates on traditional favourites such as roast chicken. “If you’re away from home, to cook a Sunday roast and have some friends round might help to alleviate some of the yearnings for home cooking,” he says. Isn’t a Sunday dinner a bit, um, tricky? “Nope. An oven and a tray and a potato peeler, and away you go,” Greenwood says.

It’s a long way from spaghetti hoop toasties – contemporary equivalents of which, I’m assured, include crisps with chocolate spread, or peanut butter and mayo, or whatever you’re having yourself. But another thing we’ve learned from years of nutritional studies is that a little tweaking goes a long way towards improving diet. Add a handful of salad leaves to that chicken nugget baguette. Slather your supermarket pizza in fresh tomatoes, garlic and herbs. Put a bit of butter on the spuds, André. Add friends – and enjoy.

RESCUE RECIPES: THREE SIMPLE MEALS

1: LENTIL SOUP

A winter regular chez Wallace

Ingredients

• 1 cup/225g red lentils
• 2 onions, peeled and chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
• 2tbs oil
• 2 bay leaves
• Pinch of dried mixed herbs
• 1.5 litres vegetable stock
• Salt
• Pepper

Method

Put all the ingredients except salt and pepper into a large, heavy-based saucepan. Bring to the boil over a medium heat, then lower the heat and simmer for about an hour, stirring occasionally to make sure the lentils don’t stick to the bottom of the pan. If the soup is too thick, add more water.

Once the carrots are cooked, take out the bay leaves and add salt and pepper to taste. If you like a smooth soup, put into the blender: for a chunkier finish, just mash with a potato masher. This soup will keep for three days in the fridge.

To dress it up for serving, add a handful of chopped fresh parsley/basil/dill and a wedge of lime or lemon on the side.

2: PINT GLASS BROWN BREAD

Courtesy of Peter Ward, Country Choice, Nenagh, Co Tipperary

Ingredients

• Pint glass of white flour
• Pint glass of wholemeal flour
• ¾ pint glass of buttermilk
• Salt to cover the bottom of a pint glass
• Soda to cover the bottom of a pint glass
• 1tsp butter

Method

Mix dry ingredients. Mix in wet ingredients. Shape and bake in a preheated oven, at 230 degrees, for 15 minutes, then at 200 degrees for a further 25-30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

3: PASTA CARBONARA – SERVES 4

Courtesy of Cooks Academy culinary school, South William Street, Dublin 2

Ingredients

• 400g spaghetti
• 2 tbs olive oil mixed with a small knob of butter
• 8 hickory smoked rashers, cut into small cubes
• 1 tsp dried chilli flakes
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 4 eggs, lightly whisked
• 100g Parmesan, very finely grated
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

Method

Put water on to boil. While it is boiling, whisk the eggs, finely grate the Parmesan, crush the garlic and cut up the rashers.

When water has boiled, add one dessert spoon of salt, bring to the boil again and put pasta into boiling water and simmer for about 10-12 minutes, until al dente (or cook as per packet instructions).

Meanwhile, over a medium heat, fry rashers and chillies in the olive oil for eight minutes (depending on thickness of rashers), adding garlic towards the end. Remove from the heat, set aside and keep warm.

Once cooked, drain the pasta and while still hot, return it to the saucepan over a gentle heat. Keep two or three tablespoons of the water in case you need to add it at the end if there is not enough moisture. Drizzle with a slick of olive oil and immediately add the eggs and quickly stir through the pasta for one minute. As soon as the eggs start to turn opaque, turn off the heat and stir in the Parmesan until it melts. Lastly, stir in the fried ingredients. Season and serve immediately.

NOTE: The creaminess in this carbonara is due to the eggs not being overcooked. Remove the saucepan from the heat just before you see the egg starting to scramble. Also, if you can't afford Parmesan, white cheddar will do just fine.