Not Another Microwave Meal

Hello anon, Kate here.Don't worry about the money thing, I'll be honest, I'm quite concerned about money too - after rent I was left with exactly £500 to live on until the end of April and I'm quite sure I've already spent up most of it, I'm a bit too scared to check my bank balance to confirm it. And don't worry about coming across as cheap either, everyone's concerned about their money situation at the moment - especially us!We tend to bulk buy a lot of things and freeze the excess.Petra will buy a lot of fresh vegetables every two weeks at the market (we go to a great stall in Preston's covered market, they offer free delivery on orders over £10 and you also get student discount, it's also really great stuff)

I bulk buy meat in my Tesco shops (e.g if the three packs for £10 offer is on, I'll get two packs of chicken breasts and a double pack of bacon and freeze the lot, defrosting when I need it).

It is true that sometimes we throw a bit of money at a recipe, we rarely go out or buy anything particularly flush so we will sometimes buy the odd expensive ingredient (such as the duck legs and coconut milk etc) but more often than not, a lot of the ingredients we use can be added to other things. For example a bag of lentils you can buy for less than £1 and you can easily throw them into a soup or stew which adds both flavour and more substance to the meal.

 A lot of things can be substituted for cheaper things too or not used at all - you can make a banana milkshake rather than smoothie by just using milk and saving the £1.15 I'd normally spend on a pot of yoghurt to buy a bigger milk (or, my current vice, mini eggs).

As the weather has been cooling down, I've been very much into making soups and when I spotted this in a book recently, I had to try it. Grating the carrot is exhausting and takes time but it's worth it for such a beautiful soup. Cumin isn't a spice I use very often but it really makes a difference in this recipe. Here's how I made it:

2tsp ground cumin

Pinch of dried chilli flakes

2 tbsp olive oil

300g carrots, washed and grated (no need to peel)

100g split red lentils

1l hot vegetable stock

100ml milk

Spoonful of natural yoghurt and flat-leaf parsley to garnish

Heat a large saucepan and dry-fry the cumin and chilli flakes for one minute before scooping half out and putting aside for later. Add the oil, carrot, lentils, stock and milk and bring to the boil. Simmer for 15 minutes until the lentils have softened. Pour the soup into a blender and whizz until smooth. Sprinkle with some of the set aside spices, parsley and yoghurt.

This really is superbly warming for a chilly day and so simple to make, it comes highly recommended.

Until next time foodies, Kate 

I'm feeling very delicate after finishing all my deadlines and I've recently developed a pretty nasty cold and for that reason I'm not craving particularly healthy meals. After a long hiatus, pasta has recently been introduced into my diet and eating it for the first time in months was like kissing an old lover again, nostalgic and heart warming. This was one of the first meals I've made involving alcohol and I can straight away see the benefits - finishing the bottle with the meal. I also know the chicken is slightly burnt, learning how to fry chicken breasts without cutting it into small chunks is something I'm not hugely familiar with but they tasted fabulous anyway. Here's how I did it:

75g fusilli

1-2 skinless chicken breasts cut in half

100g chopped bacon, rinds removed

4 tbsp dry white wine (I used a small bottle of Stowells Australian Colombard Chardonnay which was really good)

100g frozen peas (I used petit pois but garden peas are fine)

Oil for frying

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

5 tbsp single cream

Boil a pan of salted water and add your pasta, cooking for 12 minutes then adding the peas for the last 5 minutes. Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the chicken breasts and bacon and cook on a high heat for 5 minutes. Turn the chicken and stir the lardons, pour over the wine which should more or less evaporate and season before cooking for another 5 minutes. Drain the pasta and peas and add them with the cream to the chicken and bacon, making sure everything is evenly covered and ensuring the chicken is cooked through before serving.

Delicious - especially with the rest of the wine!

Thanks for reading and until next time, Kate 

Currently making what I call deadline vegetable soup - throw everything in a pan of vegetable stock in my working break. We’re sorry for the lack of posts lately, I have two big deadlines on Friday and Petra is the same for next week. We hope to be posting more very soon, in the mean time have a great week!

Hi guys, It's our first video so bear with us! We would love to hear your suggestions and impressions so feel free to comment either on tumblr or on youtube.  Promotional Code: N5VF2DWD

This is something I do when I have no time, no energy or no food in my fridge. I know there are tons and tons of recipes for pea soup all over the internet, but this is the version that works best for me. Being the healthy-minded gal I am, I don't add any double-cream or soft cheese in it as I think the soup really doesn't need it. Plus, adding double-cream would just soften the flavours and that just isn't my style.

All you need for this radioactive-looking soup is:

1 Tbsp of olive oil

1 clove garlic

1/2 onion

200g of frozen peas

300ml of hot chicken stock (or vegetable stock)

salt, black pepper

Mint leaf

First, heat the oil in a saucepan and then add to it a nicely chopped onion and garlic. When its all golden and soft, shovel in those frozen green peas and pour the hot chicken stock over it. Wait for to boil and then pour the whole thing into a blender. If you don't have one, don't panic, a hand blender will do the trick as well. Now, advice for the not-so-technical people, do not put the whole lid on the blender! As the soup is hot it produces a lot of steam that has to go somewhere and when you close its only escape route and start blending the soup will just explode all over your kitchen. (believe me, it's not pretty)

Instead, cover the top of the blender with a tissue or a clean cloth when blending. Plus, if you want to prevent any accidental splashes of green on the kitchen walls, switch the blender on one speed and just keep it going until it's nice and smooth.

Now pour it into a nice bowl and make it look posh by adding a mint leaf. Seeeerve and enjoy!

So simple, so delicious. Until next time my foodies, Petra

Czech bread is, like every other traditional Czech food, very dense and filling.  A few bites will stuff your tummy for hours.  And don’t worry about the calories; you will work them off when making the bread. I promise this Czech bread that will make your mouth go wet.

You don’t need many ingredients.

5 cups of flour: bread flour works the best 

2.5 cups of tepid water

1 Tbs of caraway seeds

2 Tsp of salt

1/2 Tsp of sugar

1 pack of quick-rising yeast

Start by mixing half a cup of warm water, sugar and yeast and wait about 15 minutes for the mixture to rise.

Then add in 1 cup of flour and stir it well medieval style = with a wooden spatula or spoon.

Add 2 Tsp of salt to the rest of the water and add it to your lovely looking mixture together with the rest of the flour. Now enjoy about 5 minutes of mixing labor until you have something you would be happy to call a dough.  If 5 minutes is not enough for you, feel free to torture your arm to the extent of your full satisfaction. Remember, the more you stir the better the bread will be!

To add to our bread a bit of something you can pick out of your teeth hours after you have a slice of it, mix in caraway seeds. 

Now, just scrape down the sides of the bowl and let it stand in a warm place for about 2 hours. If you feel fancy, cover it with a clean dish cloth but be sure your dough have enough space to rise and won’t stick to it. Otherwise, just put a cling film over it.

Go do some productive stuff.

Come back to the kitchen and dust a clean counter with a bit of flour.

Flour your hands, take the squishy dough out of the bowl and knead it like you mean it for about 8 minutes.

If you feel that the dough is a bit too clingy and doesn't want to let go of you, just keep adding a little bit of flour. But don’t over-flour it.

Next, give it some rest. Just tuck it under a plastic wrap and sing it a lullaby. About 10 minutes should be enough; we don’t want it to get lazy.

After 10 minutes, give it a fierce wake-up call by kneading it until it’s smooth and elastic.  This should take about 5 – 7 minutes or more, depending on your arm strength.  For the masochistic types among us, just knead it until your arms feel numb and then some more! Remember, this is the part where you can burn the most calories.

Then, give it some shape. Round would probably work the best.

If you have a rimless baking sheet cover it with parchment paper, dust it with flour and place your dough creation on it. If not, just take whatever baking bowl you have,  butter it, flour it and then place your aspiring bread on it.

I like to make a cross on the top of the dough with a sharp knife as it makes the bread look prettier.  But if you aren't the cross type, you can either leave it or carve on there whatever you like.

Finally, sift some more flour over it to give it some colour and texture. Now, give it some rest AGAIN! Approximately 1-2hours. The dough should spring back slowly when you press a fingertip into it.

Preheat the oven to 220ºC and put in some ice cubes to create a Swedish-sauna-like environment that will create the amazing bread crust you can break your teeth on.

Put the dough in for about 30 – 40 minutes until it has browny color, sort of like the skin colour of people from Jersey Shore.

Resist the temptation to open the oven during baking. Staring at the baking magic though the glass is permitted though. 

When satisfied with the colour and look of your product, take it out of the oven and let it cool for at least 1hour. 

Carve yourself a slice and try not to be tempted to eat the whole thing there and then.

Czech people say that when a girl can cook/bake, she can get married. Although this statement says more about Czech culture than about Czech cooking I think of it this way: if your version of this bread is edible, there is nothing in the world you wouldn't be able to do. Let us know how your bread turned out! 

I've brought in my housemate Petra to help me run this blog and hopefully keep it updated more often.  She plans to post recipes from her Czech homeland and we are considering posting video recipes as well as showing what we buy from the food market.

Towards the end of my second year, I began to get desperate to go back home where vermin don't run around the loft and having an oven that doesn't break down every few months. My homesickness was also born out of a desire to go back to simpler times without looming graduation and the "real world" seeming so very close and, since time travel is currently not available, I turned to the next best thing - an old family recipe.

"Chucka" was invented when I was very young, when it was just my mum looking after us and we didn't have a lot of money. It more or less involves chucking in the week's leftovers into a pan of pasta and tinned tomatoes and it was pretty much the only way I would eat vegetables at that age. 

It brought back so many memories, I love the way that food can do that, how a taste or a smell of something can instantly take you back to somewhere wonderful like how fish markets remind me of holidays in Thailand at the age of 6 and 7. I'm also very keen to put this on my website as it's a perfect recipe for students at the end of their budget and, after having most of my loan stolen by card thieves (which I was quickly given back), I was very short on funds. 

Here's how I made it for one: 

400g tin of chopped or plum tomatoes (preferably one with herbs for extra flavour)

75g pasta (my sister says that farfalle is the best for this recipe but I've made it with penne)

1 clove of garlic, crushed or thinly sliced

50g frozen peas

1 handful of mushrooms, sliced

2 rashers unsmoked back bacon cut into lardons

1 onion, sliced

Oil for frying

Pinch of mixed herbs (optional if you're unable to find tinned tomatoes with them)

Boil the pasta and peas according to the packet instructions and while this is cooking (as it normally takes 10-15 minutes) prepare your vegetables and bacon. Heat the oil in a frying pan and add your bacon and fry on a medium heat for 3 minutes (regularly moving it around the pan to avoid burning) before adding the mushrooms, onions and garlic and cooking until the onions are soft and the mushrooms are soft. Once the pasta and peas are done, drain the water and combine with the mushrooms, garlic, onions and bacon. Heat up the tomatoes until they're just starting to bubble and pour over the pasta, season and serve!

Taste - 9/10 I'm totally biased here, I grew up with this recipe so I'm completely happy with it, tasted just like mama's! 

I wonder how many food bloggers out there do this on a regular basis, for me it's almost every meal!

I'm sure you've noticed that the cold weather is drawing in and bringing with it almost-constant rain so recently I've been thinking about warm desserts. I normally have a pot of yoghurt with a bit of honey drizzled in when I get a sweet tooth but I've been craving something warm and, let's be honest, more satisfying so when I spotted a recipe for baked apples, I knew I'd found my calling. I bought a pack of two Bramley apples and some raisins from my corner shop to experiment with and fished out the bag of light muscovado sugar I'd bought in second year to make truffles with (which never happened because I can't seem to stop eating the chocolate before the cooking takes place) and got busy. Firstly preheat the oven to 180°C then mix a matchbox-sized piece of butter with 2 tablespoons of light muscovado sugar, 1 tsp nutmeg or cinnamon and a handful of raisins. Next, using an apple corer or a knife, remove the centre of the apple (my knife skills aren't much to write home about so mine was square) and fill the apple with the mixture, placing it on the middle shelf of the oven for 20 minutes or until the apple is soft. I served mine with a dollop of yoghurt, honey and a final sprinkle of muscovado sugar and voila, ready to eat!

I tried hummus for the first time at one of my very best friends' house, it was absolutely delicious, I looked it up at home and was surprised at how quick and easy to make, perfect for lunch between classes. I found tahini paste in my university shop and knew I had to try making it. For me, it's the lemon juice that makes this taste so good because I'm not fond of overly nutty tastes so make sure you add the correct amount. Here's how I made it:

400g canned chickpeas

1 or 2 cloves garlic, crushed

Juice from one large lemon (massage it for 30 seconds before squeezing to get the most out of it)

1 tbsp tahini paste

Pinch of salt 

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp chickpea water

Sprinkle of paprika

Drain the chickpeas, saving some of the water, and pour them into a food processor (or a bowl if you're hand mashing/using a stick blender). Add the garlic, lemon juice, tahini and salt. Heat the oil and chickpea water without boiling then add it to the chickpeas. Blitz everything until it becomes a somewhat smooth paste, spoon into a bowl, drizzle with more oil and sprinkle with paprika - done!

Taste 7/10 This is amazing to eat with breadsticks and if you like the shop bought stuff, I promise you'll love this!