Ready steady cook
It’s a little gem, with a ton of useful advice for novice cooks and students who were just about to embark on the challenge of feeding themselves for the first time. It has lots of yummy, simple recipes, exciting enough to steer anyone interested in real food away from pot noodles.
Now there’s a sequel, Beyond Baked Beans Green: Real Veggie Food for students. Like its forerunner, this is an unpatronising cookbook that treats students as adults, taking account of the fact that many have travelled and eaten widely.
Many of the recipes are suitable for vegans and the dairy-intolerant, including pink coconut rice and mango salad with mint and lime sugar. Beckett also realises that some vegetarians will miss meat and tackles this issue by including recipes and ingredients that are satisfyingly savoury, like the Sunday (or any day) roast and portabella mushroom “steaks” with garlic and parsley butter.
The book is divided into three main sections depending on a student’s experience, how much time they have to cook and who they are cooking for.
SOLO is for beginners, those living on their own or in halls with limited cooking equipment. The emphasis is on quick meals like the Take a Tin recipes based on tins of pulses and beans.
SHARING is for those cooking for fellow students in a student house and includes recipes designed to appeal to veggies and non-veggies alike, such as harvester’s pie, roast Mediterranean vegetable pasta bake, and homage to the spicy beanburger.
SHOW OFF is for the more ambitious student who wants to display their newfound cooking skills. It includes three themed menus: Eat Italian, Go Greek and Try Thai, as well as an aphrodisiac dinner for two.
There is a also a section entitled BAKING THERAPY for the nostalgic and homesick, which includes crunchy nut flapjacks and proper old-fashioned chocolate cake like your gran used to make.
The book also has plenty of practical, down-to-earth advice about shopping, equipment and health and safety issues.
Last year Beckett launched a student food and drink website - www.beyondbakedbeans.com - which was recently listed in the Independent’s 50 best websites for foodies as one of the eight best for “recipes, chat and reference”.
Beckett is an expert on student food - she has been a student herself (twice) and has been on the receiving end of numerous calls from her four children (calls which still go on now) quizzing her about how to cook everything from noodles to roast potatoes.
She was voted food journalist of the year by the British Guild of Foodwriters in 2002 and writes for a whole bunch of food magazines as well as putting in regular appearances on TV and radio. Below are some recipes from her book.
Beyond Baked Beans Greenby Fiona BeckettAbsolute Press; €13.40.
