Fiona Beckett - The Ultimate Student Cookbook

TO SIG, GUY AND JAMES:

THREE GREAT COOKS OF THE FUTURE.

I am a totally self-taught chef. I was very lucky that I fell in love with food and cooking at a young age and subsequently had boundless natural energy and enthusiasm in the kitchen. Looking back at my early kitchen days, I think that there were three things that helped me immensely: having an inquisitive mind, confidence in the kitchen and possessing a general sense of fun with cooking and eating. Many of us will shy away from cooking because of the lack of one or more of these attributes.

This book will help to build all of these. For the inquisitive cook, there is no-nonsense information that will make the recipes easier and help to develop confidence. The book is lively, vibrant and accessible. It radiates a great sense of fun and above all, does all of this on a budget. What more could a student want?

Its six years now since Absolute Press published my first student cookery book Beyond Baked Beans. Thanks to a surprise serialisation in the Guardian it became an instant best seller, for one brief glorious moment outstripping the celebrity chef cookbooks to top the food book charts. I think the secret of its success was that unlike most of the cookbooks out there it didnt talk down to students or assume they spent their time consuming bizarre throwbacks to the 1970s (like tuna bakes topped with crisps). Its always been my view that if you can write an essay you can follow a recipe.

In the intervening years two other books appeared: Beyond Baked Beans Green (for veggies, obviously) and Beyond Baked Beans Budget, focussing more on the student who was cooking for his- or herself. There has also been a website, www.beyondbakedbeans.com, and, more recently, a Facebook page where students have been able to upload their own tips, videos and recipes (with a little encouragement in the form of a rewards points scheme and assorted lavish prizes).

As a result of all this, weve learnt a lot about students that busts open the popular Young Ones stereotype. Mainly that you are no different from the rest of the population just more hard up, with worse cooking facilities. Some wont go near a cooker for their entire university career, others really want to eat healthily and are prepared to make the lets face it, not massive effort to do so. They enjoy cooking, enjoy being in the kitchen, enjoy sitting round a table and sharing food with friends. This book is for you.

Were fortunate this past year to have stumbled on three brilliant students who fall into just that category (see opposite) and who gave us the inspiration for this book: a compilation of the most popular recipes from the Beyond Baked Beans series along with their own favourite recipes. Theyve also commented throughout on my recipes, adding tips and often witty observations of their own which makes this a unique book, combining the experience of an established cookery writer (me, in case you were wondering!) with on-the-ground experience of three current students.

Weve also as the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted finally got some flashy food photography, brilliantly executed by the lovely Matt and Andrea, which shows that student food doesnt have to be drab food.

Finally, were more than a little proud to have the endorsement of Heston Blumenthal, a role model for all of us: a self-taught chef who has brought the lab into the kitchen and a sense of irreverent fun and playfulness to the hitherto starchy world of Michelin-starred cuisine. (Sig has been lucky enough to work with him, hence her learned treatise on making your own ice cream on pages .)

I hope, if youre coming to cooking for the first time, this book will ignite a passion for food and give you confidence. If youre a more experienced cook, I hope you will use it as a base to branch out from and experiment. Either way, I hope you will develop a love for cooking that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

FIONA BECKETT

July 2009

ESPECIALLY THESE THREE....

Since standing on a stool as a young boy, helping his mother cook and licking cake mixture off a wooden spoon, 23-year-old Yorkshireman James Ramsden has always been obsessed by cooking and food. In 2004, he went to Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland before starting his own catering company, The Hungry Caterpillar, honing the modern rustic, western European style that he loves. He has worked in France and Italy, both as chef and gardener, and has now finished his final year at Bristol University, studying, unsurprisingly, French and Italian. He writes The Larder Lout cookery blog (www.thelarderlout.blogspot.com), and has also written on food for Sainsburys Magazine.

Guy Millon is a 21-year-old just-graduated psychology student at the University of Nottingham. He starts his MSc in October 2009. He grew up travelling around Europe with his food-writer-and-photographer parents who instilled in him a voracious appetite for food of all kinds. For the first nineteen years of his life he experienced dining purely from a consumer stance (and consume he did!). When the time came for him to fly the proverbial nest, he realised that he must learn to craft his own meals. Together with his partner-en-crme, Claire, he learnt to cook through trial and error, aided by an indispensable custom-built recipe book inherited from his parents. He continues to film regular videos for the Beyond Baked Beans Facebook site.

Signe (Sig) Skaimsgard Johansen is 28 years old. She grew up in Oslo, the daughter of a Norwegian father and a half-British/half-American mother. At the age of eight she tasted her first piece of raw fish at her Japanese best friends house. Food has been a passion all her life; baking in particular, to which she devotes her food blog, Scandilicious (www.scandilicious.blogspot.com), and about which she learnt so much from her mother and grandmother. She trained at Leiths cookery school for a year, then moved on to freelance catering and a three-month stint as a stagire at Heston Blumenthals Fat Duck Experimental Kitchen. She has a degree in Archaeology and Anthropology from Cambridge and is studying for her MA in the Anthropology of Food from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and is hoping to continue with her PhD at SOAS.

This is what you need to get started; the crucial kit, the must-have store cupboard ingredients, smart ways to shop and eat and invaluable advice that will safeguard your equipment, accommodation and friendships.

If youve already done some cooking at home the big difference youll notice about cooking in a student kitchen is the lack of kit. Those endless bowls, pans, knives and labour-saving machines you take for granted are simply not there. At least not unless you bring them with you.

Look on the bright side if there are fewer things to cook with there are fewer things to wash up. And theres no point in acquiring too much stuff of your own or itll simply get nicked.

Obviously you cant actually cook properly unless you have the basics and if youre keen youll want to add to these. That doesnt have to cost a bomb. Chances are your parents want to chuck out some stuff anyway. Or that theyll be so anxious about how youre going to look after yourself when you leave home theyll kit you out. (You can always point out magnanimously that if they give you their old toaster/kettle/mixer they can treat themselves to a new one.)