Goodbye Crappy Uni Lunches!

Our saviour has arrived.
Soup, leftovers, pasta salad? Oh yeah.

Soup-er Simple

I may have small obsession with soups right now. And it's true, I may be making one as I type this. But who doesn't love soup? It's cheap, very healthy and soup-er (I'll stop that) easy to make.

You can customise them and completely make them your own. I've been batch cooking them and keeping them in the freezer, ready to zap when needed. I've also made a great habit of using up whatever is in the fridge in my soups before it goes bad.

Here's how to make a quick and easy soup -

• Chop up one or two onions, and crush 2 or 3 garlic cloves. (We LOVE onion and garlic, the more, the better.)
• Grab your pan with a shot of oil and place on a medium heat.
• Stick on the kettle, making sure that it's full as possible.
• Throw in your onion and garlic whilst you chop up the main ingredients for your soup.
• Throw them in the pan with a stock cube and cover with the just boiled water from your kettle.
• Bring it all to the boil and then let it simmer for around 15 minutes, depending on how tough the veg is.
• Take it off of the heat and blend it up. 

Smoooooth, or chunky, it's entirely up to you. That's all you have to do.

This week my freezer has been filled with soups of a few varieties: Red Pepper and Roasted Tomato (as the name suggests, you're better off roasting your tomatoes if you don't want to take all of the skins off) - fresh tasting and extremely light at around 70 kcal, Broccoli, Yellow Pepper, Bacon and Cheddar (creamy, meaty, silky!) at 176 kcal and today's offering of Carrot and Corriander at 80 kcal.

A portion size is quite generous at approximately 300 ml, so you can't really go wrong, especially when they're so filling!

Broccoli, Yellow Pepper, Bacon and Cheddar soup

I also branched out today and made a non-soup-related culinary creation. Creation is probably a polite way of saying disaster. A meaty sarnie dreamt up in a day-dream, I couldn't get it out of my head so I just had to recreate it. It was a small off-shoot of a bigger dream that I have, to one day own a mobile street-food eatery.

Imagine a big kitchen that you could really work your magic in, complete with the street-foodie's best friend; a huge grill-press (think George Foreman grills but a more industrial size).

Now think of 2 slices of thickly cut, dark and grainy bread. The first spread with a layer of refried beans, a great portion of chilli con carne, a generous sprinkling or cheese and then topped with the second, heated throughout and grilled to perfection.

Okay, so forget the previous specification and replace dark and grainy bread with white farmhouse, and the chilli con carne with normal bolognese (with a little more than a hint of chilli, my hand slipped when I was cooking it, okay?) and well, we were pretty spot on with the refried beans. Apart from they were kidney beans, and also had a small (but lovely and sweet) chilli hit - Ooh, sooo close.

Oh, and remember that grill? Replace that with a budget one from your local department store, good for your average cheese toastie but a bit on the small side...

The 'Frankenstein'

So my intention was a sandwich that was meaty, warming, satisfying - just plain good. And without sounding too bloody big-headed, it was. It just wasn't so aesthetically pleasing. In my big café pipe dream  I was gonna give it some corny name, like "Genesis", you know the beginning, as it was my first creation but I've decided that "Frankenstein" would possibly more appropriate...

Food, Friends and Frantic Essay Writing

If you want to spend some quality time with a friend, then cook for them. Wow them. Talk about your skills, your recipes and then any gossip you've missed.
I'd invited a friend and her husband (husband, how grown up does that sound?) for dinner with me and Sam and served up a simple red pepper and roasted tomato soup with ciabatta loaves, pork and chorizo sausages and a side salad.
My partner in crime and assistant chef, Sam, tackled the sausages and if I'm perfectly honest (with absolutely zero bias) they were the best part of the meal. The chorizo gave the pork mince a whole new dimension and turned sausage meat into a slightly spicy experience which warmed up the meal and seemed to waltz in your mouth (as oppose to mosh in your mouth, which sometimes happens when you attempt to heat things up a little too much!)
Ciabatta soaked up a simple soup that hit the spot. I firmly believe that most of the time, simplicity is key.
It was so easy, all I did was roast some red peppers in the oven with a splash of olive oil for an hour. When they were finished, I popped the kettle on, sweated an onion, 3 garlic cloves and chopped up my red peppers and threw those in there too. Then, I poured my boiling water on the veg just until it was covered and (asked Sam) sprinkled a vegetable stock cube in to the pan. I brought it to the boil, let it simmer for 15 minutes and then whizzed it with my stick blender.
Red peppers are naturally very sweet which married perfectly with the acid tomato and warm chorizo. Altogether, it was a bit more of a rave on my mouth, buzzin'.
I made sure that I made more than what was needed so I could throw some in the freezer for when I was feeling lazy/pressed for time. Which I anticipate will be quite often as uni is back in full swing. It's going to be a tough term so it was lovely to just chill out over a bowl of soup before all the hard work begins.
It's not all doom and gloom though, Sam had last weekend off which somehow turned into some form of Asian-fusion weekend. Starting off with another great Wagamamas lunch on Saturday and then making our very own katsu curry and sushi rolls on the Sunday, once again, Sam shined and made some pretty perfect looking sushi rolls. Asian food is tasty and pretty damn healthy, I should attempt it more often but I think I'll stick to simple salad and soup for a while.