You are soon going to flee full pelt from the loving bosom of your family, and it is best to first rob them blind. Beside all the hard studying and academic work and societies that you will no doubt throw yourself into and tell your parents about, besides all the drunken, or otherwise induced and not endorsed, debauchery which you will probably not inform them of, you will have to at some point feed yourself. Perhaps that isn’t the best way to describe the future nest feathering which your parents want to prepare you for and which you should want to take advantage of, but let’s not beat about the bush. One way to do this wanton daylight robbery is get your store-cupboard well prepared and stocked in advance. For the first week of uni you will be living off not very much, besides alcohol, which will not soothe parents minds or nerves but will form the main part of your calorific intake, and takeaways. So long as this doesn’t develop into habit and routine you’ll maintain a physique more suited to a student that an elephant. However there will be points when you will want to cook in the coming year and having a well-stocked cupboard is a serious help.
The most obvious things to bring is rice. A packet of risotto rice and plain long grain each will last the first term easily and they can be made into something delicious and nourishing very easily. Most students know how to make a risotto and having rice at the ready will mean that you will be less tempted to delve into takeaway menu. Moreover the packet will tell you how to do it as well. When you do get settled the things you buy, onions, bacon, oil, stock cubes, are all you need to have a suitable supper. Long grain is terribly good to have around. It can be eaten just plain boiled if times are very hard. This is the point of the store cupboard that when times are hard, i.e. after a night out when you bought everybody a double round of shots twice, you can still have something to eat. Not only can it serve as a prisoner of war style staple it can also be fried up in a stir fry once it has been cooked to provide something which is more than just edible. This is an imprecise recipe, better will most certainly follow; Chop some vegetables, a carrot, spring onions, a pepper, why not?, and perhaps some meat, any meat just slice it fine, fry them in a hot pan with a little oil. The meat first then then the carrots and then everything else should go into the pan as the former ingredient begins to look more cooked. When everything is cooked add however much rice you want to eat and fry that until it has got mixed through with all the other ingredients. It’s a simple supper and cheap, though not necessarily something to look forward to. It will taste good and when you sit down to eat it you will think this is something I have made and it is good. Contentment must follow or perhaps just resignation to the actual banality of student life. Just don’t overcrowd the pan or nothing will cook quickly or well.
Served plain, rice can happily accompany a curry. You will never be able to produce a real curry. It will never really taste as it does in an Indian or Bangladeshi restaurant or takeaway however when the weather is cold and you want something which will warm your very marrow a homemade curry is a real treat. A large packet of curry powder is always useful to have, not just for making a curry but for adding some spirit into a particularly bland casserole or maybe for dusting over some cutlets before frying to give them an added level of flavour. You can now procure readymade curry pastes which are also a great help in adding a much needed kick up the arse for something bland and in making a curry actually taste of something.
Noodles, too are good served with curry. If you get dried ones they will last well and are very versatile as come to think of it are the other variety you can buy in their vacuum packs. A restorative noodle broth can be a life saver and a damn sight better than any pot of dehydrated muck. A teaspoon of creamed coconut and another of the curry paste, half a stock cube, a handful of noodles, and some chopped carrot, greens, and spring onion with a quarter of a litre of boiling water all boiled together for however long it takes for the noodles to be cooked is a miracle worker for colds and other ills. A bottle of soy sauce is helpful in these endeavours. Whilst a packet of creamed coconut is a great money saver. Cooking for one means that a whole can of coconut milk is often too much but a dessertspoon of creamed coconut mixed with enough hot water will make enough coconut milk for the occasion. Moreover it is also magnificent in cakes.
If you are particularly fond of curries it might be prudent to bring some tins of chickpeas. They can make a little meat go rather a lot further which is always a good thing for the impoverished, and they can make a particularly enjoyable curry on their own if all else fails or if you’re a vegetarian which falls under the former category. A chickpea curry can be made entirely with the contents of the cupboard which when done is in bizarre way satisfying. Fry some curry paste and or powder in a little oil with half a chopped onion just into discs about as thick as a pound coin , or a whole one the other half always seems to get binned anyway. As you go along you will find that if you cook you would do well to have a supply of onions. When the onion is soft add the drained chickpeas, coat in the oil and then pour in water enough to cover them. Add a dessertspoon of creamed coconut and bring to the boil. When it has boiled turn down to a simmer with the lid on and leave for half an hour. Stir occasionally. You could add halfway in a handful of washed rice to bulk it out, if you do so be careful that it doesn’t catch on the bottom of the pan. I am too lazy to boil rice separately. Moreover I find that my or anybody else’s curries are often not thick enough, to get them thick you have to use an inordinate amount of onions and puree them (I do not have the willpower to chop and peel half a dozen onions for one meal, to create more washing in using a blender and to have at the end something which would never be as good as I would have hoped) to kill two birds with one stone add the rice to the curry, it will thicken it and if you’re careful all will be well. If you have a slow cooker, which I advocate highly along with a hand-blender, there is no risk of burning the thing.
Other useful tins to have are plain beans such as haricot and butter beans which can go into a stew, or as an accompaniment. Fry some bacon cubed in a little butter a small teaspoon will be enough, (butter is a kind and useful thing, it is a comfort and a joy, it enriches food in flavour and colour, use it) then add some sliced onion and carrot and celery. Celery if you enjoying picking at things is good to have about. Add the drained tin of beans and mix coating the beans with the fat, pour over enough water to leave the top layer of beans on show. Simmer carefully, stirring gently occasionally, they’ll be done when the food it’s to be served with is cooked. Serve with any grilled, roasted or fried meat. So start the beans off first then do the meat. This is much more rewarding that plain boiled rice. Canned tomatoes are a necessity. They add flavour and texture and thicken so many things, stews, sauces, soups etc. I needn’t tell you that they will prove a back bone of your cookery. As will Pasta. Buy whatever you find that you eat. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, bought me a two kilo bag of fusilli, I had and have never eaten fusilli pasta, it is as far as I know having been donated to the food bank sitting in somebody else’s cupboard waiting for some occasion for someone to say “Do you know what I really what, what I crave and desire, what I must have? I must consume fusilli!” This will never happen I’m sure. Instead buy whatever it is eat you will eat. If you consume fusilli willingly then buy that awful, loathsome thing and enjoy. Christ help you I can’t. Dried, it goes without saying for the store cuboard; tagliatelle bought in balls is very useful being already portioned and suitable for most sauces. Its delicious served with a sauce based around dried mushrooms. A small pot will last a long time, you can buy in bulk from Chinese supermarkets. Boil a litre of water. Put a few mushrooms strands into a bowl and pour in a large glug of water, the rest goes into a saucepan for the pasta. Wait five minutes for the mushrooms to be rehydrated, in a frying pan fry the mushrooms in a dessertspoon of butter. When you put the mushrooms into the frying pan put the pasta into the saucepan. As the mushrooms start to get crispy, add the juice in the bowl and boil hard and fast. When the liquid is substantially reduced, almost syrupy turn the heat down and add if you have it a little cream. It is advisable to buy cream and freeze it in ingredient sized portions. If you don’t it will be fine anyway. The sauce can be improved with some fried bacon at the start with some onion.
Pasta is the student staple because it is easy, but there is something even easier out there; Couscous. It is a kind thing, it wants of little and repays so much. Take with you some dried fruit and nuts, put a pinch of them in with a handful of couscous and pour over boiling water to cover, you will in five minutes have something which is edible on its own but a great foil for anything. Add a little honey, olive oil, salt and pepper and you will have a couscous salad which repays the very little effort expounded. Add some halved cherry tomatoes and you’ll have something which could be a meal.
We have yet to touch upon the sweeter things in life in depth. Honey as mentioned is good to have around, for Asian cooking as well as sweet things. Jam is always good to have, spread on toast, over porridge, on its own on a sad day it will help. Oats for porridge are also good to have about the place. A small bag is enough if you don’t really eat the stuff, but it is nice to have some about since porridge is actually a miracle cure for the really god-awful hangovers which last two days and demand pity. Nutella always gets eaten.
That is really the basics covered for a simple but effective store-cupboard, if you find that you eat less pasta and more rice there is nothing to say buy more rice. The idea is to go to uni with a supply of things which will be helpful in maintaining your continued existence. If you buy most of the things in this list you will have the ingredients to just about manage that. Your parents might indeed have a lighter wallet but when they drop you off they’ll feel better for knowing that you shouldn’t stave.