My Favourite Winter Recipes

I love food. I love going out to restaurants with friends, and I love cooking at home, for just me and my partner or for a large group. I’m so obsessed that my Canadian friend calls me Betty Crocker and my sister calls me Martha Stewart, so apparently I am a middle-aged woman in a twenty year old’s body.

I wasn’t always this way; when I started University I was pretty much cooking-phobic and relied on ready-meals and the offer of ‘will wash up if you feed me’ to get by. However, over time I started experimenting and cooking new things.

With winter approaching, I thought I would share my favourite winter recipes. This is food designed to suit cold winter nights when you are knackered from doing coursework and just want something delicious but simple for dinner.

Impromptu visit to Ghandi in Portswood after a four hour lecture

A bonus of these recipes is that they can be made gluten-free, something that I do regularly so that my gluten-intolerant friends can join us for dinner.

Wholemeal Bread 

I just adore homemade bread; it tastes better than store-bought and kneading bread is a great stress reliever. I buy Sainsbury’s own wholemeal bread flour and just follow the recipe on the back. It produces great tasting bread every time. If you like seeded bread, Sainsbury’s sell seed packets that you can add to the dough, or if you want a slightly different taste, substitute half the flour with buckwheat flour for a rich, nutty bread, or strong white flour for a lighter taste. If you are going to make bread, remember to use warm water and find the warmest place in your house to leave it to rise (I put mine on top of the radiator).

My homemade bread

Leek and Potato Soup 

This is one of Jamie Oliver’s recipes, so full credit to him! All the ingredients can be bought from the market on campus on a Monday and the soup can be frozen once cooked to enjoy later since this recipe serves four. Plus, this is dairy and gluten free so perfect for everyone! Though I will warn you, if you don’t have a very large pan, try halving the recipe to make enough for two. I’ve also put the rough amounts of the ingredients for those who don’t have kitchen scales.

Ingredients: 

2 Carrots
2 Sticks Celery
2 Medium white onions
400g Leeks (two leeks)
2 cloves garlic
400g potatoes (two medium size cooking potatoes, I like Maris Piper)
Olive oil
2 chicken or vegetable stock cubes
Salt and pepper to taste

Method: 

1. Chop and peel all your ingredients into quite small pieces (if you don’t have a blender, the size of the pieces will be the size of the chunks in the soup, so cut them as you would want to eat them!), set the potato aside.

2. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a very large pan over a high heat until a piece of onion dropped in sizzles when it touches the oil.

3. Throw all your chopped ingredients, except the potato into the pan, stir, and leave with the lid askew for about ten minutes. The veg should soften and it will look like there’s about half the amount that you originally put in.

4. Put the stock cubes in 1.8 litres of boiling water and stir until dissolved.

 5. Add this to the pan and chuck the potatoes in. Season with a good amount of salt and pepper.

 6. Bring to the boil (just leave it on high heat) and then once boiling reduce the heat and let it simmer for 10-20 minutes (depends on how desperate you are for dinner at that point), give it a good stir and check that the potatoes are soft and cooked all the way through.

7. Tadaa - and finished! If you have a food processor or a hand blender you can blend it until smooth if you like, or just serve as is.

My leek and potato soup and homemade bread 

Homemade Pizza 

Okay so this isn’t really a winter dish BUT it’s super quick, tasty, and a great way to use up any leftover ingredients at the end of the week, because you can put basically anything on a pizza and it will be good. Thanks to the base I use this feeds two.

Ingredients: 

For the Sauce:

Half a can of chopped tomatoes
One tablespoon of tomato puree
1 clove garlic (crushed or chopped)
Mixed herbs to taste (or paprika and cayenne if you want to go spicy)

For the Pizza topping: 

Whatever you like, I use:
Sweetcorn
Grilled Chicken
Bacon Red Pepper
Half a red chilli
Ham
Cheese
BBQ Sauce

Base: 

I use ready roll puff pastry because it makes for a really light base to hold the toppings, though you can buy ready-made pizza bases.

Ingredients for the pizza ready to go 

Method: 

1. Heat the oven to 200 degrees (fan)

2. Pre-cook any raw meat (bacon and chicken)

3. Make your sauce by simply mixing the ingredients together in a bowl

4. Place puff pastry on a baking tray and cook on its own for 10 minutes until its puffed up and slightly brown on top

5. Remove from the oven and cover in your chosen toppings (after I put mine on I add some BBQ sauce because it’s the best)

6. Place back in the oven and cook for another 10-20 minutes (will vary depending on how good the oven is and what ingredients you have on top) until the pastry edges are light brown in colour.

7. Remove from oven, garnish with salad if you like (I love adding fresh spinach).

 The final product 

If you are feeling really adventurous, why not try cooking a roast dinner for your friends before you all leave for the Christmas break? This works best as a group effort, however if you want to try it on your own you will need about four hours and in my case a lot of help over the phone from my mum.

My first roast dinner (including regular and gluten free Yorkshire puddings) 

Dessert! I adore Polenta cake and fully recommend Nigella’s recipe 

I hope these recipes keep you warm and fuelled over the next few weeks!

Emma

A week of celebrations

It’s always nice to take a break from studying, assignments and project work, especially when you have something to celebrate. In the last week I’ve had several excuses to put my work away and enjoy time with friends, leaving me feeling very refreshed!

Last Saturday was, of course, Valentine’s Day and my girlfriend came down to Southampton to celebrate it. Although we had a table booked for dinner in the evening, it didn’t stop us going to the local ice cream parlour for lunch. The venue had been decorated in Valentine flair, with heart-shaped balloons and roses on the tables, which made our indulgent lunch feel very romantic! Afterwards we attended a matinee showing of Romeo & Juliet at the Nuffield Theatre on our Highfield Campus.

The play was put on by the Students' Union Theatre Group and featured a very talented cast, including fellow Life at Southampton blogger Robin! I have seen several shows that the society have put on over the years, but this was easily the most impressive, helped massively by the lighting, sound and set capabilities of the Nuffield Theatre.

Looking forward to a chocolate covered waffle! 

In the evening we headed down to Oxford Street in the heart of Southampton’s Old Town. The street is dominated by high quality restaurants, all of which were busy with couples enjoying their Valentine’s Day meals. We had booked a table at a restaurant which does traditional – but exquisite! - British food. The evening was the perfect end to a very romantic day, but ordering puddings after the main was probably the wrong move!

Dressed up for a romantic evening together. 

On Tuesday I celebrated Pancake Day with my housemates. We had prepared three batches of batter – two English-style, and one American. I ate the English pancakes with chopped bananas and biscuit spread, whilst the American ones I topped with crispy bacon and golden syrup – a combination that works surprisingly well! As usual Pancake Day quickly turned into a pancake flipping competition, with each of us awarding scores out of ten like it was an Olympic sport! At some point it became Physicists versus Engineers (since there are two of each in our house), but the outcome was uncertain – looks like we’ll just have to organise a rematch!

The house celebrations continued with Chinese New Year, with our housemate of Singaporean heritage cooking up his best egg fried rice for all of us, as has become the tradition. It’s a shame that we don’t get to cook together more often as a house, because when we do we always have a great time. Maybe after the end of exams in the summer we can have another Come Dine With Me competition, like we did at the start of the year. However, this would mean potentially risking my title as winner of the competition!

The final cause for celebration came with the release of exam results on the same day as Chinese New Year. I’m pleased to say I got the grades that I wanted, which is the perfect reward for all the time that I spent revising over the Christmas break.

I now have one final semester to complete and hopefully I will be celebrating again in the summer when I come to graduate!

James