Ready, Steady, Cook!

cson

This is my prospective Pulse cooking guide, I'm posting it up here before I polish it off and if anyone has any suggestions they'd be appreciated. The prices for some of the stuff is off the top of my head so that'll need clarification. Anyway.....




The floor has become a rich concoction of pizza boxes and Subway wrappers. You side step the sticky bit near the cooker as you make your way to the table. ULSU chicken roll papers have started forming the basis of a tablecloth. You're pretty sure that the garlic and cheese on your Superdine chips from 4 nights ago wasn't royal blue in colour and that chicken burger you took two bites out of is looking mighty tempting right now. Is it wine or chicken burgers that get better with age? You can't quite remember.

The longing for those home cooked meals. Nourishment @ Mammy's, Michelin starred as far as you're concerned. How does a cooker work? Where does one purchase food? Fear not, for we at Pulse Towers have put together 5 meals for €5 which will leave you asking "please sir, can I have some more?"



1. Spaghetti Bolognese

I don't exaggerate when I say it's impossible to survive 4 years of college without knowing how to cook this dish. Cheap and cheerful it's formed the backbone of the diet of almost every college student this country has produced since... well forever. While the name conjures up exotic images of Tuscany, the real beauty of it is the simplicity. Here's how to do it;



Buy

Angus Steak Mince - 3.99

Spaghetti - 0.95

Specially Selected Pasta Sauce - 0.99

Grated Chedder - 1.99

Onion - 0.35



All Aldi; Total: 8.27 - serves 2.



Cook

Ok so we have the ingredients. Well, most of them. Three special ingredients we're going to leave in your hands; firstly try and rob some olive oil from home. Secondly check the herb cupboard at home for some parsley. Lastly buy yourself a bottle of white wine - we're only going to need half a glass of it so you can figure out what to do with the rest.



Cook the spaghetti in boiling water and add a touch of salt, parsley and a spoon of olive oil. Let it cook for about 5 minutes and then get to work on cooking the mince. Chop up your onion during the 5 minutes and heat the pan to a medium heat. Add a dash of olive oil to the pan and then cook the mince in small pieces until light brown and then in order add firstly the half glass of wine, then the onions and finally the pasta sauce. Leave to cook for about another 4 minutes. Drain the spaghetti use it as a base on the plate add the mince then sprinkle a little grated chedder and give yourself a pat on the back. IT won't be long before you're doing this professionally.


2. Chicken Curry

We like to keep it simple here at Pulse and this is one of the easiest and tastiest meals you can make. Put down your chinese takeaway menu because from now on, you'll be able to cook that chicken curry yourself.



Buy

2 Chicken Fillets - 2.99

Uncle Ben's Boil-in-the-bag rice - 1.99

Uncle Ben's Chicken Curry Sauce - 1.80

1 Pepper - 0.70



All ULSU Spar; Total: 7.48 - serves 2



Cook

Add two bags of the rice to boiling water. If you're a stickler for flavour buy basmati rice instead but for the basis of this recipe we're going to stick with good old long grain white rice. Heat the pan to a medium temperature. Dice the chicken fillets into small pieces and do likewise with the pepper. Add the chicken pieces to the pan and cook until light brown, a spoon of olive oil will give us a touch of help here too. Add the peppers first and allow to simmer with the chicken for a minute. Pour in the Chicken Curry sauce and stir. Leave to cook for about 5 minutes. I should add at this point that the sauces are varied and the choice is entirely up to you. I'm quite partial to the one with winter vegetables in it. Use the rice as a base for your plate and pour the chicken curry onto it.



3. Sweet & Sour Pork

It's no wonder there's a Chinese in almost every town in Ireland. They sure do cook nice food. Pulse is very fond of their recipe's and this one in particular is oriental food at a price even the most fiscally frugal can enjoy.



Buy

3 Pork Chops - 2.99

Uncle Ben's Sweet & Sour Sauce - 1.80

Uncle Ben's Boil-in-the-bag rice - 1.99

1 pepper 0.70

1 onion 0.35

1 head of broccoli 1.65



All ULSU Spar; Total 9.48 - serves 2



Cook

"Why broccoli is one of the most dangerous plants in the world, it tries to warn you with it's horrible taste" I hear you say. Well it's a chance we'll have to take. Plenty of chopping to do here with the pork chops, pepper, onion and broccoli all requiring to be diced up into small pieces. As per the Chicken Curry place 2 bags of rice into a pot of boiling water and you can also add the diced broccoli to that pot. Add the diced pork to a medium heated pan with a dash of our old friend olive oil and cook until light brown. At this stage you can add the proceeds of your dicing with first the peppers and secondly the onions. Cook for about a minute and then pour in the sweet and sour sauce and cook for a further 5. Again using the rice as your base pour the sweet and sour over it. Getting familiar?



4. Irish Stew

You've probably had this quite a bit at home over the years. With good reason too, Mammy generally has the magic touch of combining good cooking with even better prices and Irish Stew certainly fits this category. For how to with the Stew, see below!



Buy

1 Piece Round Steak 2.99

4 Potatoes 2.69

2 Carrots 0.80

1 Parsnip 0.90

1 Packet Knorr Oxtail Soup 1.80

1 Onion 0.35



All Aldi; Total 9.53 - serves 2



Cook

Take the round steak and trim off all the fat. Cut into cubes and brown on the pan. Set aside. Plenty of chopping to do here with the carrots, parsnip and onion all needed to become small pieces. Place ingredients in a large pot, including the cooked steak. Season lightly with some of the famous stolen parsley and sautée on a low heat for a bit. Prepare the packet of Knorr Oxtail soup and add this to the pot too. Turn the heat up on high and when you reach the boil, lower and simmer until the potatoes and carrots are tender. It should take about 30 minutes. One of the most satisfying meals you can cook by just plonking all the ingredients into a large pot and watching Home & Away for half an hour.



5. Baked Potato

Your ancestors survived on potatoes and so will you! This is a pretty new recipe for us at Pulse having only come into common usage courtesy of a banging meal of the aforementioned served to us whilst on a sojourn in the USA. I believe the local expression is; It's damn good.



Buy

4 Potatoes - 2.69 (Use from the same potato's previous recipe and they're free!)

6 Thick cut rashers 2.99

Grated Chedder 1.99

1 tin sweetcorn 0.60



All Aldi; Total 8.27 - serves 2



Cook

Prick the potatoes with a fork, sprinkle with a little bit of Salt and Pepper (just to add flavour to the skins). If you have a metal skewer for bbqing etc, push that through the centre of the potato. This will ensure that the middle of the potato cooks as well as the outer bits. Otherwise prick the outside of the potato with a fork. Wrap the potatoes in tin foil and cook in the oven at 180-200 for and hour. If you'd like crispy skins, take the tinfoil off for the last 10 minutes. Cut the rashers into pieces and cook on a pan for about 5 minutes. Cut the potatoes length way and then fill with the rashers, grated cheese and sweetcorn.





And should you come into some money, like winning the lotto for instance, here is Pulse's splash out and splurge mega-fun-super-happy delicious dish.



Fillet Steak

Oh yes. Steak. In it's purest form. Should you ever find yourself in an upmarket eaterie one of these baby's will burn a hole in your wallet to the tune of at least 30 notes. Courtesy of your favourite magazine you'll be able to have it at half that price.



Buy

1 Large Fillet Steak - 9.00

1 Onion 0.35

2 Mushrooms 0.80

1 Bag oven chips 2.99

1 Packet pepper sauce 1.80



All Superquinn; Total 14.94 - serves 1



Cook

The crux of the matter is how you like your steak done. Personally, medium suits me perfectly - a little pinkness on the inside gives a lovely flavour. In any case the steak needs to be cooked at a medium temperature and I emphasise this, even if you like a well done steak you'll only burn the outside of it by turning up the heat. Chop up the onions and mushrooms. Add the steak to the pan and cook for 4 minutes on each side, then add the diced onions and mushrooms and cook for a further 2 minutes on each side. Cook the oven chips as per the instructions on the bag and do likewise when making the pepper sauce. Serve as you wish.



So there are 6 recipes all relatively simple and cheap to cook. God forbid should this College lark ever go belly up, you can always fall back on your chef-ing skills thanks to Pulse!



Money saving tips

1 - Cook together. All of the above recipes become cheaper the more of the ingredients you buy. As indicated above all of the meals serve at least two people so you should try and streamline dinners with a housemate. This will result in more productive kitchen as everyone is not cooking at different times. You never know, you might just get all the house in on it and have a family dinner every night! One more thing - share the tasks. A simple way to do this is if one person cooks the other washes up.



2 - Shop around. While I've given ingredients that can be sourced in either the ULSU Spar or Aldi you can by shopping around save a lot more. Always keep an eye out in the papers for deals Tesco/Dunnes/Superquinn/Lidl may be doing and find by trial and error the products from each that you like. While you'll likely end up buying a lot from their budget lines sometimes the quality can be better than the brand names. Aldi's sweet and sour sauce is one that I'm quite partial to.



3 - Rob. Pulse is condoning stealing? Well I never... While robbing supermarkets will likely land you in jail the authorities at home will probably be less severe. Of course Mammy may get irritated to find her cupboards barren on Monday mornings she won't like to see you starve either so rob whatever you can from home. Personally I tend to go for the expensive items - toilet paper, olive oil and rashers mysteriously disappear from our house every Sunday night and my shopping bill mysteriously is lower than it should be too. All very mysterious.

ni ni

Brilliant!

I was only begging someone yesterday to teach me how to make irish stew!!


Thanks cson x x x

Delta Kilo

That's really good cson. Your after making me hungry now though! Ill have to give the steak and chips a lash some evening... might be able to rob some of it from home

Seachmall

Looks good but I can barely get a glass of water in my kitchen let alone cook food. Seriously. Not [entirely] out of laziness and incompetence either, the place is a ****ing state. Maybe you could write an article on washing dishes as a prequel?

Good article none the less, maybe even stickable?

seithon

Boil in the bag rice is pricy stuff.. you can get a nice big bag of rice from an indian shop or one of the suppliers they buy from.. can last you a month or two!