The Student Cookbook

Peeling Garlic

Remove outer layers of papery skin from the head of garlic, then ease out as many cloves as you need for your recipe (photo 1). Store the rest of the head in a cool, dry place, but not in the fridge, where it may taint milk and eggs and other foods.

Slice off the base and the tip of the clove (photo 2). If you are going to chop or crush the garlic, the easiest way to get the skin off is to place the clove flat on the chopping board, then press the bowl of a wooden spoon down on it firmly, crushing it gently (photo 3). Now the skin will almost fall off.

If, on the other hand, you intend to slice the clove, or keep it whole, pull the skin away bit by bit with your fingers. Any skin that sticks can be loosened by running the blade of the knife, held at an angle to the clove, firmly down the skin.

Chopping Garlic

Garlic is chopped in much the same way as onion, but scaled down appropriately. If you’ve crushed it virtually flat when removing the skin, then you obviously won’t be able to slice it horizontally.

Crushing Garlic

A garlic crusher is quick but wasteful. A lot of good garlic gets left behind or stuck in the holes. A knife does the job more efficiently, though it takes a little practice.

Peel the garlic and chop it very roughly into three or four pieces. Sprinkle with a good pinch of salt (this diminishes slippage). Press the flat of the blade of the knife down on the pieces, crushing them, then drag the sharp end of the blade, at an angle to the board, over the smashed pieces. Push them all back together, and repeat the dragging and crushing until you have a smooth paste. The dismaying thing is how little you end up with, but don’t fear – the impact of the smoothly crushed garlic will be epic.

Chopping Herbs

Pile the leaves up together on the chopping board. Grab the biggest knife you own (but not a serrated knife). Hold the handle with your right hand, and the tip with your left (reverse this if you are left-handed). Hold the knife over the herbs, the tip in contact with the board close to one side of the heap. Now hold the tip steady on the board, and bring the knife firmly and quickly down on the herbs, again and again, swinging it backwards and forwards. Push the herbs back together in a pile, and repeat the whole operation. Keep doing this until the herbs are chopped as you want them. With practice this becomes an easy, quick and rhythmic operation.

This is also the method to use for fine chopping garlic or onion, once they have been roughly chopped in the usual way.

Skinning Tomatoes

Cut a small cross in each tomato, opposite the stalk end (photo 1). Place in a bowl and cover with boiling water (photo 2). Leave for a minute, then pick the tomatoes out of the water. The skin will now pull away from the tomato with ease (photo 3). If it doesn’t, repeat the process – the tomatoes must have been under-ripe.

Deseeding Tomatoes

Method 1 For tomatoes that are to be cooked in a sauce or stew or soup. Halve the tomatoes through the equator, i.e. cutting halfway between stalk end and base (photo 1). Squeeze each half over a bowl or bin, just as if you were squeezing out lemon juice (photo 2). The seeds will ooze out.

Method 2 For when you want perfect looking pieces of tomato. Halve the tomatoes as for method 1, then scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon (photo 3).

Deseeding Peppers

Begin by slicing off the stem end as if it were a lid. Turn the pepper upside down and tap the base firmly several times to loosen the seeds. Shake them out, and scrape out any malingerers with a knife. When you want to keep the pepper whole, perhaps for stuffing, or cut it into rings, you should also scrape out the white ribs (not 100% necessary, but it does improve the flavour a mite). For quartered peppers or long strips, cut the cup into four from one corner to the other, to give flattish pieces. This makes them easier to cut into strips, or grill. Remove the odd seed and cut away the white ribs if you haven’t already. Now cut into strips if required.

Handling Chillies

It is the capsaicin in chillies that makes them hot. When you handle chillies, capsaicin transfers itself to your fingers, so you need to be extremely careful that you don’t rub your eyes, or worse still, especially for men, go to the loo, before cleaning your hands thoroughly. The results can be painful. Capsaicin is not water-soluble, so you need to use a good deal of soap, or some alcohol-based cleanser to get rid of it all. Either that or wear rubber gloves when working with chillies, not a bad idea if you have sensitive skin. The plus side of this is that you absolutely need to drink some kind of alcohol with a hot curry, if you want to soothe your mouth and thro at. Water just won’t do.

Deseeding Chillies

Halve the chillies lengthways and scrape out the seeds and cores with a knife. These are the hottest parts, although the flesh too is hot (as described above). Chillies vary in heat, and there seems to be a correlation between size and heat – often the smallest chillies are the hottest!

Topping and Tailing Beans

Most fresh green beans need to be topped and tailed. This means cutting off the tips on both ends. I like to do them individually, as long as there is something interesting to listen to on the radio. When I have a huge pile to work through, I’m inclined to become more wasteful – taking a bunch of beans at a time, lining up the ends and then just slicing them all off in one fell swoop.

Grating Lemons

The zest of all citrus fruit contains aromatic oil, and this adds wonderful flavour to many dishes, along with the juice. Rub the surface of the (washed) fruit to and fro on the fine grid of a flat grater several times to remove the zest without any of the bitter white pith. Move around the fruit, covering different areas, until it is denuded. Only then squeeze the juice!

Recommended Kitchen Utensils

It is impossible to make one definitive list of the essential cooking implements and utensils you will need. Absolute basics are fairly obvious – with nothing but one sharp knife and a frying pan or saucepan, you could turn out a fair number of severely streamlined meals. After that, the list is dictated as much by what you like to cook as anything else.

View your ‘batterie de cuisine’ (cooking equipment) as a long-term collection that you will build up over the years. Sadly, the general rule is that the more you spend, the better the quality, and better quality often makes for easier, more enjoyable cooking. So, no long list but instead a few notes and recommendations on useful kitchen kit, and recommended buys.

Casserole Every home should have one (unless, of course, you loathe stews of any sort). Best bet is a flame- and heatproof casserole that can go both on the hob and in the oven. It should also look good enough to go straight from the oven to the table. It is better to buy a larger casserole dish than a smaller one, allowing plenty of room. After all, most stews improve in flavour if kept for a day or two in the fridge, or can be frozen if necessary, so making a big potful is a pretty sensible thing to do, even if you are just cooking for one or two.

Chopping Boards Hard to do without, so again, buy the best and biggest you can afford. It is far more useful to have one really big wooden chopping board, than several small book-sized ones. Chopping boards should be made of wood (which scientists now consider perfectly hygienic as long as you wash them after use) or plastic.

Food Processor You can manage very well without one, but your kitchen life will become a good deal easier with. Here, as so often, you should probably head for the best you can afford. Choose one with a relatively large capacity, and several different speed settings. Several models have small inner bowls that can be fitted to process small amounts – very useful for making curry pastes and spice rubs, amongst other things.

Frying Pan, Non-stick Another investment item. A really tip-top heavy-based non-stick frying pan does not come cheap, but is worth every penny. Choose one that is fairly large with high sides so that as well as frying, you can also cook a chicken stew and the like in it. Incidentally, modern nonstick surfaces are very tough, so it is usually all right to use metal implements in them.

Graters Don’t get too fancy. An old-fashioned box grater does the job very nicely. I like the modern Microplane graters, too, especially for orange and lemon zest, or Parmesan, or nutmeg.

Kitchen Tongs These do make turning practically anything in a frying pan or under the grill ten times easier and quicker.

Knives Buy the best you can afford (or ask some nice relative with more money than you to make a gift of them). A good knife will last you a lifetime. They’re not cheap, but since you will be using them constantly, knives should be seen as a major investment. You will need, at the very least, one fairly big chef’s knife (around 17.5-20cm /7-8in), one smaller 15cm (6in) knife and a bread knife. A smaller serrated knife (around 10cm/4in) is great for cutting tomatoes.

Knife Sharpener As essential as the knives. A small hand-held knife sharpener is easier.

Liquidiser If I had to choose, I’d say that a liquidiser is more essential than a processor and a darn sight cheaper, too. Liquidisers are important for making soup and smoothies amongst other things. For more on liquidisers, turn to page 17.

Pestle and Mortar Two most important characteristics: firstly, that the mortar needs to be heavy, so that it doesn’t slip and slide around on the table. Secondly, the interior must feel rough. If it is smooth it will make grinding and pounding hard work. Best pestles are rough at the wider end, rather than smooth.

Saucepans You’ll need one small one, one medium-sized one and one large. And no doubt you will add more over the years. When choosing your saucepans, look for solid, heavy bases that will conduct heat evenly.

Sieve I prefer metal, but modern nylon sieves are fine. More important than the material is the mesh size. This should be fairly large. If the mesh is too fine, then it can makes things like sieving a soup a complete nightmare. Never buy a sieve which doesn’t have one or two hooks on the rim opposite the handle, so that you can sit the sieve securely over a bowl or saucepan.

Weighing Scales Digital scales are far more accurate than most dial scales. Buy scales with a flattop, so that you can use any bowl or pan on them, resetting the display to zero before weighing out ingredients.

Cooking Terms

Baking and Roasting both refer to cooking in the oven, and the differences between them are not always clear. Generally, however, roasting is done at a high temperature without covering the food, so that it browns, while baking is undertaken at a slightly lower temperature and the food may sometimes be covered or not.

Frying means to cook something in hot fat, either in a shallow frying pan (sometimes also called pan-frying), or in a deep pan, half filled with oil, which is known as deep-frying.

Grilling means to cook food under a hot grill.

Sautéing is a form of frying. Unlike ordinary frying, which is verging on sedate, sautéing is an energetic business. The word ‘sauter’ is literally the French for ‘to jump’ and that describes the method well. When sautéing the idea is to keep all the pieces of food moving more or less constantly, so that they brown and cook evenly on all sides, and never have a chance to stick on the base of the pan.

Searing and Griddling Searing means cooking food with the minimal amount of fat, on a searingly hot flat surface – probably a heavy-based frying pan. Griddling is similar, but a ridged, heavy griddle pan is used instead.

Simmering means cooking something in simmering water, in other words water that is so hot that a few small bubbles are lazily making their way up to the surface, but not much more than that. The surface of the water will move and tremble gently. In most instances water is first brought up to the boil (i.e. when crowds of bubbles rise ebulliently to the surface), the item that is to be cooked is tipped in, which reduces the temperature of the water below simmering point, and then the whole lot is warmed up again until the water is simmering.