One of the many wonderful things Youtube throws my way in its suggestions box was a quite funny video of a guy doing an impression of Heston Blumenthal. I thumbed through their other videos and found a very good instruction video for Jelly Shots…
Then I found they had a website…
…And then I found they had a book!
I ordered it from Amazon almost immediately and read it cover to cover. When I read recipe books I can be excited, bored, hungry or just plain confused, but I’ve never been depressed by a cookbook before.
This book isn’t just recipes, oh no. It’s an incredibly useful repository of tips and tricks preparing you for university… Such as a chapter on what to do to prepare for Freshers week, a chapter on what utensils and equipment you should have handy when you get your own place and even a chapter on how best to prepare for your exams…
Whatever you do, don’t read Sorted: A recipe for student survival if you happen to have graduated recently. You’re gonna be a mix of Marvin and Eeyore for several days. What you read that doesn’t remind you of the fun you had and the friends you made will make you kick yourself for not trying them while you had the chance.
On the other hand, if you’re about to go to university or managed to actually enjoy post-graduate life, you’ll find this a great way to break into any cooking harder than beans on toast. Every recipe has been designed to be easy to make and useful to the student with better things to do than buy organic food from Waitrose. There are recipes like a massive curry that you leave in the oven while you go to the pub or play videogames with your mates and a full English breakfast in a tortilla that you leave in the fridge for when you have a hangover the next morning. The only ones that aren’t there for heavy drinking are there for giving you the energy to study or impress that girl/boy you like. It’s exactly the type of book I’d have wanted when I was young and fresh and wanted to make the rest of the Creative Writing students think I could actually cook.
The book and the recipes are written in a funny, conversational style that you’ll enjoy reading even if you’re not interested in the recipe on that page and the style of the pages themselves with fake beer rings and photographs of students doing studenty things adds another great reason for the book to be an addition to your shelf along with the porn and comics.
They have a second book out already that seems to be a step upwards in complexity from the first, and by the sounds of it I’ll probably enjoy it as much as I enjoy following their website and the videos that they put up regularly with new recipes or random sketches the crew have made.
If you’re new to cooking and still at the stage where normal recipes are a little daunting and you follow them to the letter in case it spontaneously combusts because you used beef rather than vegetable stock or something, then this is well worth a try. If you’re about to go to university, then this book is essential. It has everything you need to feed yourself properly and it’s a great introduction to the best years of your life.
