One of the key differences between life as a student in Scotland versus in America is the living situation. Comparatively different to your average American dorm shared by two people, Scottish universities’ accommodation basically consists of an apartment style living where you could be sharing a flat with two to twelve other people. Additionally, instead of having a weekly meal plan, most students at uni in Scotland cook their meals in their flat’s kitchen. At the University of Edinburgh, there is only one accommodation option that offers its residents a meal plan, which consists of just breakfast and dinner. After having a not so appetizing meal plan at university in America, I wanted to try and cook all my food while studying abroad. I have a confession to make though: I am an extremely lazy cook! My first semester of study abroad I kept a frozen pizza in the kitchen for the not so rare occasion that I would not want to cook. My go to meals were eggs, nachos and pasta (not the most nutritious). I am going to make this semester different though! I have decided to cook one new recipe a week, to slowly develop my skills in the kitchen and to ensure I am actually eating healthy. I will continuously add to this post with my lasted experiences in the kitchen. Feel free to laugh at my missteps or try the recipes yourself! Who knows, cooking could become something I actually enjoy doing by the end of the semester!
Recipe Four: Butternut Squash Soup: Finally, a Success Story!
I have eaten amazing butternut squash soups at restaurants before and I wanted to see how hard it would be to make on my own, so I went Googling for recipes. My searches led me to this one: https://selfproclaimedfoodie.com/butternut-squash-soup/, a very easy straightforward recipe with minimal ingredients (that’s how I like them).
I started the recipe early since I had to roast my squash for an hour. I cut the squash in half, which was a little difficult since they are as hard as pumpkins and put it on a foiled pan after gutting the threadlike insides. I kept it in the oven for around 50 minutes. Towards the end of the roasting time, I started on the stove work. After cutting up an onion, a gala apple and some garlic, I threw olive oil in a sauce pan and let it heat. After a couple minutes I added my onion and sautéed it until it was brown. After, I threw in my garlic and apple together (a strange combo I know) and sautéed it all. By this time, I removed my butternut squash from the oven and began to spoon out the now softened squash from the skin into the pot. In addition to adding the squash, I also added a few cups of chicken stock (which could easily be replaced with veggie stock for a vegan dish). Once all the ingredients were in, I brought the mix to a boil and then simmered it for around twenty minutes, continuously stirring. I have to admit, looking at my mixture of squash clumps, apple and onion, I wasn’t sure how it would turn to look like the picture in the recipe. . . but it did!! I threw the mixture into and blender and within a minute I had perfect butternut squash soup! It tasted amazing especially with a pinch of salt and pepper. The recipe yielded about three dinner plate servings (though the recipe link says six, definitely wrong). I would recommend this recipe to anyone, no matter their cooking experience. It was so easy and tasted amazing; I will definitely be making this soup again!
Recipe Three: Martha Stewart’s One Pot Past
I was perusing through YouTube looking for easy healthy recipes when I found Martha Stewart’s video for a one pot pasta recipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09smBNps4EM What could be easier that throwing everything into just one pot, I thought! Well turns out easy doesn’t always mean successful.
I bought all the ingredients I didn’t already have: an onion, cherry tomatoes, even fresh basil. I already had spaghetti and garlic in my kitchen and was happy I didn’t have to buy a ton of extra ingredients. When I started the dish, I took out all the needed items onto the counter; that is when I realized I had bought whole wheat pasta, not white. What difference could it make right? Wrong! Big difference as you will read further down. I put all the ingredients into a big sauce pot since I did not have a sauté pan. My pot wasn’t big enough, so I had to squish all the ingredients down which ended up resulting in burnt spaghetti stuck to the bottom of the pan for two days. I continuously stirred as much as I could so everything was cooking evenly. After a few minutes I started to notice a residue darkening the water. It was the wheat pasta emitting this weird film. Normally this isn’t a problem because the pasta cooks on its own but with the one pot pasta, the film went onto all the other ingredients coating the onion and tomatoes as well. I thought the film would definitely go away once I drained the dish. . . and then I took another look at the video. Martha didn’t drain her pot! Does that mean I shouldn’t drain mine? My mind raced with the idea of possibly ruining my dish, but that had happened a long time ago when I put wheat pasta in instead of white. I decided to drain it and from my colander came out, slowly, a think brown liquid, disgusting to behold. But just draining the pasta wasn’t enough, the film was on everything! I portioned out one serving and coating it heavily with parmesan cheese and red pepper hoping it would mask the oniony thick film; it didn’t help much. I ended up trashing the rest of the dish because the film was so revolting. I won’t be trying this recipe again, not even with white pasta. Martha failed me here.
(I've made the picture larger than the others so you can see for yourself the film I am talking about)
Recipe Two: Sad Thai
Right near campus is this amazing Thai food restaurant, called Ting Thai, that I absolutely love. I have been countless times since coming to Edinburgh. Prior to studying abroad, I had tried Thai food maybe once or twice without seeking it out again. But when I went to Ting Thai, I was absolutely amazed at how much I liked the food! My go to dishes now include Pad See Ew and Pad Thai. I know I should try other dishes while I am still in Edinburgh but I love these two so much it is hard to order anything else. It is because of my newfound love of Thai food that I decided to try making it myself.
Again, I found the recipe on Pinterest:https://www.dinneratthezoo.com/thai-peanut-noodles/?utm_content=buffer830ca&utm_medium=social&utm_source=pinterest.com&utm_campaign=budgetbytesbufferagainand and again I did not follow it! The listed ingredients included linguine or other long pasta/noodle (I used rice noodles), sliced bell peppers (this I had), sugar snap peas trimmed (I used frozen broccoli instead), roasted peanuts, cilantro (did not have), green onions (did not have), peanut butter, soy sauce, honey (I salvaged some from a jar of honey I had that crystallized over winter break), lime juice, sesame oil (did not have so I used olive oil instead), chili garlic sauce (did not have so I used red pepper flakes and cut up garlic instead) and 1/4 cup warm water. I also added chicken for some extra protein. When I was preparing my ingredients, my worry was on how the sauce would turn out since I did not have some of the key ingredients and was improvising with what I did have in my cupboard already. Surprisingly though the sauce was not the problem, the noodles were. I started on the sauce since the rice noodles cook very fast. Once I combined all the ingredients for the sauce, I put my rice noodles into boiling water. What I did not anticipate was that rice noodles, much like actually rice, expands. Suffice it to say I did not have a big enough pot. I also overcooked my noodles because I had to add extra water in to fully cover the noodles sticking out of the pot. I quickly drained them, not wanting to overcook them anymore, and returned to my sauce. I threw in the chicken and broccoli to mix in and get coated. I did have a mixed bag of veggies in my freezer I wanted to add but I realized when I took it out of the freezer that I wasn’t supposed to freeze them and that it had an expiration date of November; oops. Once my sauce was ready, I went to mix it with the noodles only to find the noodles stuck together in a giant blob (I was not fast enough with the sauce). To make matters worse the noodles were almost mushy since I overcooked them. I mixed the sauce in as best I cooked and choked down some of the dish for dinner, trying to ignore the mushy texture (I am one of those people with texture issues). When I went to pack the dish up (because I worked too hard making it to trash everything), I haphazardly tried to loosen up the noodles. I ended up taking half the blob of overcooked rice noodles and throwing it in the trash. That did leave a good portion of Pad Thai, or as I would call it Sad Thai, to save for left overs. And I ate it. I ate it all! It did taste better the second time around since the noodles hardened a bit. Surprisingly, I think I will make this dish again, knowing what I should and should not do with the noodles. But nothing, especially my Sad Thai, can compare to Ting Thai’s food which I highly suggest to anyone in Edinburgh.
Recipe One: Vegetable Lasagna
I have made lasagna before, but I wanted to try making vegetable lasagna to get some extra nutrition into my diet. I used this recipe, which I found on Pinterest, as my guideline for the dish: https://wendypolisi.com/veggie-lasagna/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=pinterest&utm_medium=Fitful%20Focus. If I am being candid, I don’t strictly adhere to any recipe’s instructions. I used this recipe to get a cooking time and to see how to include the vegetables (I used zucchini and spinach) but I omitted certain ingredients like the ricotta cheese, egg and parsley. Instead of cooking the zucchini, I cut it up and laid it out on paper towels to absorb the moisture. For the pasta, I got a boxed of lasagna noodles from Tesco. The box said I could boil them if I wanted to, but if not, they would cook in the oven. Since every other time I made lasagna I boiled the noodles, I decided to boil it this time as well. BAD IDEA. My pot was too small, so the noodles stayed together in a huge pasta block. When I went to layer my lasagna, I had to peel away parts of pasta, burning my fingers while doing so, to try and assemble my noodle layers. I ended up trashing half my pasta block because I could not peel away any more pasta. For cooking the dish, I looked up a conversion for oven temperatures. My flat has a gas oven with a 1-6 temperature dial, which I never encountered before coming to Scotland. Since the recipe used a Fahrenheit oven temperature, I Googled the conversion to gas marks and put my lasagna in to cook. I guess the conversion is not exact because I ended up burning the dish. It tasted okay, not the best or the worst I have ever had. I am freezing the left overs though. I spent too much time peeling pasta pieces off of the lasagna block to trash the dish.
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