Tuesday 16th October 2012 | INDIGO

6 food & drink

Beyond your daily bread

Bread, from time immemo-rial, has been the staple stuff of the western diet;

an economic marker, the food of thousands and the bane of bikini diets.

It’s also a constituent element of almost every student shop-ping basket. From toast to, well, beans on toast, the humble loaf is a post-lecture hunger saviour.

Yet the versatility of this starch is too often undermined; today’s sorry looking crust is tomorrow’s supper. Look to the French, whose pain perdu, is a classic example of leftovers turned good. Just soak a couple of slices in beaten egg and fry gently in butter until golden, then drench in sugar and cin-namon.

Or do as the Spanish do, and use it as a vehicle for tapas; try the classic pan con tomate, and add a couple of slices of chorizo or ham to bulk it up. Or smear with chickpeas mashed with olive oil and garlic, then drizzle

with lemon and sprinkle with paprika. These, and the ideas below, might be simple but they’re anything but stale…

PanzanellaAn autumnal twist on an Ital-ian classic. Chop 300g of fresh tomatoes (the plum variety have great flavour) and half a small cucumber, finely dice half a red onion and tear your leftover bread into large chunks. To make this salad more autumnal, lightly toast the bread to warm - you could even swap the raw to-mato and cucumber for roasted tomato and courgette. Toss all the ingredients lightly, and sea-son well. Whisk together olive oil, red wine vinegar, capers (if you have them), a pinch of sugar and some extra salt and pepper. Pour over the salad and leave the flavours to absorb. If you fancy, scatter over leftover roast chicken or shavings of cheese to make it more substantial.

MigasMigas means ‘crumbs’ in Span-ish. Place your finely sliced bread in a bowl. Season and sprinkle with a little water, then leave to stand. Heat some oil in a pan and add a clove of finely chopped garlic and a bit of paprika if you want some extra heat. Add chopped red pepper and sliced chorizo, then remove once browned. Add the bread to the frying pan and cook in the fragrant oil. Add bread to pep-per and chorizo mixture, and lightly toss.

Tuscan bread and tomato soupThe Italians often use bread as a thickener in soups. Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a pan and cook a chopped onion and 3 cloves of chopped garlic until softened. Add a couple of tins of chopped tomatoes and another tin full of water. Bring to the boil and season well. Reduce the heat and leave to

simmer, covered, for 15 minutes or so, until the soup has thick-ened. Add the torn up bread and stir into the soup. To finish, a bit of basil wouldn’t go amiss, nor would an extra drizzle of olive oil.

Apple Bread PieBread doesn’t have to be sa-voury. Peel and chop 2 medium sized bramley apples, cook on a low heat in a saucepan with 1 tablespoon of water and 2 ta-blespoons sugar until the apple has reduced to a puree. Remove from heat. Take 3 slices of white bread (crusts removed), melt 1 ½ tablespoons of butter and brush both sides of the bread slices. Line a small pie dish or ramekin with the buttery bread, leaving some bread aside to cover the top as a lid. Fill the rest of the dish with cooked apple. Use the remaining bread to cover the top. Sprinkle with a little sugar, bake in the oven at 200oC for 15 minutes until

golden brown.

Piña Colada Pudding Or how to get rid of Malibu. In a bowl, whisk together 1 egg, 2 tablespoons of milk, 2 tablespoons of coconut milk and 1 full measure of white rum. Remove the crusts of 2 slices of white bread and soak the slices in the mixture for 5 minutes. Melt ½ tablespoon of butter with 1 tablespoon of brown sugar. Line the bottom of an ovenproof-dish with tinned pineapple rings. Cover the pine-apple with the butter/sugar syrup. Take the soaked bread slices and cover the pineapple. Sprinkle liberally with sugar and bake in the oven at 200oC for 20 minutes until light-brown and crispy on top. If you’re feeling particularly adventur-ous, follow the same recipe, but before serving invert the dish onto the plate so the pineapple is facing upwards to create an upside-down cake effect.

Find yourself cooking the same recipes day in, day out? indigo gives you some innovative twists on an everyday staple - bread

INDIGO | Tuesday 16th October 2012

7Food & Drink Editor: Kirsten Riddickfood@palatinate.org.uk

Culinary adventures

A year living in a foreign country and speaking an-other language is a daunt-

ing, if exciting prospect. From setting up bank accounts to find-ing accommodation, the start of an Erasmus placement is fraught with potential problems and anxieties.

The town centre is dominated by smart wine shops and bars where people enjoy a glass of white with a platter of oysters, brought in from the nearby port at Arcachon – a pretty seaside town famous for them.

Aside from oysters, Bor-deaux’s main speciality is ‘canelé’, a mini fluted cake made with egg yolks and flavoured with vanilla and rum. The story goes that nuns at the city’s con-vent originally made them with yolks provided by local win-emakers. The winemakers used the whites to clarify the wine and had no use for the rest of the egg.

Personally, I’m not a fan; they’re crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, but the predominant flavours are rum and egg. In any case, the ‘Bor-delaises’ (the people of Bor-deaux) are immensely proud of them, and when you’re given one to try there’s no option but to nod appreciatively. Other regional specialities include foie gras, confit de canard, and macaroons of every flavour im-aginable.

As a keen chef, and cookbook author, I was curious to see what the food at the university was like. With 18 hours of lectures a week – twice what I have in Durham – I’m likely to be getting breakfast and lunch there eve-ry day of the week. My French housemate, who was in Dur-ham on an exchange last year, had simply said that it was good value so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Lectures here start at 8am, which is a shock to the system after a three month holiday, so I was grateful for the shot of es-presso and large croissant, cost-ing just €1 at the cafeteria.

The French don’t really seem to do instant coffee, which is absolutely fine with me, but the lack of fresh milk is a problem. I can’t understand how people with such pride in their food can be happy with long-life UHT milk and cream.

Lunch in the university costs

€3.10 for 3 courses, and the se-lection is good provided you’re not a vegetarian. The portions are large and much of the food is cooked in front of you on open grills.

Main course options on the day I went were: steak (cooked rare) with red wine sauce and chips, roasted chicken with rata-touille and pasta, or cheese and bacon omelette with creamed spinach.

For the equivalent of £2.50 I was stunned by what the kitch-ens managed to produce. Per-haps as the term goes on and the budget gets tight the quality of the food will deteriorate, as so often seems to happen at college in Durham, but the first impres-sions are excellent.

In fact, aside from the 18 hours of lectures a week and the hour-long tram ride into the uni, life in Bordeaux isn’t bad at all.

Photographs: Alex Yandell

See www.cooktastesmile.co.uk for more information on Alex’s cookbook company.

Alex Yandell, a French and Classics student at Trevs, has just

moved to France for his year abroad. He gives indigo a

gastronomic insight into his first few weeks in Bordeaux

1) You queue for college dinner like Mexican Bake is an iPhone 5Dinner in college is served at 5:30pm - the last time you ate at this hour, you were probably in a highchair. Not that this does anything to dampen enthusiasm levels. Come five-fifteen, the queue is out the door. This is all about technique: let anyone in, and you’re likely to be joined by their entire corridor. It’s every man for himself in this game.

2) You have tried to steal milk and caused gang warfareThe milk hoarder is a special breed of fresher. On the surface, they appear warm and friendly and they probably are. But mess with their dairy supplies and you’ll see a new side. Notes in the vein of “You won’t just be crying if you spill my milk, BITCH” are likely to be found on every lactose-containing item in your corridor fridge.

3) You combine carbohy-drates like you’re Michael PhelpsLasagne and chips, plus bread and a healthy dollop of mash, is now just a standard lunch snack. And are those curly fries in the corner? Being catered

means, inexplicably, you must pile as much starch onto your plate as possible. You might not be doing a triathlon the next day, but you have got that swimming test for rowing. Bulk-ing up is thus obligatory - you won’t get through that length of breaststroke without it.

4) You have already identi-fied your college parents as a potential food sourceNot in the cannibalistic sense. Rather, your college parents have probably made claims about a “family dinner party.” Second years will try and con-veniently shirk this responsibil-ity for as long as possible. Don’t let them get away with it. Turn up uninvited one evening, and they’ll have to produce some-thing.

5) You realise that Saturday morning brunch is now the highlight of your entire weekMaybe even your life. The only stress factor is the item limit rule. Choosing between hash brown and croissant requires more intellectual investment than your average Medieval English literature tutorial.

Recipes and photographs: Kirsten Riddick and Emma Richardson

You know you’re hooked on college food when...Five signs that show you’re fully embracing the joys of college catering

“For the equivalent of £2.50 I was stunned by what the kitchen managed to produce

PFor more mouth-watering food ideas and recipes, go to palatinate.org.uk