As students, we know that along with late-night study sessions, erratic schedules, and jam-packed calendars come the inevitable irregular eating habits. Our on-the-go lifestyles make it hard to find time to eat a meal, let alone cook one, and the truth is, many people don’t know how to make more than the simplest dishes. That’s not a big problem with fast-food spots and take-out restaurants on every corner. However, a junk-heavy diet definitely doesn’t help the student budget (or the waistline), and the last thing students need is the lack of energy that results from eating too much fast food.
Jeremy Ying, a fourth-year U of T student in political science and urban studies-and a former Electric Circus dancer-believes that time restraints and culinary inability shouldn’t force students to avoid the kitchen. One year ago, Ying found a solution for the many friends he saw struggling to find the time and money to cook real meals. He created studentbudgetcooking.blogspot.com, a web database of easy-to-make recipes that call for few ingredients and basic skills. Each of the dozen or so recipes currently featured on the site is beautifully presented, with pictures and step-by-step instructions to help the novice chef along.
After a year spent experimenting in the kitchen and working on the website, Ying can confirm that his home cooking is a welcome break from fast food.
“I find that the most satisfying food you’ll ever eat is the food that you cook yourself,” he said. “You know exactly what you want, and how you want it.”
Yet we all know that “easy” food can often translate into “not very good” food-is this one of those cases? To find out, we headed to Ying’s Scarborough home for a demonstration. The test: given three hours, Ying was to prepare four meals under the scrutiny of skeptical-but hungry-students. The meals-salmon fillets, beef tortillas, chicken fried rice, and pasta with shrimp-were all prepared from recipes available on Ying’s website.
At a restaurant, the salmon Ying made would no doubt be called “salmon fillet in white wine and dijon,” a title oozing elegance and expense. In reality, you can’t get much more effortless than marinating the fish and sticking it in the oven, leaving the oven door open to crisp the fillet’s outsides while leaving the inside tender. The end result was delicious and subtly flavourful.
Ying’s recipes emphasize resourcefulness and speed. The beef tortillas and the chicken fried rice took the longest to prepare because of the need to chop vegetables and let chicken fry on the stove. Using store-bought tortillas and pre-shredding the lettuce and cheese made wrapping the sautéed ground beef a breeze. The sauce added for the sautée can be whatever you like (Ying used Diana barbeque sauce instead of the pricier Old El Paso mix).
This was definitely a highlight of Jeremy’s recipes-they follow the “whatever’s in the fridge” approach, in that most vegetables or meat can be used in place of or in addition to those specified in the recipes. But convenience isn’t everything-how did the wraps taste? Like good, wholesome tortillas.
So how did the ex-popstar get interested in cooking? Ying started learning from his mom, mostly because he needed something to do.
“When people asked what my hobby was, I didn’t have an answer,” he laughed. “I decided I needed a hobby.” With his girlfriend’s help, Ying developed the website in hopes of reaching out to his fellow students.
The next sample dish was pasta in a light cream sauce. Restaurant cream sauce is notoriously fattening, but Ying substituted a can of cream of mushroom soup, adding some herbs for flavour. Since his goal is to make cooking as student-friendly as possible, he advocates using dried herbs and spices because fresh produce can go bad quite quickly. For those of you saying, “Spices? I need to buy spices?” don’t panic, you’ll only need a few. The best part of the sauce was the shrimp, and the overall dish was a nice departure from the common “pasta with store-bought tomato sauce” meal.
Fortunately, we had a little time to breathe while our happy chef prepared the final dish, the chicken fried rice (prepared with no MSG in sight). It was while chatting with him between courses that we realized there was another benefit to cooking at home. A beautifully sunlit, quiet kitchen in which to work created an atmosphere that cannot be found as one flies through a fast-food restaurant. Not only is the food better for you at home, but cooking it can be a lot of fun!
Ying has found some other benefits to being his own chef. “Having a comfy kitchen to cook and eat in has done wonders for my relationship with my girlfriend. We both love to cook, and the hobby has brought us closer together,” he said. “The fast-food atmosphere really doesn’t offer a couple the same benefits that a comfy kitchen does.”
In less than three hours, this student chef had prepared four scrumptious meals, confirming that his are very doable recipes. To stay in tune with what students are looking for, Ying encourages feedback as to what types of recipes he should post. We recommend Ying’s website for those who need basic kitchen instruction or want to prepare a quick, easy meal made with quality ingredients.
Ying plans to keep sharing healthy, low-budget recipes even after he graduates and leaves the starving-student phase of his life. Explains the chef himself, “Money’s one thing, nutrition’s another, but what’s really worth it are people’s reactions.” Skeptics who try the site’s recipes will be delighted to discover that cooking isn’t really that hard-knowing a few little secrets makes all the difference.
