This being my fourth year in this fair southern city, I am well acquainted with the inadequacies of the student diet. It’s fair to say that in the last three years I have consumed my body weight several times over in toast and pasta. Toast for breakfast, toast for lunch, pasta - usually covered in some variety of canned tomatoes and mixed herbs, maybe even with some frozen mixed vegetables thrown in for colour - for dinner. Pretty appetising, huh?
Well, NO MORE I say.
As students we really do eat the foulest shit. Weird shit too. Dare I mention the time I ate nothing but spinach and salad dressing for two days (not one of my better ideas)? Or that time one of my flatmates presented us with a very memorable cabbage-mashed-potato-pineapple concoction? It might have been passable if the pineapple hadn’t been off. The same flatmate was later responsible for a citrus-ginger pasta dish which I swear I can still taste in my nightmares.
This year, however, will be different. No more mei goreng. No more cornflakes for dinner. Goodbye mixed vegetables. Goodbye budget wheatmeal. And good riddance.
In an attempt to determine if it is possible to cook decent, interesting meals without interfering with the goon budget, this year, the Critic food page will be bringing you recipes and suggestions which meet three criteria; quick, cheap and not toast.
However, I should also say now that I suffer from what is generally acknowledged to be an unhealthy obsession with Nigella Lawson. Accordingly, there will also be room in Critic this year for decadence and indulgence. And so, to start the year and wish you all a happy hungover and new semester, I bring you what is seriously the most delicious brownie recipe in the world.
Fudgy Chocolate Brownies
This recipe, which I have adapted slightly, was given to me by a girl at work, but originally comes from Annabel Langbein, Anyone Can Bake (2010).
225g butter
200g dark chocolate
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 self raising flour (makes it the perfect cakey/fudgy consistency. YUM.)
½ cup cocoa
Oven at 180°C. Line a 30cm x 20cm tin (or whatever) with baking paper.
Melt butter, add chocolate and stir over low heat until chocolate is melted too. Mix in eggs one at a time (use some vegetable oil in place of an egg if you don’t have four), beating well after each addition. Stir in vanilla, then sift in flour and cocoa. MIX. (You could also add some chopped nuts or chunks of white chocolate. Serious brownies.)
Place in tin and bake for 35-45 mins or until set. Leave it to cool. (Tricky, I know.) Dust with icing sugar. EAT ENTIRE TRAY IN ONE GO.
NOT TOAST
