h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I compete with one of my flatmates in cooking. The only meal that either of us has been marked on with was corned beef, chicken lumps and potato all fried in milk. Totally inedable. He also made a stir fry once in triple sec. Yum Yum. Other than that the standard has been high

I have a flat mate who tends to only eat pasta with chees on top and will ocationaly add some tomato sauce. This diet is causing her hair to fall out and i have managesd to persuade her to eat better with my help.

he sounds like chris

he's a german that only eats cheese, toast, gravy and pasta

While the rest of my flat seems to be eating microwave meals, nothing, or FRIED baked beans with FRIED ravioli (no one knows why, they're French and won't tell me!) I've started to learn to cook. I now do a mean roast chicken breast with herbs, macaroni cheese, stir-fry (from scratch, may I add) and I even bake cakes! So no, you're not the only student who eats properly!

On a holiday (suspension) from school several years back now my mother, who was a bit put out by the nature of my enforced holiday and the fact that I had absolutly nothing to do on my day off, taught me how to cook really nice choclate brownies and pizza from scratch. THis was also partly a ploy to placate my dad who was going to be very angry with me when he got back from work.

Now, here I am at university with the responsbilty of passing on all my knowledge that I have collected since then to my housemates who readily admit that they know very little about cooking. But I think that I am actually looking forward to it.

Anyway I thought I might add my favorite quick, cheap recsipe; Egg Fried Rice

Essential Ingredients:
one egg
some already cooked rice
some olive oil

Optional Ingredients:
Half a medium onion chopped
A red chilli pepper diced (if you like it a bit spicy)
spring onions chopped
shredded chicken leftovers

The thing about this rescipe is that you can really put anything you like in it. Depending on what I have in the fridge and what I'm willing to fork out to get I'll do variations on this theme.

Before you start you should fork the rice through to seperate the grains. I always cook my rice with cardomon and cinamon and find that this greatly enhances the flavour. Also I always use Basmati rice which tastes much better then your general stuff, but for this rescipe it makes very little difference.

Take one or any combination of the things in the good ingredients list. Fry this in a couple of glogs of olive oil in a fairly deep frying pan.

When the good ingredients are finished frying, when the onions are going a golden colour and the red chilli looks slightly lighter in colour, this should be after about 5 minutes cooking, then add the egg. break up the egg with a spoon or a chopstick and continue moving it around until the egg has set in lots of small peices and is looking more dry.

Then add your cooked cold rice and continue to cook for about 2-3 minutes. Remove the whole thing to a plate or bowl and add a little salt and cover in soy sauce. Then eat.

Thanks for that, I'll try it sometime. Despite my earlier boasting, I failed spectacularly when trying to make egg fried rice tonight, much to the ammusement of my new flatmate Clare.

what happened?

I had an almost disasterous attempt to make cake with my two completely inept freinds. They managed to put the eggs and butter in a hot pan and actually boil the mixture.

Luckily it all came together at the end, but was a bit thin. Still it tasted nice.

My rice was too damp, it all turned a bit sticky and the egg didn't quite work as well as it could have done. I'm not deterred though, I'm gonna have another go next week. I don't quite think three rice meals in four days is the best diet in the world, even if I am a student

Er, why did they heat the cake mix?

they thought the saucepan was cold and it was anouther container that they could use, but I had just made pasta in it so it was boiling hot. So when they put the cake mix in the boiling hot saucepan it started heating up.

I think I'll make egg fried rice tonight!

possibly adding the turkey left over from yesterday

good to learn about your easy to make and easy to grab recipie. hunger and experience will teach you more.

I'm American, and I make fried rice much the same way the original poster does. Other things good in fried rice:

Bits of chopped leftover ham, steak, turkey or bacon (rasher in British English, I think).

A few frozen peas, not the canned ones (my wife hates the canned ones, and I'm not fond of them except when making pea soup). Leftover Chinese pea pods are very good.

Leftover cooked carrots, cubed.

Go easy on the soy sauce--serve to taste.