Nosh for Students - Joy May - Cookbook Review

Nosh for Students – Joy May – Cookbook Review

 

I remember the first time my parents dropped me off for my first year of  university, due to the accommodation crisis at my university I was relegated to a private house outside of town with 4 other people I’d met over the internet.  Surprisingly this wasn’t the most ideal of situations. 

Immediately I struck it off with one of my housemates and began talking about a common fear – cooking! She got this book out of one of her moving boxes and we began pouring over the recipes within the book and thrashed out what we were going to cook for our first communal dinner. This anecdote inspired me to write a nosh for students cookbook review.

Positives

Despite cooking a reasonable amount prior to university I was still intimidated by certain varieties of cooking, particularly cooking exotic food. generally I just stuck to the bog standard sausage / mash and potato wedge recipes I was comfortable with.  This cookbook really helped me to develop my basic cooking skills and built up a wide repertoire of recipes. 

Furthermore, an aspect I love about this book is the way recipes are measured. Joy May completely understands that the student kitchen is likely to be poorly equipped (I didn’t get a set of scales until third year) The measurements within recipes are given in spoons & mugs! Absolutely perfect for the aspiring student chef and proof that you don’t need a well equipped kitchen to begin cooking. 

For those of you that are on the budget, the recipes are broken down into total pricing and then pricing per serving. This is perfect for working how much you are owed (In wine or money!) when cooking a large meal for friends or when money is tight and you need to budget.  

Negatives

The only negative within this book is that if you’re of an intermediate level you may outgrow it quickly, but if you’re a beginner there’s enough content for you to cook a wide variety of recipes for the first two years of university. I’ll admit it, if i’m stuck for something to cook I’ll leaf through this book and look for something I like the sound of and then adapt the recipe.

Rating

I’d give this book, 4/5 stars out of 5

★★★★ / ★★★★★

You can buy Joy May’s book here on Amazon: