Every Tuesday “Liberation” brings you a complete, cheap and easy to prepare student menu.
Every Tuesday, Release now offers you a complete, cheap and easy-to-prepare student menu: starter, main course and dessert, for 3-5 euros per head. And since students rarely have a kitchen of 15 square meters and a lot of dishes, we stick to the classic set: knife, peeler, cutting board, whisk, dish, pot and pan, salad dressing or towels, mini-oven, stove and piston mixer (or blender) and basta. Today, zucchini salad with lemon and garlic (approx. 1 euro per portion), lentils and soft boiled egg (approx. 2.50 euros per portion) and plum cake (approx. 70 cents per portion). Estimated total for this menu: 4.20 euros per person.
Appetizer: zucchini salad with garlic and lemon
You will need three or four courgettes (depending on the size), two cloves of garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.
Wash the courgettes and peel, reserving every other strip of skin. Cut them into slices. Heat a drop of olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Fry the courgettes on medium heat on both sides. In the meantime, peel and finely chop the garlic, squeeze the juice out of the lemon (in terms of acidity, use the whole liquid or half). When the courgettes are golden, add the garlic and lemon juice, cook for a minute while stirring, season and stop cooking. This salad can also be garnished with Provencal herbs, parsley, basil, chopped chives… Zucchini can be eaten warm or cold and they go very well with sardines or canned tuna for a complete dish with pasta or rice.
You will need 100 grams of green lentils and one organic egg per person, three shallots, a clove of garlic, a bay leaf, olive oil, salt and pepper.
Put the lentils in a saucepan with three times the amount of water, a clove of garlic, pepper (a few grains when using a grinder, especially not salt, because, as with all legumes, salt hardens the lentils and increases the cooking time). You can add a sprig of thyme or rosemary, a tired carrot cut into rings – if you have it all at hand. Allow twenty to twenty-five minutes of simmering, covered. Meanwhile, peel and chop the shallots. When the lentils are cooked, drain them (without the bay leaf and garlic clove) and put them in a salad bowl. Add three tablespoons of olive oil, shallots and a splash of vinegar if you like. Salt and mix gently.
Last week’s menu
While the lentils are cooling, heat a pot of water. When it boils, carefully drop the eggs into it a tablespoon at a time. If it continues to cook, use the timer on your smartphone to count six minutes of cooking. Then immediately dip the eggs into a bowl of cold water (you can add ice cubes if there are any left over after the aperitif). Peel them and place them on a plate on top of the served lentils. Everyone cracks open their own egg and seasons it to their liking.
If you have leftover lentils, make a soup with a liter or less of tablet stock (vegetable or beef) and a little cream. Mix everything.
You will need a kilo of plums, a short pastry, 100 grams of brown cane sugar, 50 grams of very fine wheat porridge.
Roll out the dough in a pie pan covered with baking paper. Prick it with a fork and spread 50 grams of caster sugar and then 50 grams of very fine wheat semolina, which absorbs the fruit juice. Wash and dry the plums. Cut the fruit in half and remove the seeds. Place the half-cakes, flesh side up, in a spiral shape on the pie crust, carefully pressing them together. Preheat your oven to 220 degrees. Sprinkle the pie with 50 grams of sugar and bake for thirty-five to forty minutes, until the plums are caramelized.