For a devoted foodie like me, eating well is fundamental to my well-being. As an international student, I was relieved to discover that, amongst all the colleges, Tit Hall food is considered top-tier. However, while I’ve enjoyed eating in the hall with friends and religiously attended every Sunday brunch I can, I was let down by their rice – it simply could not satisfy my East Asian cravings and I was forced to seek alternatives in town, which left my wallet bleeding by the end of first year.

This year, I came prepared with a game-changer: a rice cooker! It may be a plain and humble-looking appliance, but it has significantly improved the quality of my life. My cravings have been satisfied, and I’ve been experimenting with a few rice-based dishes that have recently become my absolute favourites.

“Quick and simple, this dish brings me so much home comfort”

The centrepiece of my college cookbook is the all-time classic egg fried rice. I like to keep the ingredients simple – just rice, eggs, spring onion, soy sauce and some salt with leftover rice as the secret ingredient. For those who are not rice connoisseurs, you may not realise how texture and moisture make all the difference with rice. What makes leftover rice so special is its lack of moisture, which gives it a perfect consistency. This not only means the rice combines better with the rest of the ingredients when cooking, but it’s also less sticky and therefore easier to cook with. Quick and simple, this dish brings me so much home comfort, especially after a long day of lectures.

My go-to meal prep dish is a salmon bowl with a twist: teriyaki salmon. This requires a little extra patience and care when stir-frying to ensure it has the right level of crispiness. Crispy salmon coupled with fluffy rice, fresh avocado, and seasonal vegetables make this dish simply irresistible, and I’m always tempted to eat another portion while meal prepping. I also recently got a bit creative and have started to replace avocado with mushrooms and the results have turned out great. My tip is to chop the mushrooms into very small chunks, so they mix seamlessly with the rice — their soft textures contrast so wonderfully with the fried salmon.

“You can never go wrong with a bibimbap”

I use my weekends to experiment with new recipes, and the latest addition to my cookbook is bibimbap. I find preparing and chopping all the ingredients particularly therapeutic, temporarily taking my mind off work and bringing me some peace in the chaos of Cambridge. My favourite toppings are carrots, courgettes, mushrooms, beansprouts, a sunny egg, and any marinated meat I have on hand. I love beef bibimbap, but chicken or pork works equally well. The crowning touch to the dish is the sauce, made of gochujang, sesame oil, soy sauce, sugar, and rice vinegar. This dish always turns out so tasty and I just love all of the colourful ingredients – you can never go wrong with a bibimbap.

As the saying goes, you are what you eat. I think it not only speaks about how you need to eat nutritious food for a healthy body, but more broadly addresses how much of our senses of self and identity are generated through the daily ritual of consuming food. For me, freshly made rice will always remind me of home as it was probably one of the first introductions to food that I had as a child. Although I’m miles away from my family, my rice cooker brings home to me.