Food, glorious food...

This is the result of a rather slow-burn rant and yes, it's going to be long and preachy.

About a month ago, The Guardian published some recipe ideas for students heading off to university under the headline, "Cheap and delicious recipes for student gourmets from some of the country's top chefs, including Gordon Ramsay, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver". Well, whilst some of the lesser known chefs managed to bring meals in at about £1 a head, Hugh F-W provided a fish recipe that cost £22 and served 4, yes that's £5.50 per serving (Jamie's offering also cost £5.50 a head), and how, by all that is holy, did Gordon Ramsay manage to do macaroni cheese that cost £9.50 (£2.37 a head)? It should only cost £2.50 to make macaroni cheese for 4 people, leaving £7 to spend on beer (we are cooking for students here after all)!

I get really, REALLY, pissed off by some of the commentators who, under the guise of encouraging you to cook from scratch, are actually saying, "Oh but if you can't be bothered to do it properly, with locally sourced organic ingredients, bought from your local farm shop every day, it just isn't real food." So, you might as well not bother and just go back to buying a ready meal to pop in the microwave.

They do the same with ingredients that real people use, because we have real lives going on and can't spend all day tracking down the 'right' soy sauce. Take dried herbs and spices: I've heard 'celebrity' chefs say that if you don't use fresh spices then you really ought not to bother making your own curry because the dried ones (and, even worse, the dried pre-crushed ones) just ruin the flavour. Bollocks. That's fine if you have an Asian food shop on your doorstep, but here in deepest Wiltshire I can't always get even a bunch of fresh coriander in my local supermarket, let alone more exotic things like fenugreek. So instead the chefs try to get you to use one of their own branded bottles of curry paste that cost a fortune and don't last a quarter as long as dried spices in bottles. The only reactions I've ever had to my home-made curries cooked with dried pre-ground cumin, etc, is, "God, that was good, is there enough for seconds?".

Some daft home economist on Woman's Hour a couple of years back was trying to encourage people to avoid the credit crunch by taking their own lunches to work. A very laudable aim, until she said that making your own tuna mayo sarnie would cost about 85p. Wot? So, only about 15p less than a basic supermarket one then? Again, absolute rubbish and seems more intended to put people off making their own rather than encouraging them. For the record, I make 3 rounds of tuna mayo sandwiches for under 90p.

So, although I know virtually no-one with children at university, and those that I do know certainly don't read this blog, for my own satisfaction I'm going to cost up some more sensibly priced student meals. And if any browsing student (or anyone cooking on a budget) happens to come across them, I hope they find them useful. But remember, these are the tips of a 43 year old woman and not necessarily what I actually did when I was at uni! Although we did cook each night for ourselves and if I'd thought I'd be leaving uni with £20k+ of debt I think I'd have been even more careful.

In the beginning...

Right then, let's start at the beginning. ALWAYS have breakfast at home before you leave for the day. Buying stuff on the way to class is expensive, or leaving it 'til mid-morning when you're so starving that you pig out on crisps and chocolate bars is a really bad idea, costly and not healthy. Having brekkie at home saves you money and ensures you can concentrate in class. There are lots of options: cereals (try to avoid ones that turn the milk a different colour or are covered in sugar - but even they are better than nothing); yoghurt and fruit; toast and spreadable topping of your choice; toast and an egg; beans on toast; bacon or sausage sarnie (yeh, like you're going to be up early enough to cook that!). Also, a glass of juice in the morning counts as one of your 5 portions of fruit and veg a day. If you are up too late to eat in the house then grab some fruit to eat on the bus.

Take things for mid-morning and mid-afternoon breaks: fruit, crisps, a re-fillable bottle of water. The most popular branded crisps bought in a multi-bag from the supermarket can cost as little as 9p per bag, compare that to the 45p+ prices of single bags bought from the shop at uni. If you buy just one coffee a day at uni for £2 that's about £360 a year - so just add up what your mid-morning snacks, lunch then mid-afternoon snacks cost you.

Lunch

Yes, I've had the rant about sandwiches above. Making your own lunch will cost less than one third what a shop bought sandwich will (much less, as the campus on which I work does not sell sandwiches for less than £1.50 and most are above £2). You don't have to stop at sandwiches, try wraps, soups or leftovers kept hot in a food flask, salads (tabbouleh, pasta salad, noodle or rice salad using last night's stir fry).

OK, realistically, you're not going to have time to make these in the morning are you? So make them the night before - it'll take 5 mins and save you a fortune. You can even freeze sandwiches (don't put anything on that'll go soggy like tomatoes or cucumber) individually wrapped or in a plastic sandwich box, that you can just take out of the freezer and pop into the 'fridge the night before. Or freeze things when they're on special offer or RFQS (reduced for quick sale) like pasties and pork pies, again just transfer them to the 'fridge the night before.

Any veg you can cram into your lunch will help towards your five a day, even just tomato or celery on your cheese sandwich, cucumber, celery or sweetcorn with tuna, etc.

Dinner

Our culinary bible at uni was Cas Clarke's seminal "Grub on a Grant", but we also had the odd St. Delia and I think I even had a Ken Hom - stirfrys can be very cheap and will use up almost anything in the 'fridge. Don't buy cookery books new; charity shops are full of them, your public library has them by the armful, buy them for a penny on Amazon, surf the web for recipe ideas. Oh, and don't be afraid of ruining your food and wasting money: in the last 25 years I've only made 2 dishes that I considered inedible - one was a potato soup that had the look and consistency of wallpaper paste (that went straight on the compost heap but probably only cost £1 to make) and the other was some pasta/smoked salmon/curry thing using leftovers that I think was supposed to be like kedgeree - it was foul but Jon ate my share before saying, "Please don't make that again".

OK, 7 basic dinner recipes that will feature pasta quite heavily, 'cos it's cheap and filling. I've put 'serves 2' on most of the recipes but just double the ingredients for 4 people, or, if you're cooking for one then just pop half the meal on a plastic box and either freeze it or put into the 'fridge and eat within a couple of days. You can add more rice or pasta if you're hungry and you won't break the bank – you could eat the whole lot yourself without sharing and it won't exactly be expensive! It's easy to think that you can buy a pasta ready-meal in the supermarket for not much more than some of these recipes cost, but you should find that you're making twice as much as you'll get in the supermarket's plastic tray and you also know what's going into your food, so there's no hidden salt, sugar, etc. The only piece of kitchen equipment that you might have to buy is a 'balloon whisk', although if you find that you enjoy cooking (or at least don't hate it) you could buy a cheap liquidiser or hand blender so that you can make soups (from as little as 15p per pint), smoothies, houmous (you can make a vat of this for the price of those little supermarket pots), and so on - supermarkets and Argos sell liquidizers for less than £10 and hand-blenders for under a fiver.

Pasta with tomato sauce - serves 2 - approx cost (depending on how much cheese you have) 75p - that's 37.5p per head.

An extremely simple and cheap recipe for when there's very little in the cupboard. Taken from Elisabeth Luard's wonderful autobiography "Family Life", which also has other great budget recipes as well as being a fantastic read.

150g / 6oz pasta
1 tin tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
half teaspoon dried thyme
salt and milled black pepper
grated cheese (cheddar will do, it doesn't have to be posh Italian stuff)

Fry the garlic in a tablespoon of oil for a moment without it changing colour. Add the tomatoes and thyme and let the mixture bubble until you have a nice thick sauce (about 15 minutes). Bring a pan of water to the boil and cook the pasta as directed on the packet. Season the sauce with a pinch of salt and black pepper. Drain the pasta, toss it in the sauce and serve topped with the grated cheese.

This can be adapted by:

1. Putting the pasta and sauce in a shallow oven dish, covering with the cheese and popping in the oven (gas 4, about 180c) until the cheese is bubbly (about 15 mins).
2. Adding some veg to fry with the garlic at the beginning (e.g. any or all of these: half an onion or a celery stick finely chopped, sliced green pepper, sliced mushrooms)
3. Add a couple of slices of chopped bacon to the garlic
4. Add some tinned or frozen sweetcorn and/or a tin of tuna to the tomatoes when they start to bubble.

Pasta bake - this is an unusual recipe in that I only put in it enough ingredients for 2 people but it seems to magically multiply and will serve 3-4, so we always freeze half (take out of the freezer the night before and reheat in a microwave or put into a casserole dish with the lid on in the oven for about 45mins or until piping hot all the way through - gas 5). The price for the tuna and sweetcorn version is around £2.10, so 52.5p per head.

150g / 6oz pasta
185g tin tuna chunks, drained (if they're in oil, drain it into a cup and use it to fry the onion).
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 tin sweetcorn, drained
2 oz/ 55g butter/margarine
2 oz/ 55g plain flour
1 level tsp mustard powder (optional)
large pinch cayenne pepper (optional)
pinch ground nutmeg (optional)
Large pinch salt
1 pint / 460 ml milk (or half milk and half water)
50g - 100g cheddar cheese or similar, grated plus extra for sprinkling on top
Freshly ground black pepper

Cook the pasta as directed on the pack but drain it a couple of minutes before it's completely cooked. Fry the onion in a tablespoon of oil until translucent, not browned. Remove the pan from the heat and add the butter, flour, spices, salt, pepper and milk. Put back on a medium heat and stir with a balloon whisk until the sauce goes thick and glossy and has no lumps in it. Remove from the heat and stir in the majority of the cheese.

In a casserole dish mix together the tuna, sweetcorn, pasta and sauce. Sprinkle the reminder of the cheese over it and cook for about 30 mins in the oven at 200C/Gas 7 until the top is golden and bubbling. Serve with a veg like frozen peas.

This can be adapted by:

1. If you have some old, but not yet blue, bread rub it in your hands (or put into a blender) to make breadcrumbs and mix with the cheese to sprinkle on top - it will make a nice crunchy topping (if you have a breakfast cereal like bran flakes or Weetabix you can use a couple of tablespoons of the crumbs at the bottom of the pack instead of breadcrumbs).
2. For bacon and mushroom bake chop 4 rashers of bacon and fry with the onion - remove them from the pan and put them in the casserole dish before making the sauce. Then slice about 4oz/100g mushrooms and stir into the sauce with the cheese.
3. For chicken add about 6-8 oz/150-200g cooked chicken to the sauce instead of the tuna (or fry raw chicken with the onion and then remove from the pan and put into the casserole dish before making the sauce). Use either mushrooms or sweetcorn.
4. For ham and mushroom, chop about 4 slices of ham and add them and the mushrooms to the sauce with the cheese.

You can now make a cheese sauce (also called roux, Béchamel or white sauce) so things like cauliflower cheese, macaroni cheese, leeks in cheese sauce, lasagne, mornay, proper croque Monsieur should be a doddle.

Stuffed Peppers/Tomatoes - OK, so this one's looking a bit pricey with single peppers currently at 68p and beef tomatoes 57p each, but if you buy a multipack of peppers you could get them down to about 45p each. If you're using peppers then it's best cooked with red, yellow or orange bell peppers and I allow 2 peppers/tomatoes per person. Approx. cost £2.73, so about £1.36 per head, but may be cheaper to make in summer when tomatoes and peppers are plentiful.

4 large peppers or beef tomatoes
1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
half a cup of rice
1 tablespoon tomato purée
100g/4 oz cheddar cheese, chopped into cubes, plus a little for sprinkling on the top
basil leaves, torn or 1 teaspoon dried basil
half a pint vegetable stock or water (if you don't have any stock cubes use a level teaspoon of Bovril or Marmite)
Salt and pepper

Slice the top off the pepper, chop it and fry gently with the onion and garlic, until the onion is soft. Add the rice, stock, salt and pepper and, if you're using dried basil, add that too. Simmer gently until the rice is cooked, stirring it towards the end of cooking to ensure that the rice doesn't stick. Remove from the heat and stir in most of the cheese and all the basil leaves (if you're using fresh basil). Spoon into the peppers and top each pepper with the remaining cheese. Cover with foil and cook for 30 mins at Gas 6/200c, uncover and cook at Gas 4/180c for about 30 mins until the cheese is golden.

This can be adapted by:

Trying Simon Hopkinson's brilliant recipe for tomatoes stuffed with rice and lamb taken from The Independent, 7/10/2000

Baked stuffed tomatoes with rice and leftover lamb - Roman style. Serves 4
8 large ripe tomatoes
100g arborio rice
4-5tbsp leftover cooked lamb, finely diced
2tbsp chopped parsley
1 heaped tbsp chopped mint leaves
4 spring onions, trimmed and finely sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
salt and pepper
100-120ml olive oil
Preheat the oven to 400F/ 200C/gas mark 6. Slice off the tops of each of the tomatoes - effectively to form lids. Using a teaspoon, scoop out the insides from the tomatoes (try not to pierce their skins) and place the pulp in a colander or sieve suspended over a bowl. Roughly move this pulp about with a spoon so as to drain off most of the liquid. Coarsely chop the flesh, place in a bowl, and mix with the rice, lamb, herbs, onions, garlic, seasoning and half the olive oil. Place the tomatoes in a deep baking dish and then spoon this slop into each of the tomatoes, filling them almost to the brim (there may be a little left over). Now add the collected tomato juice to each tomato until all is used up; it matters not that some might overflow into the dish. Pop their lids back on, anoint each tomato with the remaining olive oil and finish with a light flurry of further seasoning. Cover with foil and bake for 20-25 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350F/180C/gas mark 4, remove foil and continue to cook for a further 25-30 minutes, or until the tomatoes have become well blistered and the rice has swollen to a glistening tenderness. Serve at room temperature.

Tart's Pasta - Serves 2. Pasta 'puttanesca' was apparently named after Neapolitan ladies of the night, although I bet they didn't do much trade after eating this! The ingredients look expensive, but it actually works out at about £1.70, so 85p a head. Vegetarians could leave out the anchovies. I rarely get chance to put olives in this 'cos Jon gets to them first!

150g/6oz pasta
1 x 400g tin tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 x 50g tin anchovies
100g pitted black olives, chopped
1 fresh red chilli, de-seeded and chopped finely - or use half a teaspoon crushed dried chillies
1 tablespoon capers, drained and rinsed
1 heaped teaspoon dried basil - or 1 dessert spoon chopped fresh basil leaves
freshly ground black pepper

Drain the oil from the anchovies into a pan and in it fry the garlic and chilli until the garlic begins to brown at the edges. Add all the other ingredients, put the lid on the pan and turn the heat down. Simmer until the sauce is very thick - about 40 mins. Cook the pasta as directed on the packet, drain, then toss it in the sauce. Serve with grated cheese, preferably parmesan, Grana Padano or Pecorino Romano - but cheddar is fine.

Cheat's Carbonara - serves 2 for about £1.44 if using Italian cheese (72p a head) but would cost less if you used cheddar. You can leave out either the bacon, or the mushrooms, depending on what you have in the 'fridge. Ham can be substituted for the bacon.

150g/6oz pasta
2 rashers of bacon, chopped
4 or 5 mushrooms, sliced
4 tablespoons (approx 40g) of Italian cheese like parmesan, Grana Padano or Pecorino Romano - but cheddar is also fine - grated
1 egg
4 tablespoons (approx 60ml) single cream or crème fraiche (or double/whipping cream or cream cheese)
freshly milled black pepper

Cook the pasta as directed on the packed and drop the mushrooms into the water to cook with the pasta. Mix the cheese, egg, cream and pepper together. Drain the pasta and mushrooms into a colander and in the pan heat a tablespoon of oil or butter and fry the bacon until cooked (about 5 mins). Put the pasta and mushrooms back into the pan and stir them around for a couple of minutes to come back up to temperature. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the sauce. Return the pan to the lowest possible heat and keep stirring until the cheese has melted. Serve with extra grated cheese to sprinkle over.

Dahi Murghi - a pretty easy curry recipe. Putting meat in a recipe immediately pushes up the price, but luckily more economical cuts of meat are usually much tastier than the more expensive ones! Exotic things like ginger keep for ages in the 'fridge and can be used in stirfrys. Serves 4 and costs approximately £4.80, so £1.20 a head, including rice..

400g / 1lb skinless chicken thigh fillets, chopped
150g pot of plain/natural yoghurt
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2.5 cm piece root ginger, peeled and grated or finely chopped
2 red chillies and 2 green chillies, chopped finely, or half a teaspoon (more if you like it hotter) of dried chilli flakes.
Half a teaspoon of ground turmeric
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 large onion sliced into half-moon slices
(1 green or red pepper, sliced - optional)
Salt & ground black pepper
Half a teaspoon of garam masala
2 tablespoons (1 small pack) fresh coriander leaves, chopped

Curries are best marinated for a few hours or overnight to let the flavours develop, but if you forget don't worry, just start the recipe from 'Heat the oil...'. To be honest, if I remember to marinate it the night before then I'll cook the onions as well, add them to the marinade when they've cooled and then the following evening everything just goes into a casserole dish in the oven for 1 hour at gas 4.

Put the chicken in a large non-metallic bowl with the yoghurt, garlic, chillies, ginger, turmeric and ground coriander. Mix thoroughly, cover and leave in the 'fridge for 6 hours, or overnight. When you're ready to cook the curry heat the oil in a large pan and fry the onions until browned. Remove the chicken from the marinade, reserve the marinated and add the chicken to the pan. Cook the chicken for 5 mins until starting to brown. Add the marinade (and green pepper, if you're using it), cover and cook gently for 30 mins until the chicken is tender. Add the salt and pepper, garam masala and cook for a further 5 mins. Stir in the coriander leaves and serve with boiled rice.

Green fettuccine with tuna - well, actually, you can use whatever pasta you like and the recipe originally said 'salmon'. Serves 2. The wine bumps the cost of this up to about £1.84, so 92p a head. Buy the cheapest resealable bottle/carton of white wine possible and it'll keep for ages - you probably wouldn't want to drink a glass of it, but it will be fine for cooking with.

1 small onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon tomato puree
pinch cayenne pepper
200ml/7 fl oz white wine
140ml/5fl oz single cream or crème fraiche
185g tin tuna chunks, drained (if it's in oil, use the oil to fry the onion)

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a pan and soften the onion and garlic. Add the tomato purée, cayenne and wine and simmer for 5 mins until reduced by half. Cook the pasta as directed on the packet. Add the cream and tuna to the onion mixture and simmer for a couple of minutes. Drain the pasta and toss it on the hot sauce and serve.

In conclusion...

So, that's two people fed for 7 nights for £11.91. I could go on with the recipes, but I'm sure I've made my point: cooking for yourself is cheaper than ready meals, let alone take aways, and you shouldn't be put off by poncy chefs feeding you duff infromation.

Shopping carefully and a little forward planning are probably the keys to cheap eating:

* never going shopping without a shopping list. Check out what's in the 'fridge, freezer and cupboards as you write it so that you avoid waste. Do a rough list of the meals you can make with the ingredients as you go.

* be open to special offers and RFQS bargains and be prepared to change your meal ideas if you can find cheaper ingredients.

* supermarkets are not always the cheapest place to shop: the green grocer may have cheaper fruit and veg; the market (and we're talking traditional markets here, not farmers' markets) may have cheaper veg, cheese, meat, fish; and ethnic food shops (Asian/Chinese/etc) cheaper spices, sauces, veg, rice, and so on. A good butcher may not be more expensive than the supermarket, and may also be selling locally raised meat. And people are often happy to tell you the best ways to cook what you buy, advise you on amounts to cook, and so on. Turn food shopping into a social experience rather than a chore.

* don't be addicted to brands – the supermarket's 'value' ranges are often just as good but are a fraction of the price, for example the leading brand of bran flakes is £2.29 for 750g, whilst the supermarket's value brand is 78p for 750g and even their regular bran flakes are £1.58 for 1kg. They all taste the same so are the branded ones really 3 times better? The same goes for cleaning products, kitchen roll, etc. Read Martin Lewis's 'Down-Shift Challenge' on supermarket shopping. All the recipes above were costed using non-branded goods where possible. If you're label conscious, just buy a plastic box to decant the product into - you'll be saving so much money that buying the odd Tupperware box won't even register on your budget.

* avoid waste by not buying more than you need and by using up items that are about to spoil – make soups or stirfrys from those dodgy veggies in the bottom of the 'fridge, add them to a stew, make smoothies from fruit that's over-ripe, or chop them and freeze them – lots of websites have ideas for using up things lurking at the back of the 'fridge, try this forum.

* you don't have to spend every night slaving over a hot stove: several of these meals can be assembled in advance (with the pasta bake, just make sure that all the cooked ingredients and sauce are cold before you assemble it) and either frozen or put in the 'fridge ready to go into the oven when you get home, for example the stuffed peppers/tomatoes, pasta bake, curry and the tart's pasta sauce (just reheat that in a saucepan whilst the pasta is cooking). So an hour's preparation on an afternoon when you have the time to spend could give you 4 meals that will barely need any time spending on them later - just the cooking of rice, pasta or a veg to go with some of them.

Right, I think I'm ranted out now, and I never even got onto smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels or tiger prawn linguine! Well, perhaps next time...

Friday Fun 9

Jasper Carrot's account of his first time in Hong Kong, eating at an 'authentic' Chinese restaurant. I had to be helped back onto the sofa when I first heard this on TV all those years ago and I still cry with laughter.