FOOD blogger Jack Monroe was challenged to feed a family of four on the living wage using British food after Prince Charles urged the nation to “buy British”.
And the living wage campaigner came up with a plan for three meals a day, plus snacks, for a whole week, costing only £35.42 – that’s just a fiver a day.
Yesterday single parent Jack, 27 – who posts budget recipes on jackatapinch.com – bought you tasty breakfasts and easy lunches, based on a shopping list of British-grown or British-made supermarket foods.
Today you can tuck into Jack’s delicious dinners and snacks, which will even provide you and your family with five fruit and veg a day.
Meat/Dairy/Protein
• 1kg boneless pork shoulder joint, £3
• 670g cooking bacon, £1.15
• 500g frozen white fish, £1.70
• 1 tin of sardines, 40p
• 6 mixed weight free-range eggs, £1
• 400g dried skimmed milk powder (makes eight pints of milk), £1.05
• 3 tins Basics baked beans, 75p
• 3 tins Basics kidney beans, 90p
• 500g Basics low-fat natural yoghurt, 50p
• Salmon paste, 45p
• 625g Basics cheddar, £2.90
Total: £13.80
Fruit and Veg
• Basics apples, 80p for 5
• Basics pears, 80p for 4
• 500g Basics sultanas, 85p
• 1kg loose Basics Fairtrade bananas, 68p (approx eight small to medium, choose carefully!)
• 1.5kg Basics carrots, 75p
• 1kg frozen peas and 1kg frozen spinach, £2.50
• 1.5kg Basics onions, 90p
• 4 x 400g cartons of Basics chopped tomatoes, £1.40
• 2 bulbs Basics garlic, 35p
• 400g Basics mushrooms, 97p
• 400g frozen berry mix, £1.50
Total: £11.50
Carbs
• 1kg Basics rice, 45p
• 2 x 500g Basics pasta, 70p
• 1kg porridge oats, £1.20
• 4 tins of Basics potatoes, 80p or 1kg Basics salad potatoes, 70p
Total: £3.05-£3.15
Store cupboard
Please check what you have in stock before you go shopping! This initial outlay assumes there is absolutely nothing in your cupboard.
With this week’s menu, you will have some quantities of most of these items left, meaning that your subsequent shops will be much cheaper.
• Basics peanut butter, 62p
• Bicarbonate of soda, 85p
• Basics dark chocolate, 35p
• Basics chicken stock cubes, 30p
• Basics mixed dried herbs, 40p
• 1kg fairtrade sugar, 80p
• Bottled lemon juice, 50p
• Basics strawberry jam, 30p
• 1.5kg Basics self raising flour, 45p
• Dried chilli flakes, £1
• Ground cumin, £1
• 40 basics teabags, 40p
Total: £6.97
Dinners
LET’S start with a Sunday roast and break it down into leftovers, the way my mother always did – although in her case it was a chicken made into Chinese chicken curries and avgolemono soup, recipes for which are available on my blog. I’ve opted for a pork shoulder. I recently cooked a roast for my family and clocked that an 800g pork shoulder joint was £2.50. It served six of us, with leftovers. I always say those people who don’t like pork haven’t had it cooked properly – a rolled shoulder joint rubbed in salt and oil and roasted slowly is a beautiful thing.
Sunday roast pork with veg and gravy
1kg roast pork shoulder
1 tin of potatoes (tinned ones make excellently fluffy roasties)
6 carrots
200g frozen peas
For the gravy:
2 onions
2 fat cloves of garlic
2 tbsp oil
1 tbsp flour
Pinch of mixed dried herbs
1 stock cube dissolved in 600ml water
For the Yorkshire puds:
2 tbsp oil
125g self-raising flour
½ tsp mixed herbs
2 eggs
150ml milk
1 Preheat the oven to 220°C. Score the fatty top of your pork with a sharp knife and rub a little salt and oil all over, working it into the scores. Place in a roasting tin and cook for
30 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 180C, cover loosely in tin foil, with the shiny side down, and cook for another hour.
2 Next make your gravy. Peel and finely slice the onions and garlic and add to a pan with the oil. Cook on a low heat to soften for a few minutes, then add the flour and herbs and stir well to coat the onions.
3 Add a splash of stock and mix well. Then add a splash more and repeat. Repeat until all the stock is used up – it may look a little thin but it will thicken as it cools. Remove from the heat and set to one side to cool and then thicken.
4 Wash and chop the carrots and place in a pan of cold water on the hob. Pop the peas in cold water in a separate pan.
5 Do your Yorkshire pudding prep – drop a little oil into the bottom of each muffin tin and set to one side. Take a large mixing bowl or jug (I use a jug to make pouring it easier). Add the salt and herbs and mix.
6 Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients – admittedly it’s a little harder in a jug. Break in the eggs, pour in the milk and beat to form a smooth, runny batter. If it’s lumpy for any reason, put it in the blender on a quick pulse. Cover and chill in the fridge. The best, lightest, crispiest batters are made when very cold mixture meets very hot oil. Then relax for 20-30 minutes.
7 When the pork has just 30 minutes to go, drain your potatoes and toss in a little oil with a pinch of salt and herbs and place around the outside of the joint.
8 Remove the pork, wrap tightly in 2 layers of foil to retain the heat and rest it to one side.
9 Pop the oiled muffin tin in the oven for a few minutes. Bring the carrots to the boil.
10 Remove the hot muffin tray, pour a little batter into each tin until around a third full and put back in the oven.
11 Reduce the carrots to a lively simmer, cover and cook until tender. Warm the peas and gravy.
12 Remove your Yorkshires, drain all the veg, uncover and slice the pork (remembering to leave some for tomorrow
– be strict about seconds) and serve.
Pork kokkinisto with green rice
300g leftover cooked pork, diced small
2 tbsp oil
2 onions
2 fat cloves of garlic
200ml strong black tea (or red wine if you have it)
400g tinned tomatoes
1 tsp mixed dried herbs
1 tbsp sugar (optional)
300g rice
Frozen spinach
1 Peel and finely slice the onion and garlic, and pop into a pan with the oil. Cook on a low heat for a few minutes to soften. Add the tea (or wine) and tomatoes, stir well, then add the pork, herbs and sugar. Bring to a boil to heat through, then reduce to a gentle simmer.
2 Bring a pan of water to the boil and add the rice. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes.
3 Drop in the frozen spinach and cook until the rice is soft. Drain in a sieve to catch the spinach. Add a dash of lemon juice and serve with the kokkinisto.
Ham and pea casserole
300g cooking bacon
2 onions
1 tbsp oil
1 stock cube dissolved in 300ml water
Pinch of mixed dried herbs
1 tin of potatoes
150g frozen peas
Dash of lemon juice, to serve
1 Dice the bacon and peel and slice the onions. Put into a pan with the oil and cook on a medium heat for a few minutes, stirring occasionally to give the onions a chance to sweeten and the bacon time to seal.
2 Drain and rinse the potatoes, slice or dice and toss half of them into the pan with half the stock. Put the remaining potatoes and stock in a blender and blitz to make a thick sauce.
3 Tip this into the pan and stir well. Add the frozen peas, turn up the heat and cook, stirring for a few minutes until piping hot.
4 Add a dash of lemon juice and pepper to serve (no salt needed – the stock and the bacon will see to that).
Friday fish pie
600g tinned potatoes (approx drained weight of 2 tins)
2 onions
Pinch of mixed dried herbs
400g frozen white fish fillets
100g tinned sardines
300ml milk
2 tsp flour
2 eggs
100g frozen spinach
Handful of cheese
Peas and carrots to serve
Preheat the oven to 180°C/ gas mark 4.
1 Wash and dice the potatoes and bring to the boil in a large saucepan of water. Reduce to a medium heat and cook until tender – tinned potatoes take a matter of minutes because they are already cooked but are generally not soft enough to mash.
2 Meanwhile, poach the fish. Peel and quarter the onion and put into a large saute pan or saucepan with the herbs. Add the fish, cover with the milk and poach on a low heat for around 10 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, take out the fish and onion pieces and place on a plate.
3 Add the sardines, removing the large bone down the middle carefully with the prong of a fork. (It is edible and a great source of calcium. I leave it in if cooking just for me but take it out when cooking for my five-year-old son Johnny.) Break up all the fish gently with a fork. Reserve the poaching liquid to make the sauce with later.
4 Boil or poach the eggs in a small saucepan for six minutes. Drain and carefully spoon on to the fish plate.
5 Drain the potatoes and tip back into the saucepan. Mash with a little milk. Grate the cheese into the mash – if using – and stir well to melt through.
6 Warm the oil gently in a pan over a low heat and add one tablespoon of the flour. Stir well with a wooden spoon to make a thick paste. Add the rest of the flour and repeat.
7 Now take a tablespoon of the reserved poaching liquid and stir it into the paste. Repeat, gradually adding more liquid until blended together in a thick sauce. Add the spinach, stir, then tip in the cooked eggs, mashing them with the back of a fork to break up. Add the onion, then the flaked fish and mix everything together well to coat in the sauce.
8 Spoon the fish mixture into a large ovenproof casserole dish, then top with the potato mash, starting at the edge of the dish and working inwards, using a fork to fluff up the top.
9 Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes until the mash is golden and crispy on top.
Tip: Instead of one big pie, make individual pies to freeze separately. Fill small freezer and ovenproof dishes half full with the fish mixture, then top with the mash. Do not cook but instead allow them to cool. Then cover and freeze for up to three months. To cook, remove from the freezer and bake straight from frozen in an oven preheated to 180°C/gas mark 4 for 30 minutes.
Treats
Jam tarts
50ml sunflower oil
120g plain flour
1 tbsp cold water
6 tbsp jam
1 Preheat the oven to 180°C and pop a tablespoon or wooden spoon into the freezer. Lightly grease a six-cup muffin tray and set to one side.
2 Pour the oil into a large mixing bowl. Add a little flour and mix well to form a paste. Add more flour and repeat. Repeat again until all the flour has been incorporated.
3 Add a tablespoon of cold water, remove the spoon from the freezer and use it to mix the dough together. Repeat if required.
4 Briefly knead the dough on a floured worktop and press or roll out until approximately 0.5cm thick. Using a pastry cutter or tea cup, cut circles from the pastry that are slightly bigger than the muffin cups.
5 One at a time, gently press a pastry circle into each cup of the muffin tray. Repeat until all the dough is used up. Pop a heaped tablespoon of jam into each pastry case, being careful to fill only two-thirds full as the jam will bubble and spill when cooking.
6 Bake in the centre of the oven for 12 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove and allow to cool before serving.
Fruit
From the shopping list, you will have extra fruit kicking around for snacks: apples, pears, sultanas, berries and bananas.
Juice
To make a simple lemon juice, heat 250ml water in a saucepan with 200g sugar. Bring to a medium heat – not boiling – then reduce to a low heat and stir to make a simple, runny syrup until the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat and stir in 100ml of lemon juice with a little more water. Allow to cool. Transfer to a bottle or jar, store in the fridge, and dilute to taste, shaking gently before opening as the contents may settle.
