A Girl Called Jack: 100 delicious budget recipes Kindle Edition

Regular readers of Jack Monroe's blog will be familiar with her excellent recipes that conjour up quick tasty and above all, cheap meals from store-cupboard staples such as tinned chickpeas, lentils and cut-price bacon.Those who have tried the recipes will know that they mostly work, and work extremely well.This book is a collection of the blog recipes along with new ones but it is also so much more. The first nice surprise was the format - an A4 sized softback packed with beautiful but realistic photos by Susan Bell of each dish opposite the ingredients and method.For some recipes such as 'Use -Me-For-Anything Tomato Sauce' there are helpful stage by stage photos arranged to make the procedures easy to follow; ideal for nervous novice cooks.Each recipe has plenty of suggestions for variations - vegetarians and vegans will find that many of these recipes can be adapted to suit them.For those not too familiar with her work, Jack introduces herself with some moving extracts from her blog - including the now-famous 'Hunger Hurts' piece - and at the end of the book, 'Hunger Hurts - One Year Later', showing just how far Jack has come in that time.There is some incredibly sensible advice on the basics needed to equip a kitchen. The only expensive item required in many recipes is a blender, and Jack's cost under a tenner.Sound advice is given on how to shop with a very limited budget and build up a store-cupboard at the same time - proteins first, vegetables second, then one store-cupboard carb per week -rice, bags of pasta, tins of potatoes (tins work out much cheaper than fresh and are surprisingly versatile). Then back to the fruit or tinned fruit with any spare cash.It's this grounded sensible no-nonsense approach that infuses the book and makes it such a valuable read.If you read Jack's blog regularly you may think you have seen all these recipes already; well, you haven't - many were new to me. There's some brilliant advice on getting a decent batter coating in a lovely Scampi Roes recipe (using tinned herring roes), and an inventive way of making gnocchi using tinned potatoes.With recipes being so budget focused, ingredients lists are almost always under ten items and often seven or less.I've been cooking for many years using Shirley Goode's and Jocasta Innes' budget recipes. Jack is their equal, if not better, in that she is bang-up-to-date in what ingredients are readily available to today's cook.Costings aren't given but very few recipes appear to be more than £1.50 per head - and many are substantially less.Since first writing this review, I have tried more recipes, having only tried those on the blog previously.Some are very good - mixed bean goulash, sausage and lentil hotpot, creamy salmon pasta - but there is one that doesn't work and that's the Diet Coke Chicken.Jack describes it as being 'sticky', but to be sticky it needs a sugar content, and there is none in the recipe. It's a rather boring non-sticky tomato reduction, not very nice and the Diet Coke may as well have been water. I would like to try it again with more of my conventional BBQ sauce ingredients such as honey, plum jam or golden syrup, Worcestershire sauce and tomato puree.I would hope that those public libraries that are left following council cutbacks buy multiple copies of this book. It deserves to be made widely available to those who will need it most. I bought and donated a copy to my local library.Jack is exceptional in the way she has fought her way out of the poverty that mindless bureaucracy imposed upon her, but there are many, many like her who need her wisdom and hard -won knowledge.

I got this when released, and I don't think its been out of my kitchen since. As a very experienced home cook, I've been using Good Food, Nigella and Jamie for years, but have always struggled with finding good "every day" recipes without resorting to ready-made ingredients (one of the Good Food 15 minute meals books I had had a tomato pasta recipe that uses ready made pasta sauce, for goodness sake!).I've read the negative comments on this book, and would agree on some. However, I feel that they have missed the point somehow. For me, this book opened my eyes. Yes, the recipes are basic. But the whole ethos isn't to hand hold you through the process, with complicated instructions and long descriptions (thank you, Nigella!), but to inspire you to try out your own creations. For the past 18 months, I have made the smoky lentil burgers nearly every week, except I make my own variations - spring onions are ace, as is curry powder, morroccan spices...the list goes on. I even oven bake them in a yorkshire pudding tray instead of frying.This book gives you basic techniques, uses the same ingredients as a base to create a massive variety of dishes, and gives ideas on how to make cheap food not only edible, but posh too. I've given this book to my clients (I work for a food project), who have all reported good things about its accessibility, easy of use, flexibility and great ideas that save money.What this book says is "you might be poor but you're worth having decent, nutritious food". And that is Jack, in a nutshell.

I don't review every book I purchase just the ones which stand out to be noticed I am a 62year old grandmother who has cooked all her life, my mother was a brilliant self taught cook and she in turn taught me. In the early years of my marriage I purchased Delia Smith's cookery course cook book which has been my cooking bible all my life, I'm currently on the second copy of this as the first was used to the point of falling apart. Recently I've purchased Mary Berry's easy cakes and again this has been getting a lot of use. I also worked in libraries all of my life and had access to a vast number of cookery books. Now we come to 'A girl called Jack' this is changing the way I think about food and how I shop probably more than any cookery book I've ever used. I now check my cupboards before going shopping, I'm looking at what I have in already and thinking 'what can I do with that'. We are not vegetarians, but my sons wives are, and as one son turned veggie overnight at 13years old I had to learn some vegetarian cookery fast. I wish I had had this cookbook at that point in my life it would have been a life saver. I've only had this book three weeks and so far I've made Love Soup, chickpea and tomato bread and this is heaven toasted the next day with a runny poached egg on it. Paella, probably the easiest version I've ever come across, Chestnut and red wine casserole and we are having the soup and bread again for lunch today. All have met and enthusiastic response from my husband and I'm planning on making the veggie burgers next week. These are recipes which are tasty, economical, with generous portion sizes and, in the most unfussy. I can't wait for one of my daughters in law to visit so I can cook the chestnuts in red wine dish. I'm convinced that this book is going to be as valuable to me in the kitchen as my Delia Smith and Mary Berry are and from me that is high praise indeed.