Food writer and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe has created a cook book featuring recipes using canned and dried food, drawing on her experience as a food bank user and working with people in poverty.
Entitled Tin Can Cook, it brings together 75 simple, affordable recipes that can be rustled up from tinned and dried ingredients (give or take a couple of store cupboard staples) as a 'tongue-in-cheek fuck you to food snobbery and elitism'.
The book promises creative twists to some well-known dishes, with recipes including Red Lentil and Mandarin Curry, Fruit Cocktail Cake, Catalan Fish Stew, Pina Colada Toast and other clever hacks like crème brûlée made from tinned custard, roast tatties using tinned potatoes or beef stew made from canned stewed steak.
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Monroe, who mastered frugal cooking out of necessity as a single mum, told the Sunday Telegraph: "There's a lot of snobbery around tinned food but I want to lift the lid on it and show people you can make really good meals out of it.
"We are emphasising that cookery doesn't have to be this elitist or fashionable thing you're sold on television.
"It's about looking at what's in your cupboards and knocking something together - that's what it's about for most people."
And by 'good meals', Monroe doesn't just mean the basics like soups and stews - as solid as they are. She believes that frugal cooking can stretch much further, and even into the realms of a cannellini bean beurre blanc (which uses cider instead of wine) or anchovy mayonnaise.
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Sure, not the stuff that food bank users are probably used to, but that's not to say that they don't deserve it, as Monroe points out:
Well bloody said.
Monroe has also said that she'll be donating copies of the books to food banks, and has now set up the means for others to do the same via GoFundMe.
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The GoFundMe page explains: "I have donated my previous books to food banks and told them they can photocopy the pages to hand out to their clients, and they have done so in their thousands. I have made thousands of recipe cards to hand out to food bank users in conjunction with Oxfam and the Trussell Trust. But I want to do more.
"I want this book to reach as many people as it needs to. I'm not in this to make money - the royalties for an author are laughably piteous, 7-10% of the RRP - so this isn't about flogging books. It's about giving people hope, dignity, and decent meals in the most dire of situations."
Find out more about the book - and how to donate - via Amazon or Monroe's GoFundMe page.
Featured Image Credit: Jack Monroe/PA