With the onset of our recession and my redundancy I have not spent less on food - other than eating out - but have thought more about frugal eating. I even see that Delia Smith has published a book on the subject.

However one of my main inspirations for frugal cookings comes from asian students I lived with in the late 1970s. I thought I had a small budget to live with but they tended to have even less. However the chinese and indian students seemed to knock together really tasty but frugal fare.

One area where they spent less than most UK students was meat. They would tend to use much smaller quantities of it and make it go a long way. For example, I recall a Malaysian student taking a single pork chop and cutting it into small pieces and stir frying it with a pile of vegetables. Many Indian students were either vegetarian or bought meat rarely. They would make extensive use of pulses such as lentils and chickpeas.

At the end of my student time, my research grant had run out but I needed to continue working for a few months. For much of this time I lived on dhal and pita bread. The dhal with lentils, onions, tinned tomatoes and spices was very cheap to produce. The diet was a little boring but the varieties of lentils and spicing could be changed around.

Another thing which many people have forgotten about is cheaper cuts of meat, which leads to my next recipe...