Sophie Gray published her first destitute gourmet cookbook 12 years ago when her family had a dramatic cut in income but she still wanted to eat interesting and fashionable food. Since then, she has written a series of best-selling cookbooks explaining her principles - shopping smartly, eating healthily and in season, and making a little of something luxurious go a long way.
Her latest book, Feed the family for $15 or less (Random House) will be published later this month.
At first she felt like a voice in the wilderness, she said, but her message is more readily received now people are aware of financial limitations and living within their means.
What still upsets her is the often repeated, but untrue statement that it's more expensive to eat healthily, she says.
"Every time we cost recipes, like we've done for this book, the least expensive recipes are invariably the healthiest. If you go to the stir-fry section, you'll find recipes you can readily make for $10 or less and you'd be hard-pressed to find healthier meals to put on the table. Soups might not be the most wildly exciting, but they are tasty and healthy and that's at the heart of the issue."
She believes such mistaken ideas continue because many people lack cooking experience and knowledge.
"It takes a bit of practice to become competent in the kitchen. You might have one or two things you make from scratch, but it takes a bit of experience to identify that the skills in cooking are transferable."
Our forebears learned by doing, she says.
"As soon as you were old enough you stood up at the kitchen bench with your own portion of dough or mince you made into rissoles, but now people learn cooking by going to classes, watching television, reading recipes in magazines and not by doing.
Much of what she does is based on what people from New Zealand and around the world tell her on facebook or by email on her website www.destitutegourmet.com.
"People ask us for new recipes on facebook every day. They want new things all the time - we have a never-ending hunger for something new. A lot of the new recipes that come out are in lovely magazines or books and are nice to make for a special occasion but they are not necessarily things you can be thinking of doing 365 days a year, so that's really where we come in."
But if you have cooking skills, you don't necessarily need lots of recipes, she says.
"I'm probably shooting myself in the foot here, but you don't need to have a million recipe books with a million recipes. If you've got one good recipe and you know how, you can transfer those flavours and ingredients to make a different dish.
"You may not have any pasta in the house and you may not have time to make it, but if you've got a couple of frozen pastry sheets in the freezer you can make it as a tart, or bruschetta when people come round for lunch at the weekend, rather than go 'I've got nothing to make for dinner. I'll have to go to the supermarket'."
She can't help being amused that we have more appliances at our disposal than any other generation in history but we cook less than any other generation.
"An awful lot of what I'm teaching people to do was just second nature to my grandmother's generation. They would have been puzzled by people making gravy from a packet," she says.
"They would shake their heads and say why would you - it's only flour rubbed into the drippings in the pan and vegetable juices. And they'd say why would you open a packet?
"It's more difficult and you have to clean another pot and it doesn't taste as good. They'd be mystified."
• Recipes from Sophie Gray's Feed the family for $15 or less (Random House)
serves 4-6
Stromboli is a rolled stuffed bread, packed with savoury flavours - it's a great way to make a little bit of something go a long way. This stromboli uses roasted pumpkin - or you could use other roasted vegetables such as kumara or capsicum or a combination left over from a previous meal and a small amount of spicy sausage. Cost: $8.32
Ingredients
For the dough:
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp sugar
½ tsp salt
1 Tbsp oil
½ sachet instant yeast
½ cup warm milk
½ cup warm water
For the filling:
1 Tbsp oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
4-5 large button mushrooms, peeled and sliced
1½ chorizo or other spicy sausage, thinly sliced
¼cup tomato paste
1½ Tbsp pesto
2 cups cooked pumpkin, diced and roasted in a little oil until tender, or use leftovers
1 cup grated tasty cheesegrated parmesan cheese (optional)
a handful of fresh basil leaves
extra grated cheese for topping
Method
To make the dough, place all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Combine the warm milk and water and stir into the dry ingredients using a large spoon.
Turn the dough on to a floured board and knead, adding extra flour if necessary to prevent it sticking to your hands or the board.
Knead until smooth and springy (around 5 minutes).
Place the dough into a clean greased bowl, cover with cling film and microwave on low power for 1 minute.
Rest the dough for 10 minutes then repeat. After the second rest the dough should have doubled in size.
(Alternatively, set aside in a warm place until doubled in size.)Preheat the oven to 210degC. Grease a baking sheet.
While the dough is rising, prepare the filling. Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the onion, garlic, mushrooms and sausage and cook gently until soft.
Place the dough on a well-floured bench and roll out to a rectangle roughly 40cm x 30cm (around the size of a Swiss roll pan if you don't have a ruler handy).
Spread the dough first with the tomato paste then with the pesto.
Scatter on the roasted pumpkin and the mushroom and sausage mixture.
Add the cup of grated cheese, a little parmesan, if using, and the basil leaves.
Roll up the dough from the long side like a Swiss roll. Carefully transfer to the greased baking tray, cut a few slashes in the top with a serrated knife and top with the extra grated cheese.
Rest the stromboli for 10 minutes then bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden.
Cook's tip: Basil is simple to grow in pots or in a sunny patch of garden and it is most prolific in late summer and autumn, so harvest the leaves before the weather turns cold and make pesto.
Process the basil with a few cloves of garlic, some nuts - cashews or almonds are cheaper than the traditional pine nuts - enough olive oil to produce a paste-like consistency and a good grating of parmesan. Freeze in ice-cube trays to use throughout the winter.
serves 4
Tangy lemony sauce and the scrunch of cashews is a great combination, not too exotic for the conservative eaters but interesting enough for the adventurous. Cost: $10.91
Ingredients
a dash of sesame or rice bran oil
2 boneless chicken breasts, skin removed and thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp grated ginger
1 large stalk celery, finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled, cut lengthwise and thinly sliced on the diagonal
2 cups (approx. 1 head) broccoli florets
2 Tbsp dark soy sauce
⅓ cup (approx. 1 average lemon) fresh lemon juice
1½ tsp chicken stock powder dissolved in 1 cup boiling water
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp honey
1 cup green beans - frozen are fine
1 Tbsp cornflour mixed with 1 Tbsp cold water
a handful or two of roasted cashews
cooked rice for 4 people
Method
Heat the oil in a wok or heavy-based frying pan. Add the chicken in batches, stir-frying each batch briskly until sealed (white on the outside but still raw inside). Remove from the pan and continue with the next batch until all the chicken is sealed - add a drop more oil to the pan if you need it.
When all the chicken is sealed, return it all to the pan and add the garlic, ginger, celery, carrot and broccoli. Add the soy sauce and lemon juice and stir-fry for a minute or two, then add the chicken stock, brown sugar and honey and stir-fry until the vegetables are almost tender, then add the beans.
When the beans are cooked, stir in the cornflour mixture and taste to check the seasoning, adding a little more brown sugar or honey if desired. Toss in the cashews just before serving. Serve with cooked rice.
