Cooking on a Bootstrap: Over 100 Simple, Budget Recipes Paperback – December 1, 2018

In about one month of having this book, I've made 10 things - all delicious. Jack is the least pretentious recipe writer I have ever had the pleasure to read, and this book is full of substitutions and options - all with hilarious realness. These are empowering recipes. I have not found the units of measure difficult to adapt to my US kitchen. I am using a cheapo thrift store food scale for dry measures in grams.

Jack makes it sound easy to make lots of flavorful, healthy, budget recipes. Can't wait to try "Sardine and Tomato Soup."

It’s not just that her food is delicious and easy; it’s that she is such a lovely writer as well. Her personality comes bubbling off the page.

UK centric, still a ton of delicious instructions to cook flavorful, nutritious meals. Food in cans is not the worst choice in my opinion, and this book features many ways to upgrade a can of potatoes, tomatoes, or seafood into a good meal.

A must-read for anyone not willing to sacrifice healthy, tasty eating because of budget constraints.

What I love about all of Jack Monroe's books is, how useful they are. With so many cookbooks, you get intimidated and end up never using them. Not Jack's books. I have already book marked some recipes to try.

'Cooking on a Bootstrap' is billed as a sequel to 'A Girl Called Jack', Jack Monroe's first cookbook, and yes, it certainly is.These are recipes based on storecupboard staples, and relatively affordable fresh ingredients such as spinach, carrots and onions.This was first published as a crowdfunded Kickstarter book, in black and white, with line drawings, great recipes, but sadly, no index.This mainstream version has the same great recipes, realistic full page photographs, and crucially, a very good index.A sizeable number of recipes are vegetarian and many are vegan, There are lots of ways of using pulses, but for omnivores there are also imaginative ways of using tinned fish, mackerel,and sardines (including one not in the index, and one I've tried , a simple but good Hot Sardines with a Herby Sauce, listed under 'Contraband'.)Having tried many of the recipes from the book, among my favourites are a splendid makhani daal, and an impressive onion and lentil korma, which are so much more than the sum of their parts.Lemon juice, chilli, cumin and turmeric feature heavily in Jack's recipes (particularly lemon juice and chilli) and these simple ingredients lift so many recipes into the 'Oooh, that's actually really nice' category.Chief among this is the creamy crabby pasta on page 126, which is a rework of Jack's creamy salmon pasta, that has become one of my staples.This recipe has been cooked dozens of times by me since it appeared in A Girl Called Jack.I've also become a fan of Jack's version of a pot noodle, a lovely filling microwave mac 'n' cheese You can cook pasta perfectly in a microwave (and rice too, incidentally), if you have a large enough container. A lovely Carrot Ribbon Pasta also uses this methodThis is a definitely a book to buy for students off to university for the first time. The extensive use of tins means that even a fridge isn't essential for many of the recipes.For anyone who bought Jack's second, hardback book, and felt that the recipes had moved away from the low budget focus, this one is firmly back on form.The Cauliflower Mac and Cheese from that book (A Year in 120 Recipes) has been reworked into an equally delicious Parsnip Mac and Cheese, but minus the eggs and bacon, for example.You won't need a lot of expensive kitchen equipment for the recipes. A blender is useful, but not essential, many recipes are single -pot ones, so it's economical on fuel too. If you want bread, but don't want to use an oven try Jack's Simple Flatbreads, the recipe works beautifully.There's useful advice and tips at the front of the book for novice and even not so novice cooks. (Equipment, using plain flour, black tea instead of red wine in a casserole, and much more. Definitely worth a read.The print is clear enough to be read at arm's length without getting mucky fingerprints and ingredients all over the pages, as you peer at it in the kitchen. Quite simply, it's all good.Recipes from here will no doubt be handed out at foodbanks with tins of potatoes, and tomatoes (suggestion try Aloo Dum, but with tinned peas).Like A Girl Called Jack, this is needed, and it was worth the wait.Thanks, Jack.

There's a binary food divide in the media these days between "the rich", who we imagine swanning round Waitrose with a trolley full of quail's eggs and umeboshi, and "the poor", who apparently live on fast food and ready meals. It's great that at least one food writer in print today understands the issues people on a tight budget have with good food - expensive to buy, cumbersome to transport and store, hard to cook from scratch with limited equipment, risky to spend cash on ingredients you're not familiar with.Jack has lived through poverty and learned that you can make decent, healthy, sustaining food with basic, cheap ingredients, often tinned or frozen, and with the minimum of kitchen equipment. Not only that, these storecupboard staple dishes are great for any cook in a hurry or at the end of a hard day when you didn't make it out to the farmers' market after all.In addition, the cookbook itself is lush - the softback edition is smooth and glossy to the touch (and easy to wipe clean of splashes), and the photos of the finished dishes are mouth-watering. Jack's gift for colour, flavour and presentation is aspirational - my main thought on reading through was "I think I could make this". The instructions are simple, comprehensive and reassuring, with many hints, tips and anecdotes.This book could change lives. I'm hoping many people will take up Jack's suggestion to buy a copy for yourself and donate one to a food bank. And for those who can't afford the book, recipes are available free online from the Cooking on a Bootstrap website, because everybody deserves the chance to eat well on a small budget.

Great book, great recipes, great value

I bought the Kindle version and I think it's worth it for the "sardines in a herby sauce" recipe alone. There is indeed a cheerfulness in Jack's writing, and I think this is a significant factor in me deciding "Well I can jolly well have a go!" I always hesitate to move towards cooking everything from scratch, because I fear the initial outlay involved in setting up my store cupboard. That said, I simply can't afford to continue my undisciplined approach to eating, for financial reasons but also because I cannot possibly return to boring microwave meals. Thumbs up from me.