Yes I am being serious. It’s amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.

When I noticed that 2 duck legs from Tesco cost a mere £2.15, I thought I had to fit them into the experiment. The only problem is that duck is often cooked with red wine, port or expensive fruits like cherries and blackcurrants. I needed to think up a recipe that used less expensive accompaniments. In the end I produced this. 

That is a duck leg slow cooked in honey and ginger sauce served with rice boiled in vegetable stock and seasoned savoy cabbage. Only the cabbage was on special offer and the whole thing came to £1.63 per portion. I reduced costs by using powdered ginger. It is a useful storecupboard item if you like cooking. A 47p pot from Tesco would probably last you about a year! 

Ok, the portions aren’t as big as when I made the meatballs, but it was a decent size for an evening meal. It is potentially a good dish for a budget dinner party or if you are out to impress someone.

I cooked for two again and halved the cost but it is easy to just halve the quantities for this recipe. Here is the breakdown.

I guess no one expects duck to be cheap! It is true that duck breasts cost about £15 per kilo but the legs are not very popular. This is because they need to be cooked slowly for a long time or they end up really tough. It seems a bit silly to me because you can leave them in the oven unattended while you go down the pub. Just make sure your flatmates know what is going on! In a way these cheap cuts demand less of your time than the more popular ones, which need careful attention if they are to be cooked to your liking.

The dish is simple to make too. The full recipe is here. In hindsight, I think that instead of using vegetable stock to cook the rice, it would have been a good idea to add some lemon zest and juice. It would make the dish about 10p more expensive overall. Let me know if you try it and it works!

Yesterday evening I attended a drinks party at the Carlton Club. It was good fun and had some interesting American themed canapes like little pastry cups with Caesar salad and mini hot dogs. Since I knew it would finish rather late and I’m not too keen on walking home on my own at night, I’d arranged to stay in Hammersmith and make my experiment meal for two.

The kitchen in this flat certainly lives up to the student cliche. No washing up had been done in weeks and the floor was slippery with grease. You’d need a hammer and chisel to find out what colour the hob was. Nevertheless, I set about making that evening’s meal.

The idea was simple. I made meatballs from beef mince, garlic, onion and random dried herbs and spices. I cooked them in a tomato based sauce with aubergine, chilli, more garlic and herbs and lamb stock. I think using lamb stock is a nice cheat to make beef or turkey mince based meals taste richer. I intended to use turkey or pork mince for this, but there didn’t seem to be any available.

And now for the cost of the meal. This made too much for two people!

If you include the eggs (which I bought yesterday), it is £3.20 so £1.60 per large portion- and when I say large I mean too much for a hungry 16 stone man! The meatballs were really nice and soft! I’ve had trouble with them being dry before but I think the slightly fatty beef mince helped this. The aubergines were lovely with the tomato, herbs and lamb stock.

This is a very temperamental camera. All the photos has the weird blurring to the left. But the important thing to notice is how much food there is! Those were big plates too! See the comparison with the knife and fork.

There is a definite advantage to cooking for several people and splitting the cost. If I was doing this experiment on my own, I couldn’t buy an aubergine! I wouldn’t want to eat it four days in a week and, if I left it longer, it would go off.  By cooking for two, I used half my aubergine. I’ll probably do this again to get rid of the rest. 

I’ve not been specific about the herbs and spices because I used things that were lying around. Cayenne pepper went in with a little chilli and oregano. You can improvise with the things you have in your kitchen.  A couple of squares of dark chocolate would be nice with the chilli. Here’s a basic recipe.

So after splitting the cost of the food, my total so far has risen by £1.45 to £8.76. I’m still on target …for now… but I’m beginning to struggle for ideas. I think it might be time to try out some offal.

For those of you that didn’t see, it all started here.

For the first time I’m on a food budget. It felt a bit strange walking through Tesco and not being able to pick up everything I wanted. In the past I might have been described as frivolous. If I couldn’t find what I wanted easily, I’d grab the organic version, just because it would save time. Not this week. This week I’m hanging around the bargain bin and calculating cost per portion.

Last night I bought these perishable foods which will go on the shopping bill regardless of whether I finish them.

So that is breakfast covered. I got 4 tins of tuna and some mayonnaise and half a cucumber to go with it. That, in my experience, will cover four lunches at least and came to £2.12.  I was left with sorting out that evening’s dinner.

This time I thought I’d take advantage of special offers. I won’t do this regularly as I’d like to put up recipies for things that are always cheap. But I guess it is an important point that you can live quite well off a bargain bin. I found 2 large portions of  nice undyed smoked haddock for £1.77, so I made smoked haddock florentine with new potatoes. Sounds extravagant, but it still costs less than £2.

This cheap version uses frozen leaf spinach. I didn’t get value eggs, but you could knock 5p off the price by doing that. I also was careful with the cheese sauce, making only just enough to go with the meal. Again, if you want to replace store own brand cheddar with “value white cheese” it wouldn’t be a huge problem.

This time no lasagne was involved. It was just haddock on top of spinach topped with an egg, covered with cheese sauce and served with a side of potatoes. I already had some of the ingredients covered so it is just a case of adding on the cost of the haddock (90p), spinach (12p), potatoes(22p), cheese (25p) and flour(5p).The rest of the haddock has gone in the freezer.

Including the things I already bought, I think dinner itself came to about £1.80.  I’m afraid it wasn’t the most photogenic thing in the world but it contained a lot of food and is very healthy so long as you don’t go overboard with the cheese sauce.

Not bad for under £2, is it? The running shopping bill total is £7.31. I’ll be cutting down from now so hopefully, going on what I had before, 6 more dinners should be about £9. Thet leaves me about £3.50 to cover any other lunch items and snacks. A little bit tight but not impossible I think.

It looks like the full student experiment will have to go on hold for a week or so. This is because I’m moving on Saturday and I still have a freezer full of food to get through. Besides, my new surroundings in student halls will make the experiment feel all the more appropriate.

In the mean time I thought I’d try out one of my ideas to give you  taste of what is to come. I bring you my “students’ turkey and leek pie”.

I was a bit too stingy with the pastry so it leaked at the sides little. Apart from that, it worked and was really very nice.

The important question, of course, is “how much did it cost?” The breakdown goes like this (sorry about the bad formatting - I’ll sort it out later).

• 570g Tesco diced turkey thigh 1.69
• 2 leeks (loose from Tesco) 0.58
• 150g Tesco closed cup mushrooms 0.35
• 300ml Tesco semi skimmed milk 0.13
• salt and pepper (maximum price) 0.05
• approx 170g Saxby’s puff pastry 0.26
• 1 cube oxo chicken stock 0.08
• flour and oil (maximum price) 0.05
• Total  £2.99  (approx £1.50 per massive portion)

That makes enough to serve two very hungry people or possibly three normal people. Almost 600g of meat went into that along with two leeks. The pie would make a balanced meal in itself, but I served it with a side of sweetcorn. I estimate that this added about 5p per portion.

Admittedly it isn’t much to look at but it was genuinely very nice and disturbingly healthy. So much for pasta with tomato sauce!

Here is the student turkey and leek pie recipe.