A £5 cookery book containing meals for four that usually cost less than that. (Good Food: 101 Cheap Eats)

Member Name: dmandrew

Product:	Good Food: 101 Cheap Eats
Date:	17/05/09 (7 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Consistent and clear presentation, packed with tips and information

Disadvantages: Not the prettiest of titles

It's quite rare to find a cookery book where you like more than or two things, according to the chief cook in our household. When you find one that is good all the way through, then it's like gold dust.

101 CHEAP EATS, which is published by BBC Good Food magazine is one of those golden books. It's a small book, which you could just about fit into a jacket pocket. It's good value at £4.99, especially when you compare it with the output of celebrity chefs.

So what do you get inside?

The book gets straight to the point with a brief introduction to explain the philosophy behind writing it. Costs are kept down by careful choice of ingredients, particularly using foods that are in season - hooray for that! - and which are likely to be in the store cupboard anyway. Haute cuisine this is not, but neither is it beans on toast.

The next 202 pages are taken up with the 101 recipes - doing what it says on the tin. The layout for each recipe is the same, so it's very easy to find you way around and get straight to how it works:

The left hand pages

The title of each recipe is in the largest font.
Above the title is a sentence of useful advice about the recipe.
Below, there are two columns: one lists the ingredients in bold, the other tells you what to do, usually in about five steps.

The right hand pages

For every recipe there is a full colour picture of the food. No margins.

There is a four page index at the back of the book, and that's it, apart from picture credits and introductory pages.
Before the recipes start, the contents are displayed as chapters -

Salads, snacks and light meals
Pasta and noodles
Meat
Fish
One-pot dishes
Desserts

Our very favourite recipe is on page 118. This is the one for Pork, Ginger and Apricot skewers, which you would be best to serve with rice, with salad to follow. This is simply delicious, including lemon, garlic, yogurt, onion, turmeric and parsley. Cost is typical - for about £5, you're serving four people.

Another good one is on page 64 - Tagliatelli with Smoked Salmon. They recommend you buy salmon trimmings, easily available from big supermarkets, to save cash.

There's a good tip on page 52 (Pepperoni Pizza Tart) advising you to rinse anchovies in milk to reduce saltiness.

The salads are all lovely, and many would make a great lunch on their own. Tomato Salsa Salad includes bacon, eggs and potatoes!
Puddings (OK, they call them desserts, but I don't) come in with such goodies as Apple and Blackberry Sauce for ice cream; Iced Ginger Cream (another winner, this), Lemon Curd Brulée(just three ingredients) and Coffee Ricotta Creams.

You could certainly entertain friends to lunch or dinner with many of these recipes. We have tested quite a few. The Good Food experts have tested every recipe to make sure that it works. The pictures reflect accurately what the food does look like when prepared, and they make you hungry too! If you get too hungry, then each recipe comes with nutritional information, including the amounts of calories, carbohydrate, protein, salt, fats, and added sugar, so you know what you are getting.

Summary: Really well presented cookery book, dine like a king for a pauper's fee