Recession repasts

Elizabeth Carty is a third generation “shrewdie” – her term for low-budget foodies who waste not want not and, like her own mother and grandmother, could live on “the clippings of tin”. Carty’s experience as a financially challenged separated mum with a son to rear while putting herself through accountancy school made her grateful for her family’s ethos of using cheap and simple ingredients to create generous food.

One of Carty’s first food epiphanies came when she was a teenage waitress at a Dún Laoghaire yacht club and stole her first taste of Stilton from the cheese trolley and convinced the chef to make a secret midnight snack of prime fillet for the staff. She lived for several years abroad, mainly in London, Cyprus and Dubai, where her appreciation for creative food matured under the influence of multicultural friends and neighbours. When her marriage ended in 2000, she returned to Celtic Tiger Ireland with her son, no home to go to and very little income.

She learned to buy discounted foods in bulk, to fill her freezer with half-price beef and to keep her recipes cheap and simple with the help of larder standbys. Her new cookbook, Shrewd Food: A New Way of Shopping, Cooking and Eating(Hachette, €13.99), features recipes based on special offers that supermarkets tend to repeat frequently. The book was inspired by the success of Carty's website, shrewdfood.ie, which she regularly updates with current food bargains and recipes.

During the noughties people got used to plucking food off supermarket shelves based on appetite rather than value. The recession approach is to see what’s best value, then choose your menu, but the taste won’t be frugal or budget if you know what you’re doing – a cooking ethos that should see cooks through a lifetime, not just through lean times.