I’m always looking at these tins of tomatoes in my cupboard that I bought ages ago on offer at Tesco. Why is it that we always over-buy tinned tomatoes when they are on sale? I just read this article the FT about a woman in Ohio who has a huge store of tins of tomatoes she got on sale and with coupons for more than half off. The need to over-buy tomatoes on sale knows no borders.

I went looking for a simple, quick way to cook with these tomatoes, because typically they are the last thing we have in the house. I didn’t have to look far because, duh, I went straight to JamieOliver.com.

Here is Jamie’s Quickest Tomato Sauce recipe, from me (and Jamie) to you.

Ingredients

olive oil
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced a bunch of fresh basil, leaves picked and torn
3 x 400g tins of good-quality, whole plum tomatoes
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Recipe

I learnt this recipe from my mate and mentor Gennaro Contaldo. It’s a brilliant, basic tomato sauce for using on pizza and it’s also great with pasta or to serve alongside meat or fish – quick, fresh, fragrant and sweet.

Place a large non-stick frying pan on the heat and pour in 4 generous glugs of olive oil. Add the garlic, shake the pan around a bit and, once the garlic begins to colour lightly, add the basil and the tomatoes. Using the back of a wooden spoon, mush and squash the tomatoes as much as you can.

Season the sauce with salt and pepper. As soon as it comes to the boil, remove the pan from the heat. Strain the sauce through a coarse sieve into a bowl, using your wooden spoon to push any larger bits of tomato through. Discard the basil and garlic that will be left in the sieve, but make sure you scrape any of the tomatoey goodness off the back of the sieve into the bowl.

Pour the sauce back into the pan, bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for 5 minutes to concentrate the flavours. It will be ready when it’s the perfect consistency for spreading on your pizza.

Store the sauce in a clean jar in the fridge – it’ll keep for a week or so. Also great to freeze in batches or even in an ice cube tray, so you can defrost exactly the amount you need. But to be honest, it’s so quick to make, you might as well make it on the day you need it.

A few weeks ago, we invested (a whole £14) in a slow cooker. I’m a big fan of making a massive pot of something that you can eat for lunch all week, especially when its cold out–and it is starting to be cold out! I thought a slow cooker would be a good, easy way of making big, warm family-size meals.

So after the first day of scarf weather, I got it in my head to make a hearty stew and went on a rampage in the root vegetable section of the grocery, fighting off other last minute Sunday shoppers for the one remaining parsnip. I started with Jamie Oliver’s Jool’s Favourite Beef Stew but I ended up editing it a lot by adding loads of different veg. Only problem: stews take forever, especially in a slow cooker! So we didn’t eat it last night, we let it cook ALL night and then woke up to the most amazing smell in the kitchen!

It ended up being tasty, healthy and pretty reasonably priced when averaged out by the number of meals that it makes. The picture I took just doesn’t do it justice! Note that Jamie’s recipe includes red wine, which is a flavour E and I love but may not be a favourite of the little ones.

I may have sung the praises of vegetarian eating recently, but there is also something to be said for a lovely piece of meat! Budget-friendly cuts are back in fashion and here are a few great recipes for cooking them.

Skirt steak

Gordon Ramsay’s Triple Decker Steak Sandwich

Bon Appetit’s Pan-Grilled Beer-Marinated Hanger Steak (hanger steak is American for skirt steak, so I’m told)

Brisket

Jamie Oliver’s Steak, Guiness and Cheese Pie with a Puff Pastry Lid

Good Food Magazine’s Pot-Roasted Brisket in Beer with Parsnips and Mushrooms

Oxtail

Gordon Ramsay’s Oxtail Soup

Nigel Slater’s Braised Oxtail with Mustard and Mash

Chicken Thighs

Jamie Oliver’s Chicken and Mushroom Pasta Bake

Good Food Magazine’s Honey Mustard Chicken Pot with Parsnips

Shoulder of Lamb

Jamie Oliver’s Incredible Roasted Shoulder of Lamb with Smashed Veg and Greens

Mary Cadogan’s Greek Lamb with Orzo

Ham Hock

Gary Rhodes’ Ham Hock and Lentils

Emeril Lagasse’s Ham Hock and Beans

Pork Cheeks

Bryn Williams’ Braised Pork Cheeks with Ginger Carrots and Jersey Royal Potatoes

Tim Fletcher’s Bath Chaps in Scrumpy with West Country Farmhouse Cheddar

In late summer blackberries grow wild so you can usually pick them by the bucket for free. We saw loads of bushes growing in Wimbledon Park last time we were there.

In honour of blackberry season, I’ve rounded up a few easy and delicious recipes for making the best of them.

Jamie Oliver’s Blackberry Tart

Delia Smith’s Quick Bramble Jelly

Nigella Lawson’s Apple and Blackberry Kuchen

Rose Elliot’s Blackberry Ice Cream

The River Cottage’s Blackberry, Apple and Almond Cobbler

Good Food Magazine’s Blackberry Muffins

Cutting out meat, even just one or two days a week, can significantly reduce your family’s grocery budget. Rice, beans, potatoes, pasta and other veggie staples are inexpensive. Plus putting the focus on all of those lovely vegetables can be a lot healthier.

Just the other night we cooked a huge vegetable jalfrezi from Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food that made at least eight servings and tasted amazing. One of the best things about this recipe is that you can toss in lots of different veg, basically whatever you’ve got leftovers of. We ate it all week and I’m dying to cook it again.

Here are a few other inexpensive family-style vegetarian recipes worth trying:

Good Food Magazine’s Five-Veg Lasagne

The Vegetarian Society’s Vegetarian Chili

Delicious Magazine’s Ratatouille

Channel 4’s West African Groundnut Stew

Delicious Magazine’s Egg Fried Peanut Rice

Nigella Lawson’s Pasta e Fagioli