Celebrated food writer Jack Monroe is set to release a cook book for food bank users to help those on a shoestring budget maintain a nutritious, appetising and varied diet.
Tin Can Cook focuses on using tinned or dried ingredients and is inspired by Monroe’s own experience of using food banks.
It will feature 75 recipes that are easy to rustle up from basic ingredients.
They include tinned spud fishcakes, sardine and tomato soup and tindade – a twist on the French classic brandade.
Monroe, a well-known campaigner against hunger and poverty in the UK, revealed that her own experience of using tinned goods from food banks has inspired the book.
“I’ve been writing recipes from tins for around six years now; and it is frequently met with amusement and disdain from my peers,” Monroe said.
“But I’m fascinated by our relationships with tinned food, and what those tins say about us. Our abilities, our fears, our emergencies, and our comfort zones. [Currently] there are around 400 registered food banks in the UK, feeding 1.5million people, and those parcels are made primarily of tinned goods.
“I know, because I was a food bank user, and it was out of those parcels that I started to write recipes online.”
Monroe’s third book Cooking on a Bootstrap has sold 90,515 copies in total, with her debut, A Girl called Jack, the bestselling title shifting 67,842 from February 2014, according to Nielsen BookScan.
The writer said: “I decided to make it my mission to create restaurant-quality, beautiful, desirable meals, from my local corner store tins and supermarket basics ranges.
“These recipes are designed for everyone; from those with very little confidence and cooking ability, the smallest of kitchens, the scantest of equipment, to the gourmands, the bon vivants, and the curious among us.”
Tin Can Cook will be published as a £6.99 paperback on 30th May 2019.
