Another recession-food I enjoy is bread and butter pudding – traditionally made with stale bread. Bread pudding was popular in our house as well (a dry pudding, not to be confused with bread and butter pudding).

If beef mince is too expensive, try turkey mince. A bit of sauce and seasoning, and you’ll barely know the difference… plus it’s leaner – which means you’re allowed to eat more pork dripping :)

That sounds crass, but let me elaborate.

Move somewhere where much of the population is from one of the more recent waves of migrants (which has largely been East and South Asian), so that more of the population has buying habits from middle income countries.

Since in those countries the food budget makes up half or something of the budget (rather than the <20% we’ve had since the post war era), people who lived in them are far more price conscious on food even when the budget has changed. Which means shops in their areas are necessarily lower priced to attract customers with greater price elasticity.

Additionally, these migrant groups, like their predecessors and similar groups world wide tend to open commercial ventures with low capital requirements. Convenience stores, take aways, laundries and, as wincingly shown by Con the Fruiterer, green grocers and butchers. Subsequently, where migrants live, there are likely more of these, and competition does to prices as competition does.

Both of these features also lead to greater availability of cheap and unusual cuts as well, and greater variety in general.

While it’s true that a lot of the recipes feature critters that you won’t find roaming wild in the NT, I’m sure you could adapt them (eg by substituting crocodile for alligator).

Of course the most affordable meat of all is the meat you find pre-tenderized by the side of the road. Surf the net and I’m sure you’ll find some tasty recipes using locally available roadkill.

They’re just as good as shanks or osso buco, but people don’t buy them ‘cos Jamie hasn’t told them to yet and they’re called “necks”.

Ditto chook necks – enough meat for a decent gnaw off the barbie, or the finest stock you could hope for.

This, if such a thing exists, is probably my special subject.

A sack of long grain rice, a bag of onions and whatever fresh vegetables are in season. You can even make tofu taste more-or-less edible. Plenty of Asian herbs & spices available in Chinatown.