Freelance chef Jon Fell lives in Egremont and runs courses out of Peter Sidwell’s Simply Good Food Cookery Schools.

“So the task was ‘Christmas dinner on a budget’. I knew I was going to find this really difficult.

“I’m a chef known for never scrimping on ingredients, using the finest fantastic array of produce available to me in this wonderful county of Cumbria.

“But I’m also fully aware that Christmas is an extremely expensive time for families.

“So would I? Could I even? Change the way I’ve worked and thought all these years and really go and buy cheaply? And produce a family Christmas dinner, on a budget and be happy with the results?

“I set myself a budget of £25 maximum, and I thought that if I was looking at cooking a Christmas dinner for a family that I’d also set my own challenge at buying enough to feed six to eight people.

“I was starting to doubt I could even get a turkey for this amount of money.

“I knew that I had to change
my whole way of buying and thinking, I also knew I’d have to go totally against my own personal views.

“I visited my local supermarket and I was adamant I wasn’t going
to miss anything out so I had a list.”

“I cooked all the items that I bought, and produced a Christmas dinner with plenty to feed eight people.

“OK... so, it’s not my usual Christmas dinner, but it does go to show that a perfectly good Christmas dinner can be produced on a budget of just £25 from the supermarket.”

Carrots : They are great, because it is so simple to turn them into something tasty. Parboil your carrots, and then finish them off in a saucepan with some butter, some thyme (dried is fine) and a dash of orange juice. Let that all soak into the carrots. Delicious!

Brussels sprouts : Again, parboil the sprouts until they are nice and tender. If
you’ve got some smokey bacon then chop it up and fry the sprouts with the bacon, a knob of butter and a twist of cracked black pepper.

Roast parsnips : All they need to transform them from plain old parsnips is a squeeze of honey or some brown sugar. If you’ve got honey, then, part way through cooking, squeeze it over the parsnips and put them back in the oven. Alternatively, sprinkle brown sugar over your parsnips when they are nearly cooked and put them back in the oven to allow them to caramelise.

Roast potatoes : Parboil your potatoes until they are tender enough to just get the tip of a knife in. Drain them in a collander and then shake them to break up the outside slightly. I then dust mine with a sprinkling of flour. Take your lard or oil and put it in the pan in an oven as hot as you can. Once the fat is boiling, carefully place your potatoes in the oil - beware it might spit - and move them around so the flour and potato are fully-coated. Get a bulb of garlic, crush it up nicely and throw that in the pan too for tasty garlic roast potatoes.

TIP: For an extra special twist, when you’ve dusted on the flour then get some English mustard and mix that in.

Turkey : Even a simple turkey can be cooked well. Simply make some incisions under the skin and put some knobs of butter between the skin and the flesh to keep it nice and moist while cooking.