5 easy ways you can make your meals go further

Making your meals go further

• If you don’t have quite enough fish, cut it into pieces and use it in a chunky one-pot meal. Alternatively, poach the fish and combine it with mashed potato to make fishcakes.
• To make a small roasting chicken feed more people, stuff it with well-flavoured couscous and surround the bird with grilled sausages. Alternatively, joint the chicken and use the pieces to make a casserole or curry, and serve it with rice and a side dish.
• You can also make a dish more substantial by boosting it with extra ingredients. Most recipes can be easily doubled, but if all else fails you can stretch a dish simply by serving it with bread, potatoes or dumplings (true Grandma choices!), or the healthier options of vegetables, rice, beans or pasta.
• Dress up a plain cake and make it bigger by cutting it into layers, then spreading it with cream and piling on fresh fruit.
• There are plenty of ways to make desserts go further, or to make it appear as though a small portion was intentional. Serve an elegant sliver of tart with a dollop of whipped cream or crème fraîche and dust with icing sugar, or scoop a modest portion of ice-cream into an elegant stemmed glass and drizzle with a fruit coulis or chocolate sauce.