How chefs cut costs in the kitchen

My grandmother, and many like her, kept an account book for household spending. This was not the product of an overbearing marriage or mistrust on anyone’s behalf – it was simply how things were done at a time when habits had been formed during rationing after the second world war, and banking was manual and slow.

I spent a lot of time observing her kitchen on childhood visits. It was where my lifelong obsession with cooking began, and I can still recall a sense of balance in how she shopped and cooked; she was fond of naughty treats and lavish cuts, but she kept a stock pot, knew her way around basic butchery and was reluctant to let anything go to waste.

Later, as head chef in busy restaurants which relied on close control of tight margins to stay in business, I also kept a daily account book. We didn’t call it that, of course: day sheets, GPs, margins and P&Ls are the head chef’s stock in trade.