In an age of back-to-back TV cookery shows and forests of celebrity cookbooks, there’s always something new to tickle our taste buds and tempt us into the kitchen. But in our rush to put the latest creations on the dining-room table, there is a less glamorous, more old-fashioned skill that we tend to overlook – the art of menu planning.

So encouraged are we to be spontaneous in the kitchen nowadays that even the words themselves sound dated. We tend to shop with separate, unconnected recipes in mind, and when we get home we cook those meals and bin the leftovers because they don’t fit in with the next day’s plans. The result is more time spent cooking from scratch and more food needlessly thrown away.

But, as Arthur Potts Dawson shows here, with a little planning you can save yourself not only time but money as well. As head chef of Acorn House, London’s first true eco-restaurant, he fights a constant battle against waste. That’s why he’s devised three groups of recipes all based on the same main ingredient – roast chicken, a shoulder of lamb and braised oxtail. You cook your main meal on day one and, with the leftovers, you are halfway to creating two more meals. And that frees up more time to watch those TV chefs…

Shopping list - October

Roast chicken

Chicken frittata

Chicken soup

1 large organic chicken,

with gizzards

1 lemon

1 packet fresh bay leaves

1 bunch celery

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