No-spend January has taken me on a ​culinary ​trip ​through ​my ​pantry’s ​forgotten ​treasures

Slightly embarrassingly, I’ve found myself riding a social media trend in recent weeks. Although my own no-spend challenge this January has been prompted by a mismatch between my post-Christmas bank balance and a looming tax bill, rather than any anti-consumerist fervour, the result is the same: pulses. Not just pulses – though I am amazed at how many varieties I’ve accrued, and have been eating a lot of dal in consequence. Karam Sethi’s yellow version (pictured top) uses a satisfying variety, but I substitute dried chillies and tinned tomatoes for fresh ones. Meera Sodha’s moong dal is even simpler – but also ancient noodles, odds and ends of rice (public service announcement: you can use almost any kind of short-grain rice in a risotto if you embrace the concept of “good enough”), and dented tins are all also having a moment.

I am extremely fortunate; this game of financial Jenga is, for many people, everyday life, and few are lucky to have such a well-stocked pantry – a grand word for some precariously stacked shelves and rodent-proof storage boxes. Whatever your situation, January is the ideal time to do a kitchen clear-out. I started with tidying the freezer (OK, I had to defrost it because it was refusing to close), which showed me that I didn’t need to buy bread because I had a huge packet of corn tortillas. These make excellent partners for the last dregs of any kind of festive cheese, and they can be used to make Kitty Coles’ quesadillas – which also make good use of a bag of frozen corn and some pickles, and, I’m sure she’d agree, do not suffer too much if you leave out pricy fresh herbs. I also found a bag of crumpets, which proved a happy match with Yotam Ottolenghi’s rarebit (as ever, I’m amazed at how long double cream keeps – sniff it before assuming it’s gone off!), which, as a bonus, has allowed me to finish an old jar of piccalilli.

I find pasta especially easy to use up without the need to go to the shops – oil and garlic, tinned fish and dried fruit, Marmite and butter – especially if you remember that you can substitute any shape you like for the one called for by the recipe, and, as with noodles and rice, it’s also an easy vehicle for the condiments that have mounted up around here. I’ve had great success with Anna Jones’ peanut and cucumber noodles, which use a satisfying number of store cupboard ingredients (don’t tell her, but I left out the herbs and substituted shredded raw cabbage for the cucumber). Above all, I’ve been free-styling, be that adding a shower of crisp shallots or chopped nuts, a drizzle of chilli oil, a spoonful of sun-dried tomatoes or sauerkraut to salads, soups and sandwiches (or tortillas, in my case). For the most part, the extra flavour or texture has worked well. In fact, cooking like this has actually been fun.

In the sweet department, instead of buying fruit, I’m still trying to work through some of the many jars of jam and preserves I’ve accumulated on my travels, mostly with yoghurt or stirred into salad dressings or cocktails. If I were in a baking mood/had more butter, Ravneet Gill’s old-school jam sponge or Dan Lepard’s jam tarts would fit the bill. That said, I also like Georgina Hayden and Yotam’s idea of adding a dollop to cheese toasties … I wonder, are jam quesadillas a step too far?

The best thing I’ve read | I’ve had a lot of time for reading, given that I’ve cancelled all my streaming subscriptions, and one of my favourite things has been dipping into the compendium of “classic authors’ favourite recipes” I was sent late last year. As the title suggests, Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake has much to offer the starving writer, and rarely has a recipe for boiled eggs grabbed me as Nabokov’s page-long epic did. His description of a cracked one, “disgorging white stuff like a medium in an old-fashioned seance”, has inspired me to do better in 2025.

A good cause | The Guardian and Observer’s Christmas appeal closed earlier this week, having raised more than £1.5m for charities including Médecins Sans Frontières, which began distributing desperately needed food aid to 30,000 people in South Darfur over the festive period. A recent survey in the region found that over a quarter of pregnant and lactating women are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. If you missed the appeal, you can still donate to MSF here.

Mmmm, miso | Sarah DiGregorio’s one-pot miso mascarpone pasta not only helped with several pots in my fridge, but changed the way I thought about this Japanese ferment. As DiGregorio explains in her introduction for the New York Times (£), it’s “reminiscent of an intensely creamy and savory mac and cheese”. I can confirm it is delicious topped with kimchi, chilli crunch and fried shallots.

The best smile | Ten-year-old Renad Atallah, from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, whose videos of herself cooking simple dishes from food aid now have a million followers on Instagram.