Only a few years ago, Jack Monroe had a budget of just £10 a week to feed herself and her baby son.

So she was acutely aware of the pressures people living on the breadline are under.

But when her blog, A Girl Called Jack, which detailed the thrifty meals she cooked, gained in popularity, Monroe went from being a skint single-parent to being dubbed the ‘poster girl for austerity’ by newspapers across the world.

Such is the success of her writing that the blog – which she started as a response to a local politician’s spiteful comment about single parents – has now been turned into a cook book, also called A Girl Called Jack, and Monroe’s fronting a new Sainsbury’s advertising campaign.

If you fancy trying one of Jack’s recipes, here’s one for Love Soup from A Girl Called Jack.

LOVE SOUP (Serves 2, of course!)

Ingredients

3tbsp vegetable oil Zest and juice of 1/2 a lemon, or 1 tbsp bottled lemon juice 1 clove of garlic Small piece of fresh ginger (approximately 1cm) or 1 tsp ground ginger A fistful of fresh coriander A fistful of fresh parsley, plus extra to garnish 1 onion 2 large carrots 1 potato 1/2 a vegetable stock cube

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas 4. First make the marinade for the vegetables. Measure the oil into a teacup, jug or other small receptacle. Finely grate the lemon zest into the oil. Peel and crush the garlic, and peel and grate the ginger, then add them too. Finely chop the herbs into the mixture. Squeeze the lemon juice in - as much of it as you can squish out - stir together and set aside.

Peel the onion, chop into quarters and place in a roasting dish. Wash then chop the carrots into thick rounds and add to the roasting dish. Peel and dice the potato and put it in too. Pour the marinade over the top and shake to coat the vegetables. Pop the roasting dish into the preheated oven for an hour or so, shaking occasionally to loosen the vegetables and re-coat them in the marinade.

When the carrots and potatoes are tender, remove the vegetables from the oven and tip into a food processor. Dissolve the half stock cube in 500ml of boiling water and pour this stock into the food processor (to cover the vegetables). Blend until smooth, and serve with a flourish of parsley and a smile.