Ching-He Huang on cost-of-living cooking and why she hates airfryers: ‘You can still eat well on a budget’

The cost-of-living crisis has forced most people to cut down their food budget. Taiwanese-born British chef Ching-He Huang first learned to cook on a shoestring when she was just 11.

“My mum had to go away, back to Taiwan [from north London] to work, to try and make ends meet. My dad looked after us,” the 45-year-old says, who wouldn’t see her mother for six months to two years at a time. “It was tough. When I graduated at 21, she finally came back.”

Her parents had paid everything they had for the expensive visa to move from South Africa to the UK in 1989, and then a recession hit and