3 Budget Dinners Under $50 NZD - Springtime Risoni, Mushroom Quesadillas and Leek Tart

One shop, $49.69, and three dinners that taste like spring has arrived. Creamy risoni with peas and asparagus for Monday, mushroom quesadillas with crispy potatoes for the middle of the week, and a leek and ricotta tart on Friday that looks like you have gone to a great deal of trouble. Two to three people, three nights, and leftovers for lunch. Here is everything you need.

What's Included

Three full recipes from a single $49.69 shop, all built around spring vegetables. Below you will find each dinner, the exact shopping list, the pantry staples that make it work, and the handful of things that keep the cost down without the food feeling cheap.

Dinner 1: Springtime Risoni with Peas and Asparagus

The Monday one, on the table in forty minutes. Risoni is pasta shaped like rice, and if you cook it the way you would a risotto, adding stock a ladle at a time, the starch it gives up turns the whole pan creamy without any cream at all. Half the peas get blended into a purée for colour and sweetness, the rest go in whole.

Springtime Risoni with Peas and Asparagus - Creamy with no cream, and the first asparagus of the season.

Dinner 2: Mushroom Quesadillas with Crispy Potatoes and Slaw

The midweek treat. Mushrooms, capsicum and onion charred hard and fast in batches, cooked down with a tin of tomatoes until jammy, then folded into a wrap with plenty of cheese and fried until crisp. Air fryer potatoes on the side and a bag of slaw to cut through it all.

Mushroom Quesadillas with Crispy Potatoes and Slaw - Feels like a takeaway, came out of a tin of tomatoes.

Dinner 3: Leek and Ricotta Tart with Asparagus

The Friday night showstopper. A sheet of puff pastry, scored and par-baked so the base stays crisp, spread with ricotta seasoned hard with parmesan, then topped with leeks that have been charred and steamed in the same pan until they collapse. Asparagus over the top. Put it in the middle of the table and nobody would guess the budget.

Leek and Ricotta Tart with Asparagus - Looks like a restaurant dish, costs almost nothing.

The Full Shopping List

This is the entire shop and it came to $49.69.

• 400g mushrooms
• 2 leeks
• 1 bunch of asparagus
• 4 potatoes
• 1 red capsicum
• 1 can of diced tomatoes
• 1 tub of ricotta
• 2 onions
• 1 bag of baby peas
• 1 small block of parmesan
• 1 bag of risoni pasta
• 1 bag of slaw with dressing
• 1 packet of puff pastry
• 1 packet of wraps

Total: $49.69

What You Need From the Pantry

The shop above works because a few things are already in the cupboard doing quiet work. None of these were bought this week.

• An egg, the only ingredient in the whole week that did not come from the shop. It brushes the tart border and the rest goes into the ricotta
• Stock, about a litre for the risoni
• Smoked paprika and a cajun blend for the quesadilla filling
• Cornflour, which is what makes the potatoes go glassy and crunch
• Cheese for the quesadillas, whatever is in the fridge
• Oil, salt and pepper

A Few Tips for Making It All Work

Split the asparagus and the parmesan across two dinners. One bunch does the risoni and the tart, and the small block of parmesan seasons both. That is the whole reason the shop comes in under fifty.

Start with the slowest thing. The potatoes go on to boil before anything else is touched. Find the longest job in any dinner and get it going first.

Do your prep before the pan goes on. Especially for the quesadillas, where everything cooks hot and fast and there is no time to be chopping. It is the single biggest difference between cooking calmly and cooking flustered.

Cook vegetables in batches, not all at once. A crowded pan steams and goes grey. Small batches in a hot pan char, and that char is the flavour.

Buy the bag of slaw. Several vegetables and a dressing for the price of one, and it does the sharp, fresh job that the rich dinners need alongside them.

Frozen peas beat fresh, most of the year. Picked and frozen within hours, sweeter than most supermarket fresh, and a quarter of the price.

Wash your leeks after you cut them open. Grit sits between the layers and washing a whole leek barely touches it.

Why This Collection Works

Spring produce is the cheapest it will be all year right at the start of the season, and it is also the point where everyone is bored of root vegetables. Asparagus, peas and leeks between them carry all three of these dinners, and they go in three completely different directions. One Italian and creamy, one Mexican and crisp, one French and fancy. Nobody eating them across a week would guess they came out of the same trolley.

The other thing that makes it work is that two ingredients do double duty. The asparagus splits between Monday and Friday, the parmesan seasons both, and one onion goes in the risoni while the other goes in the quesadillas. That kind of overlap is what keeps a three dinner shop under fifty dollars, and it is worth thinking about before you write the list rather than after.

And every one of them makes leftovers on purpose. Three dinners becomes three dinners and three lunches, which is where $49.69 stops sounding like a tight budget and starts sounding like good value.

Related Pages

3 Budget Dinners Under $50 NZD - Asian Rissoles, Gozleme and Gnocchi Bolognese - Another three dinner shop, this one built on mince.

3 Budget Dinners Under $50 NZD - Prawns, Dahl and Pizza - Three completely different dinners from one $50 shop.

3 Budget Dinners Under $50 NZD - Greek Soup, Cabbage Rolls and Mexican Chicken - The chicken one, where a single bird does all the work.

Charred Leeks with Harissa Oil and Toasted Nuts - More spring leeks, as a side dish this time.

Savvy Suppers Club - Five dinners for under $85, every week.

Fourteen items in the trolley and $49.69. What comes out the other end is three dinners that taste nothing like each other, plus the lunches after them. The cost of living here is getting pretty hard and I am not going to pretend a shopping list fixes that, but eating properly on very little is a skill, and spring is the easiest time of year to do it. Click through to each recipe for the full method.

Enjoy!

Del x

Three spring dinners from one $49.69 shop, built on asparagus, peas and leeks.