Maggot
The Cake of Liberty
I thought of using Naan bread as a pizza base first!
delia's new book on cheating
- Thread starter catrina
- Start date
Geri
wasn't born to follow
Epona
Radar 2006-2020, Sonic 2006-2022, Jakey 2007-2024
Nah, I apologise too - I was just feeling grotty yesterday and the thread hit a nerve. Most of the cheese you can buy pre-grated is shit, it's that weird 'mild cheddar' stuff which appears to be a byproduct of the plastics industry. Not nice!
She was on the Today programme the other morning saying she doesn't "do organic" and that battery chickens are OK. well sorry Delia but they're not, and if she thinks 0rganic and non-organic taste the same she's a moron. she can come to my allotment if she doesn't believe me. I feel strongly that she shouldn't be encouraging the trade in battery chicken. If people can't afford free range then eat something else, but interestingly last time I was in my local supermarket there was loads of battery chicken left on the shelves and I got the last freerange one. It was £7, but I got two meals, sandwiches and soup from it so i reckon that's good value.
Wolveryeti
Detty Pig
Organic food only tastes nicer because it's fresher. It has to be fresh because otherwise it'd rot sharpish and therefore be unsellable.
However If I sourced you some GM tomatoes loaded with fertiliser and chems fresh from the vine, it would kick the organic's arse all over the shop.
ShiftyBagLady
Thinks she is a flower to be looked at
yep it freezes well. when i was in hospital i made lots of food in advance because my mother refused to cook for shiftyjunior as he was vegetarian, so i froze mash, cous cous, egg fried rice,plain rice, ratatouille, mushroomy sauce and loads of other stuff too. i know i should really freeze our leftovers as i always make too much, most it would freeze well and be a great standby but for some reason i never do
*smacks wrist*
as for cooking skills, well my mother never taught me how to cook and i didnt learn anything at school. its really not that hard to teach yourself and read books and experiment. now i can cook most things, enjoy it and find it really satisfying. i cant bake to save my life unless i use ready made puff pastry.
maybe delias book is a bridge between ready meals and homemade,thats a valid point. i will thumb through it if i see it in a shop but i do think the emphasis should be on good quality and nutritious rather than just quick.
for the record, i dont like delia, she gets right on my nerves fro some reason
ShiftyBagLady
Thinks she is a flower to be looked at
yes i heard that, she didnt want to be drawn into the politics of food apparently
i was more than a little disappointed and felt she was just trying to make a point about jamie oliver et al. and of course the people who buy this book will probably already be sick of hearing about the virtues of organic foodI heard that interview too and thought it seriously at odds with attitudes I associate with her.
She reminded me a friend a university who in front of boys would shake her dainty head and stop you if you attempted to ask her opinion on anything political. "I dont have any opinions, Im not interested in politics." She was opinionated as anything when no boys were around.
I think Delia wants to disassociate herself from the celeb chef campaigns. So she faked having no opinions. Plus is she still contraced to Sainsburys?
mrsfran
Well-Known Member
I have an old edition of her Complete Cookery Course and she says the same thing in that - nothing wrong with battery chickens, doesn't do organic. I was very disappointed when I read that.
I respect what Delia does - makes cooking accessible - but disagree with her stance on ingredients.
Also, she's a mental god-botherer.
Mrs Magpie
On a bit of break...
I bought a Braun hand-held liquidiser that came with a veg chopper thing (basically a lidded container with a vicious blade in it) It's really good for reducing cheese to tiny bits. It's really easy to clean as well.
Ms T
Honey-coloured ramparts
I kind of agree with you, but Hugh F-W's campaign for free-range chicken doesn't seem to have had the desired result. People just seem to be eating more chicken full-stop, with sales of both free-range and intensively farmed chicken increasing.
WouldBe
Dislicksick
One advantage of tinned meat is where a recipe says 'stew for 2 hours or until tender'. The tinned meat is already stewed until tender so you can just bung the other ingredients in and you've cut over 2 hours of prep + cooking time down to 30 mins or less.
scifisam
deleted
I think I might invest in some frozen mash now!I do prefer to make my own, but potatoes give him indoors heartburn, and it's such a faff making them for one - ready mash is nice, but it's usually for two and I end up throwing some away, which really bothers me as I hate food going to waste.
I've wondering before about freezing mash that I'v emade myself - but I imagine it would be gross when it's unfrozen. Has anyone tried this?
It's fine - we freeze our own mash all the time.
We also freeze leftovers, because I tend to cook for twenty, but we do have a limited amount of freezer space, so it's handy to be able to have tinned stuff too.
Oh, undoubtedly - and they must have crappy tastebuds, too, to like that stuff.
DRINK?
bummed by karmachameleon
I bought the book on Saturday and it's quite good....very different from your normal cook book and some odd recipies there are some things I would ignore ( aunt bessies roast pototoes ) though some very good idea for proper meals, does what is says on the tin as they say
Maggot
The Cake of Liberty
Don't knock it till you've tried it.
Mrs Magpie
On a bit of break...
Up to point. There are hundreds of varieties of carrots which have very different flavours. Intensive growers are more likely to grow for yield and organic farmers for flavour. A good example is strawberries. Most shop bought strawberries look lovely but are devoid of flavour. That's because they are a variety suited to travel well whereas a variety such as Mara des Bois could not cope with being chilled and transported for hundreds of miles in a lorry but it's so full of flavour it's worth growing even if you only have a windowsill. It has no future as a commercial variety however.
Juice Terry
rama lama fa fa fa
The question we should all be asking is how much Aunt Bessie paid Delia to plug her potatos cos thats what its all about, Delia's a food whore selling her recommendations to the highest bidder. You don't seriously think she'll be plugging all these brands for nothing? Supermarkets sell out of things she recommends in minutes, its massive business and she'll be getting her cut. It has very little to do with what tastes good or not but who pays the most.
If I was being cynical, I'd say that this appears to be a very commercially minded exercise - it was probably planned from the outset to endorse specific brands etc. I'm sure there's a financial arrangement of some description with these companies.
Gromit
International Man of Misery
The fact of the matter is that she has never been that good a cook. I watched reruns of her on Saturday kitchen and honestly her cooking has allways been dire.
She was one of the founders of TV cooking (and fair play to her for that) but has been long since left behind by people of far better cooking talent.
Knowing that she is never going to beat Jamie Oliver in a competetion for the diner party set she has aimed herself at a different demographic. People who don't know their arses from their elbows when it comes to food, think that Jamie Oliver books are beyond them and won't realise how shit she is. Its making her money and raising their game ever so slightly so its power to her.
She was one of the founders of TV cooking (and fair play to her for that) but has been long since left behind by people of far better cooking talent.
Knowing that she is never going to beat Jamie Oliver in a competetion for the diner party set she has aimed herself at a different demographic. People who don't know their arses from their elbows when it comes to food, think that Jamie Oliver books are beyond them and won't realise how shit she is. Its making her money and raising their game ever so slightly so its power to her.
Mrs Magpie
On a bit of break...
Marius, she was famous before Jamie Oliver was born. She already had her demographic by then.
_angel_
.
She's well outsold all the other 'celeb chefs' with her books IIRC
<Applauds>
I loathe Delia. It's her ability to extract every last ounce out of joy of cooking that makes me want to curl up and die - cooking's reduced to a butt-clenchingly dull procession of measurements and priggy little instructions. It's no wonder the British don't cook very much with Saint Delia as our national chief matron - she manages to drain any passion or spontaneity from of the kitchen with her insistence on the cooking-by-numbers approach. Cooking's a hassle, a process to be followed slavishly, with instinct and fun secondary.
I can't give a shit if someone uses the odd convenient prepared ingredient in a dish - fine by me, especially if it frees up the odd bit of time to make a better dish elsewhere. But having to listen to Delia waffle on about the joys of tinned mince is beyond the pail. Christ - give the people of Britain a little credit and dignity Delia. You've already bored people into submission with your tiresome approach to fresh ingredients and now you want to go and prescribe and patronise what they should do to ease-to-use to convenience foods. Why don't you hold our hands while patting us on the head smugly, laughing at our low expectations and telling us exactly how many mashed potato disks need to accompany a portion of frozen peas. Whatever happened to Britain as a nation of explorers? Now we seemingly need some patronising simperer to tell us how to follow 'From Frozen' instructions.
ShiftyBagLady
Thinks she is a flower to be looked at
Gromit
International Man of Misery
You miss my point. She has shifted demographic ever so slightly.
She use to teach the nations houseywives who werent fab cooks how to make their dishes slightly more exciting.
Now she teaches cookery morons how to boil an egg
Mrs Magpie
On a bit of break...
That's because there are now two generations who didn't learn how to cook at school. Time was when everyone knew how to do that....suburban75 started partly as a response to posters who had no idea to tell whether a pan of water was boiling or not. Seriously.
*cries*
i have podgy hands
or plump as i'd rather call them
Its not the podgyness per sey that offends me, its the podgy hands, red nail varnish and poking food with them that does the trick.
Don't poke yer fingers in my food and we will probably get on fine!
