Delia's How to Cheat at Cooking

February 18, 2008

I wrote a post here pondering whether I would get Delia’s new book Delia’s How to Cheat at Cooking, I am for the record not a huge fan of Delia, I find her patronising and old fashioned and I’ve also questioned whether this latest book isn’t covering the same ground as Nigella with her Nigella Express. However I do have some of Delia’s books (which I never look at), but I’m a sucker for a new cook book and I found it today at a distinctly discounted price, so I brought it.

Finally after a proper read through it, I can see that this isn’t just another version of Nigella Express and that Nigella and Delia have looked at the problem of time-starved cooking at distinctly different angles. Nigella Express is principally a collection of quick recipes, maybe with a little help of non-branded cans, jars and bottles but it is still in my eyes principally cooking. Delia on the other hand, well this new book must have been a food manufacturers dream, with the majority of the dishes built around branded products, such as ready made mashed potato, pasta sauces, frozen roast potatoes. As a keen cook, to me this book does seem like cheating, which yes, is what is says on the title, but I don’t think that even the most time starved cook actually needs to cheat, there are legions of TV cooks out there, not just Nigella but Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey as well who often show us how to cook quickly using actual raw produce. Delia’s reliance on branded short cuts does not make this cooking on a budget, grated cheese (come on who’s so time starved they can’t even grate cheese?), ready made mashed potato, frozen roast potatoes etc. are all more expensive than a block of cheese and a bag of potatoes and are overloaded with preservatives and chemicals. Also she specifies some things so specifically, from shops ranging from Waitrose to get the frozen organic pizza bases, Tesco to get the frozen chickpeas for the houmous, M&S for the pastry cases, etc. etc., you get my drift, if you live in a small town with one badly stocked supemarket (I’m thinking where my dad lives in North Wales actually, but I’m sure my dad’s town is not the only one), this is not the cookbook for you.

However, I can get some of her points, whilst I’m perfectly capable of grating my own cheese, I find ready chopped frozen onion a godsend (and which I can only find in Asda, so that does require a special trip, where I stock up two bags at a time and it lasts for ages) as yes it’s quick, easy and stops you crying when chopping them up. I also have to admit the brand of mashed potato she recommends is actually quite nice (Aunt Bessie’s) and we used to buy it quite a lot but in a household where I have to watch where dairy is going, I now have to make my own mashed potato and it’s not that hard! Same goes with pastry, ready made stuff obviously has butter in but since having to make my own I’ve discovered that it’s not actually that hard and for the time starved moments you can actually make it in bulk and freeze it (same goes for the mashed potato and so many other things, at the moment in the freezer I have homemade pizza dough, pizza sauce, sweet pastry, tomato pasta sauce and bolognaise and they all take next to no time to defrost and reheat). Anyway, sorry this was meant to be the plus points wasn’t it? The book is nicely produced, in a market of beautifully photographed life style cookery books, it would have to be to keep up, so it looks quite different from Delia’s other books. I am also aware that as a keen cook I am probably the wrong person to be reviewing this, if you’re not such a keen cook and perhaps a little nervous in the kitchen, this book is probably more for you.

Anyway recipes I will be trying, although possibly with some more ‘fresh’ ingredients.

• Cracked potatoes with melting cheese and spring onions.
• Oven sauteed potatoes with red onion, garlic and rosemary.
• Lazy summer soup (a clever use of those bags of watercress, spinach and rocket salad).
• Malaysian spicy lemon chicken
• Quick Thai chicken and coconut curry
• Melanzane Parmigiana (aubergine baked with tomatoes and parmesan)
• Very garlicky chilli pasta (which looks delicious)
• Real houmous (if I can find frozen chickpeas, they sell them in Tesco, which I am nowhere near)
• Pizza (which I’m going to make in a minute actually, Delia made the Waitrose pizza bases sound so nice and as Waitrose is my local, I got some)

 I however will not be making the chocolate cupcakes, they’re easy and simple enough to make anyway but adding mashed potato?

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