I almost bought How To Cheat At Cooking, Delia’s new book today. I picked it up in the supermarket and it was the first opportunity I had had to look inside. In fact it is a really lovely book, the feel of it, the style of it and the colour of it, all appeals to me. The photography is lovely and the type of food is just what I like. The book did get as far as the check-out in my trolley before I managed to abandon it, but it was a tussle. I feel that the only way to form a rational opinion about the book is to buy it and if it wasn’t Delia I wouldn’t care.
I did try to have a quick look at the recipes and noticed a quiche that you assemble using amongst other things, ready-cooked bacon pieces. That must save you all of ten valuable minutes. I can hear the complaints now from the quick-fix generation, that they have to wait 30 minutes for the quiche to cook. Perhaps a sandwich would be quicker. Can you buy ready buttered bread? Actually did you know that you can use mayonnaise from a jar instead of making it yourself? I didn’t read that in the book but thought of it all by myself.
How To Cheat At Cooking would make a good all round, day to day recipe book if only it told you the how not-to-cheat recipe alongside the ‘how to cheat’ version. In fact I don’t really understand why they didn’t arrange the format in that way because then everyone would have been happy. Of course like most people, I am capable of making the conversion myself but presumably the people who the book is aimed at aren’t able to do this the other way round.
This week I found my old copy of ‘Frugal Food’, Delia’s book from 1976. I think we are all allowed to change our minds over the years but I couldn’t help noticing her statement that ‘ instant foods cost a fortune’. An excerpt from the book: ‘Actually I’m not so sure that all this time-saving really does save time. I once watched a lady standing in a long check-out queue with just a large bag of frozen brussels sprouts (they were at the time 30 per cent dearer than the fresh ones). She was In the queue for a good 10 or 12 minutes; she could, had she wished, have sat in her own kitchen and peeled fresh brussels sprouts in the same time.’
Obviously before online shopping.

The other day I was watching a food programme on Sky 3 called Taste. They were doing a feature about what to ‘cook’ for a girlie night in using ready-made food and the presenter came out with the phrase, ‘I’m not suggesting you peel a potato’. I almost choked on hearing this and the words have been going round in my head ever since. God forbid, anyone should peel a potato and to suggest such a thing…well! Once upon a time life was too short to stuff a mushroom, now it’s too busy to peel a potato.

Yesterday I bought the Saturday papers including a paper with a feature about Delia and her upcoming new TV series and book, How To Cheat At Cooking, where she will be using pre-prepared bought-in ingredients, such as ready-made mashed potatoes, cook-in sauces and other ingredients that need to be hyphenated, to rustle up lovely meals in a moment. This is aimed at busy people who don’t have much time and are also quite poor so need to eat battery farmed chickens (quite obviously a distortion of the facts, in a nutshell, based on what I have read in the paper, Chinese-whispers-stylee, pass it on!). There are bound to be many words written about her and the series in the weeks ahead as she holds such an iconic status here in the UK and this series is her comeback, having retired from cookery writing 6 years ago to concentrate on her career as a footballer.

I must admit I hold her in the highest esteem myself, having learnt to cook with her. When I lived in two places I made sure the 3 part cookery course (the first time round version) and her Summer Collection were duplicated, one in each home, as I consider them to be ‘must haves’. I know many of the recipes especially from her earlier books by heart and on numerous occasions Delia recipes have been served up at momentus family gatherings. A sort of mythical Delia inhabits my families consciousness. She has an uncanny knack of being ahead of the game, like she just knows something the rest of us are struggling to put our finger on, but I am feeling very wobbly about this new theme she has embraced.

I am not a particular fan of the ‘quick and easy’ route to anything, just for the sake of it. Some things simply are quick and easy and still work brilliantly and that’s great, but there is something at the core of this that bothers me. I think we’ve got an obsession with being busy people. Most of us ARE busy, that’s a given, but the cult of busy is about making ourselves feel significant by banging on about how busy we are all the time. There is a huge industry out there catering for our busy lives and that relies on us buying into being really ‘busy people’. What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Go on, step outside the box. Find the time to peel a potato. Upend the cliche.

It wasn’t that straightforward finding Seville oranges this year and as the season is only for a few weeks straddling January and February I had to seek them out. I managed to order some in specially from the organic deli, which fortunately is very close by. When I went to the one and only greengrocers in the nearest town it had sadly closed down a week before. So Tesco has managed to put another independent out of business and another business that thought it was enough to just sell produce without the help of recipe cards and a loyalty points scheme has learnt the hard way.
Thankfully I now have some beautiful Seville oranges to cheer me up. Last year I made two lots of marmalade using different techniques to prepare the orange peel. For the first batch I pared and chopped all the peel at the beginning which takes ages but is a ritual with some therapeutic value, at least for the first half an hour or so until the novelty wears off. For the second batch I poached the oranges in my wonderful cast iron pot in the Rayburn for three hours then scooped out the innards and chopped the peel. I think the second method is the easiest and now definitely the one I prefer.

Some of the marmalade I made was beautifully glowing and orange, like looking through stained glass windows when holding the jars up to the light, the rest was slow cooked for several hours in the Rayburn till it ended up deep, dark, rich and caramelised. Both were lovely so I’d be hard pressed to choose which kind I prefer so am now making both types again this year. Find my recipe here.

Seville oranges have such a strong character that they can withstand long cooking and still retain their own distinctive personality. You have to respect a fruit like that. It is worth putting some in the freezer so they’ll be available out of season for keeping the marmalade stock replenished, for making orange curd as well as for rustling up an impromptu bitter orange tart when called for. Just wash and dry the fruits, pack into plastic bags and seal before freezing.