Delia's How to Cheat at Cooking - Delia Smith

...based on an old idea; Delia's first book was also titled "How To Cheat at Cooking." This book is designed on the same theme, but with new ideas and recipes. I bought the book following Delia's many TV appearances to promote it. The mantra "This is not how to cook, this is how to cook when you're busy" appealed to me, and, ad man's dream that I am, I trotted off to tesco to buy it!
The book has a plastic feel cover, which ...
...recipes are all written in Delia's easy to follow style. They are not patronising, but they do not assume a lot of existing culinary knowledge. I was also relieved to see there were no nasty surprises half way down in any of the recipes! I should probably explain that, even though they told me in home economics to ALWAYS read a recipe through before I start, I am always caught out half way through by a comment like, "stir in the beaten egg whites" ... more

First things first, I can cook to an average level, but I am certainly no chef! I was also a student for five years so have tried just about every combination of microwave, packet, frozen and "just add water" food available. When I saw this book trailed like mad on just about every TV channel and in all the newspapers a few months ago we decided to give it a try. After all, even though I do enjoy cooking, I rarely have the time or inclination to do anything too complex, particularly during the week.

The Author

The book is written by the rather legendary Delia Smith OBE. I think most people will have seen (if not used) her previous books and TV programs. She is a British institution, probably best known for teaching basic cookery skills, from boiling an egg upward. After starting her culinary career in journalism, she moved into TV in the 1970s and has barely looked back. She has published about 20 cookery books and is majority share holder in Norwich City football club.

The Book Itself

The book is actually based on an old idea; Delia's first book was also titled "How To Cheat at Cooking." This book is designed on the same theme, but with new ideas and recipes. I bought the book following Delia's many TV appearances to promote it. The mantra "This is not how to cook, this is how to cook when you're busy" appealed to me, and, ad man's dream that I am, I trotted off to tesco to buy it!
The book has a plastic feel cover, which you can wipe clean, half transparent and half orange with the title on it. The inside cover has a photo of a basket of ingredients, which you can see through the transparent cover.
The book is nice and large (almost A4 sized) and light enough to prop up when cooking from it. There is an introduction (repeating the idea that this is not "real" cooking) before you get onto the recipes and a few pages with labour saving ideas, such as making the most of your freezer. A lot of the recipes are illustrated with colour pictures, a feature which I think really adds to a cook book, maybe just because I am rubbish at the presentation bit though!

The Recipes

There are over 140 recipes in the book, covering everything from Shepherd's Pie to Caribbean Chicken and even a few desserts. The recipes are designed to use some of the ready prepared ingredients you can buy in supermarkets, such as baked potato discs, ready grated cheese, ready made cheese sauce, pasta sauces and so on. Now I can see the point in using ready grated cheese when you are in a rush (even though it is much more expensive) and ready made cheese sauce (I know it is easy but I will never make cheese sauce again after a particularly disastrous meal for 12...) but baked potato discs and ready caramelised onions, ready chopped garlic and chillies were a whole new world of laziness for me! There is also a lot of mention of using a "mini-chopper," I don't have one of these but have found a knife seems to work almost as well!

The Ingredients

We set of round the supermarket, with our new book in the basket and proceeded to add the ingredients for a couple of meals to get us started. The first thing I found was how specific the ingredients are. We decided to go for "Good Old Shepherd's Pie" as our first dish, thinking it would be pretty simple and a sure fire winner with the whole family. The first problem we encountered was sourcing the minced lamb (actually we decided to use beef!). Delia uses a marks and spencers tin or mince, which would have been fine if we weren't in tesco! So we took a rain check on the shepherd's pie, and picked something else to eat that night. Now I have tried some of the recipes, I would gladly substitute a different brand of the same product, but I wanted to give the book a fair trial and do things properly to start with at least!
Once I got home and read the book through, there are pages with lists of ingredients on to help you plan your meals and also a note that on her website, Delia (or more accurately "her people!") will be keeping an updated list of sources for buying the products.
As I have found many times before, my idea of "store cupboard essentials" does not agree with that of a cookery book! This, along with the multiple different shops suggested for some recipes, meant that a degree of forward planning was required. Although I was not really surprised by this, I was a little disappointed, because if I am honest I could probably cook a "proper" meal most nights with a bit of forward planning.

Cooking The Recipes

The recipes are all written in Delia's easy to follow style. They are not patronising, but they do not assume a lot of existing culinary knowledge. I was also relieved to see there were no nasty surprises half way down in any of the recipes! I should probably explain that, even though they told me in home economics to ALWAYS read a recipe through before I start, I am always caught out half way through by a comment like, "stir in the beaten egg whites" when my eggs are still in the box in the fridge!
As mentioned before, the cover is wipe clean, and having tested it with melted cheese, I can say it works!
All recipes are nice and quick to prepare, and most of them are fairly quick to cook as well. The only problem I have had with cooking them is that I am always left with half a tub of something random (like half a tin of black beans) which sit in my fridge or cupboard until they go off. This is not a problem unique to this cook book, trying any new recipes gives me this problem as however nice they were I do not necessarily want to eat the same thing again within the week! In some instances, this problem can be solved by making double and freezing the extra, but I have yet to try this with any of the Delia recipes.

The Taste Test!

I haven't try all the recipes, so don't worry, I am not going to bore you with what they all taste like! Firstly, the now infamous Shepherd's Pie, well cottage pie in our case! This was quite nice, probably a 3 out of 5 stars. I thought the mashed veg added to the taste of the meal, but that the tinned mince was a little bland compared to normal mince with the herbs and seasoning I would use when cooking it. The potato discs were actually quite nice, though the look of the top of the dish was not as good as using home made mash. I suspect that this dish is a pretty traditional shepherd's pie, but I prefer mine with a bit more taste.
Gnocchi with spinach, pine nuts and dolcelatte: this is what we went for as our first recipe from the book, as all the ingredients are available in Tesco! This was simple to make and very nice. I love cheese and gnocchi and I thought the flavours combined very well in this dish. The amount made is about right for four, it doesn't look like loads on the plate but it is pretty filling.
Bangers with caramelised red onions and mustard mash: This was always going to be a winner for me as I love red onion and mustard mash, and am pretty fond of expensive sausages! I didn't feel this added much to a meal I already cooked regularly, except speed and some nice gravy. The potato discs are not as nice as good mash, but at least you don't get lumps if you don't mash hard enough! The red wine gravy was very nice.

Do I recommend this book?

Yes, in short. It has some nice recipes and definitely produces much better results than ready meals. I would say that being organised pays off with this book, as often you may need to visit a supermarket other than your usual.
If you already own this book, check out the website www.deliaonline.com for an updated ingredients list.. There are also some sample recipes on the website from this book that you could try if you are uncertain if it is the book for you. As with all recipe books, I think this book will be used every week for a few months and then I will probably just remember my favourites and forget the rest! However this is probably more a reflection on me than the book!

Small Print

RRP £20, though mine was a tenner and I haven't seen it anywhere at full price yet!
ISBN 978-0-091-92229-0
Ebury Press.
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