[slackline]

Fresh veg is best IMO but frozen veg also is not bad as freezing just after picking preserves vitamin content / stems natural biochemical decay. 

Frozen veg though does loose a higher proportion of vitamin content on cooking than fresh veg due to the rupturing of the cell structure caused by the freezing of liquid within the cells.  Can't remember if the vitamin content of canned veg suffers in anyway due to the sterilisation process when canning (was all part of food science in A-level chemistry).

Its a half-decent effort that Delia's putting in, but it could be so much better as many others have already pointed out.

As for people who can't cook (e.g. Houdini's mum & GCW's sister as mentioned for example), its likely down to their desire/motiviation to do so in the first place, and I'm not sure that Delia's current show would necessarily change that.  Even if they watch something "simple" being done on TV, will that make them think "Oh, that looks easy, I'll give that a go next time"?  I suspect not, otherwise they would have done so already after either watching shows like Ready, Steady Cook etc. which knock up dishes in 10-20minutes, or reading a "Simple Cooking" style book.  Thus the show is really a futile effort, and would be better focusing on cooking from fresh/raw ingredients for people who are interested in cooking. 

I'm not interested in who the next Pop Idol will be so I don't watch it, could the same logic not be applied here?  i.e. people who aren't interested in cooking (who seem to be the target audience) aren't going to watch it in the first place.

[Yossarian]

My problem with Delia's current offering is that she is so far out of step with the current climate .In the six years since she last graced our screens and bookshelves English cooking has come on a long way , people have been encouraged to find alternatives to packaged produce   , farmers markets are rife , tv chefs have grasped the nettle and tried to show us great unwashed that it is just as cheap and easy to make a good nutrious meal from scratch using fresh meat and veg as it is to switch on the microwave .....
And then back comes Ms Smith , THE most influential of all , who proceeds to instruct on how using frozen mashed potatoes , tinned mince and jars of passata filled with preservatives is just fine and sodding dandy ......
Children learn how to cook from their parents , if their parents are only capable of weilding tin openers and scissors in the kitchen then the next generation ain't gone to learn jack shit and will thus be more obese and stuffed with e numbers than the current crop of fat little fuckers  ....

exactly...

and she makes it all seem like a chore. she looks so miserable, and there she is spooning gloop out of a tin into a pan.

it's enough to make you want to book a table with fiend for some fine mcdining..

houdini and nik should put a proposal together for their own show - two skinny men.

alternating between experimental vegetarianism and high fat puddings, with a soundtrack of 90s commercial dance and mnml techno, the programme will open your eyes, fill your stomach and empty your wallet (especially houdini's weekly port corner)...

[Houdini]

But are Delia's TV progs shit?  Not if they inspire or merely just poke someone into having a crack rather than going for a take away.

Delia's put in much more than a half-decent effort w/ UK cooking.  Damn sight more than most TV personality cooks.  

Top of the pile IMO is Floyd, then I'd give my working class vote to Delia, I use her recipes and they are delicious which is all I'm after.  Check some of her stuff on the link above, it's not nasty.  She teaches me useful techniques I didn't know - and I'd guess she's a better cook than anyone here (in a cook-off situation.)

Now, I could prepare any organic dish then sit on my arse and eat 3 meals worth of it 4 times a day till I collapsed and suffered from some greed-related/no exercise illness.  Organically . . .    Why are gormands fat?  

I like Yoss's proposal.  Though I'm on to red wine now, dude.  (Ahem!  Skinny but ripped pal  )

[fatdoc]

I see your point, but the idea of meat in a can gives me the boke.  It reminds me of that really awful canned chicken curry in a can stuff that people used to stuff vol-a-vents with or spam.

Although I use tinned tuna so maybe I'm being weird about it 

corned beef, white bread, onions, round lettuce and salad cream...


sheer genius.

[Joepicalli]

I suspect that a lot of people posting here (i.e. who are into their cooking) in their late 30's to mid 40's started their cooking interest off with Delia, and I would still recommend her earlier books or her "Collection's" series to anyone.

[Houdini]

Oh and it's minimal techno, not mnml (that's Unc's & Bubba's gig)  


But seriously, don't you think that you are holding Delia to ransom here - just a tad?  Did she make you order a vindaloo w/ extra ghee, egg-fried rice, 4 poppadums, 2 bhaji's and a peshwari naan washed down with 7 bottles of brown ale?  Did she make you drive to the take away even though it's 6 minutes walk?

[Houdini]

Eat this and tell me it's tasteless drivel and unhealthy.   I can tell you it's B O S S.

She's flying the flag for good British food.  Fuck the French!

[butters]

I suspect that a lot of people posting here (i.e. who are into their cooking) in their late 30's to mid 40's started their cooking interest off with Delia, and I would still recommend her earlier books or her "Collection's" series to anyone.

Can't remember if I started off with Delia's books or not but I still refer back to them often enough for basic things - as Houdini said it is good British food - nothing complex or that difficult and written in a language that doesn't frighten the bejeezus out of people. You have to be able to do the basics well before you can do the more complex things in life and cookery is no exception. 

bluebrad

[Yossarian]

I suspect that a lot of people posting here (i.e. who are into their cooking) in their late 30's to mid 40's started their cooking interest off with Delia, and I would still recommend her earlier books or her "Collection's" series to anyone.

well, i am early 30s and i have never cooked from a delia book...

the first thing i ever cooked myself was the first neapolitan pizza recipe in italian food. i was nine years old, and had been left at home. i remember struggling with a blunt kitchen knife (something i learned to remedy shortly after) and burned myself on the oven.  the pizza was a great success though. unfortunately the next time i tried it the dough went weird...

[butters]

Eat this and tell me it's tasteless drivel and unhealthy.   I can tell you it's B O S S.

She's flying the flag for good British food.  Fuck the French!

Get rid of all the lentils and the green pepper and chuck in some decent beef mince - next double up the celeriac and for gods sake put it in the mash and not with the beef - lastly place the veggie who is now foaming at the mouth because you have improved on his recipe outside to cool off. Sorted!! 

bluebrad

[Houdini]

Well, I am early 30s

Yeah Joe, I was about to say, I'm mid-30s . . .


There are many options, many great paths . . .   Delia is just one.  I like bluebrad's post.  She is personally dull, mind.  

[Houdini]

bluebrad wrote:

Get rid of all the lentils and the green pepper and chuck in some decent beef mince - next double up the celeriac and for gods sake put it in the mash and not with the beef - lastly place the veggie who is now foaming at the mouth because you have improved on his recipe outside to cool off. Sorted!!


No fucking way, flesh boy!  You get your own.

[Joepicalli]

Dull, and as you pointed out a god botherer. The woman helped get me there though so respect where due.

[Fiend]

it's enough to make you want to book a table with fiend for some fine mcdining..

Or maybe eating out quality food in a nice contemporary restaurant, or perhaps a top-notch chinese restaurant only using the special menu they don't give out to westerners, or a simple but smart Italian cafe lunch, or perhaps me cooking a good, well-rounded meal of fresh fish and tasty mash and well done vegetables or maybe some more experimental but still damn tasty mock-curry I did the other night, or perhaps anything else I've enjoyed in the last fortnight.

Or if you want I could just cook you a quick and easy spag bol with fresh toms, fresh mince, fresh herbs etc?

Typical that people focus in an utterly Daily-Mail-esque way on the one "controversial" thing, and ignore the balance of the rest of it. Where's the people poking fun at me because I like fine dining??

CUNTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Anyway...

Nik is still right. Houdinizzle is still wrong. Delia is totally off the mark on this one, the polar opposite of what she should be doing.

[Houdini]

You eat at McFuck.

[Jaspersharpe]

I agree Fiend. The salient point surely is not what she has done previously but the fact that what she is doing now is at best shit and at worst something worse...........

I've just got back from the supermarket - while I was there I noticed that a number of prepackaged jars of sauce etc had a big, shiny "Delia's cheat ingredient" label on the shelf.

Think I'm beginning to see how her road to Damascus moment about using ready-made ingredients came about.

Wasn't it her that caused a nationwide shortage of goose fat following a recommendation on her last series? I'm assuming that the precentage margin the supermarkets make on ready made spag bol sauce is significantly greater than that on goose fat...

 

If this is in fact the case then the "take her out and shoot her" lobby have it as far as I'm concerned.

You eat at McFuck.

 

[grumpycrumpy]

Interesting Delia fact ..... She baked the cake that's on the cover of the Stone's Let it Bleed ..... 

[Houdini]

And Fiend ate it!



You're gonna have to skip a few meals if you want to break into V0- dude . . .

[Bubba]

Apologies if already posted but this article sits down some "real" chefs to cook her food and review it

As unpleasant a piece of chicken as I have ever seen or eaten. Soft, squidgy, quite revolting. The rest was all right, but you could have bought two chicken thighs for less and made a far nicer dish.

This looked very appetising - bubbling and glistening on top, just the way it should be. Then you stuck your fork in and it let off this dreadful, congealed, awful odour. This dish is a crime against aubergines - they're a wonderful vegetable and to do this to them is really, really depressing. And the tinned lamb was frankly disgusting. Terrible

etc...

[Houdini]

You'll need more than that to destroy the cult of Delia, Bubs    Those were recipe tests not a test of the products someone bought to make her recipe.  Blame the person who cheaped out on the produce.

Moussaka if fucking awful, mind.



I just don't have a problem w/ Delia.  I find the negativity odd.  She's utterly inoffensive, if you don't like her TV shit/books - watch Corrie or back to yer Mills & Boon . . . 

[butters]

I've just got back from the supermarket - while I was there I noticed that a number of prepackaged jars of sauce etc had a big, shiny "Delia's cheat ingredient" label on the shelf.

If this is in fact the case then the "take her out and shoot her" lobby have it as far as I'm concerned.

I knew that I had seen the Delia Cheat ingredient thing somewhere and now I have found it again all in a subsection of its own no less. Now obviously I don't know what context she is going to use these ingredients in but there is nothing that I can see on that list which I wouldn't use myself with maybe the exception of the "very lazy ginger". Have a look and see if you can but I can't actually get into a state of righteous indignation about this list but then I didn't have the sight of her cooking with tinned mince to help I suppose.

bluebrad

[Houdini]

Could you, bluebrad, identify a Delia recipe at 40 paces or would you scoff it, burp, and pour another glass?

Ask any pro chef / restauranteur . . .  Of course they will say it's bad.  But it's fucking homecooking she deals in, not finest French Cuisine at the Waldorf . . .

(Cool thread, beats climbing talk!)

[butters]

Could you, bluebrad, identify a Delia recipe at 40 paces or would you scoff it, burp, and pour another glass?

I could possibly guess at its heritage but I wouldn't say that I could identify a Delia recipe at 40 paces so it is definitely the latter rather than the former in my case but then you probably already knew that. The thing is I like good honest food - it doesn't matter whose recipe was used when cooking it as long as it is tasty and as I have already pointed out you have to start somewhere and Delia is as good a place as any unless of course you are Yossarian or Sloper and can pretend that you don't have a small army of cooks, butlers and maids to hand for your first culinary experiments.

Anyway I am off to the Indian shop for a few things that I need for tomorrow nights dinner - 5 Indian recipes, none of which I have ever cooked before and all from scratch so it should be interesting. I might even take a few pictures and add them to the food glorious food thread!!

bluebrad

[Yossarian]

Typical that people focus in an utterly Daily-Mail-esque way on the one "controversial" thing, and ignore the balance of the rest of it. Where's the people poking fun at me because I like fine dining??

CUNTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I do apologise!

But you did tar yourself with that (barbecue sauce) brush...

Shall we McAke up?

[grumpycrumpy]

Cheap ..... Bah ...... I reckon I could knock out a better  wild mushroom risotto for half that price , thus leaving enough for a decent  bottle of crisp white sup along with it ....