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2.6 AVERAGE
2.6 AVERAGE
This book is literally full of frugal food - recipes which are cheap to make. I have made the deviled chicken drumsticks, which were yum and easy, and the quick wholemeal bread, which was a massive disaster. The bread tastes nice but it stuck to my loaf tin like glue (which was well greased, as advised!) and I'm not sure the loaf tin can be saved. There are no photos of dishes in the book and some of the recipe titles are in French, which required a bit of research to translate on my part.
This book is interesting because it is an almost exact reprint of the original 1970s text, with a few notes from Delia to point out changes in modern thinking. Some of the recipes just seem bizarre by today's standards, for example the egg and bacon pie (Boil three eggs. Cook bacon. Make pastry. Line pie dish with half of the pastry. Chop up eggs and bacon, scatter over pie crust. Beat one egg and pour over hardboiled eggs and bacon. Cover with other half of pastry, cook.) Today you'd make a quiche or tart and serve with a green salad and there'd probably be fresh herbs, baby spinach or rocket somewhere. It clearly illustrates how tastes and expectations of food have changed in three decades.
I was disappointed that there weren't instructions on how to save money through cooking practices. Delia mentions in passing that it's wasteful to put on the oven only to make a quiche, but then almost all of the recipes require cooking in an oven. It would have been better if perhaps she'd paired dishes - like 'Bake chicken casserole. At the same time, roast chicken to be served cold tomorrow night with salad, thus avoiding the need to use the oven two nights in a row'. After reading this cookbook I've got a few new recipes but no real insight into how to save money in the kitchen.
PS. There's a whole chapter on offal, because it's cheap. If that floats your boat, this cookbook is for you.
This book is interesting because it is an almost exact reprint of the original 1970s text, with a few notes from Delia to point out changes in modern thinking. Some of the recipes just seem bizarre by today's standards, for example the egg and bacon pie (Boil three eggs. Cook bacon. Make pastry. Line pie dish with half of the pastry. Chop up eggs and bacon, scatter over pie crust. Beat one egg and pour over hardboiled eggs and bacon. Cover with other half of pastry, cook.) Today you'd make a quiche or tart and serve with a green salad and there'd probably be fresh herbs, baby spinach or rocket somewhere. It clearly illustrates how tastes and expectations of food have changed in three decades.
I was disappointed that there weren't instructions on how to save money through cooking practices. Delia mentions in passing that it's wasteful to put on the oven only to make a quiche, but then almost all of the recipes require cooking in an oven. It would have been better if perhaps she'd paired dishes - like 'Bake chicken casserole. At the same time, roast chicken to be served cold tomorrow night with salad, thus avoiding the need to use the oven two nights in a row'. After reading this cookbook I've got a few new recipes but no real insight into how to save money in the kitchen.
PS. There's a whole chapter on offal, because it's cheap. If that floats your boat, this cookbook is for you.