The Power of Delia or Cheap Chicken Again
Delia Smith, that is. If you don’t live in Great Britain, you’ve probably never heard of her. So you don’t know that when she did a television cooking show on how to boil an egg, 54 million more eggs than normal were sold in the next few days. Since the population of Great Britain is about 60 million, that almost an egg for every man, woman, and child in the country.
As an aside, I’m going to use this next time my husband tells me that boiling an egg is child’s play. I don’t think so. You can’t see inside the damn thing to know what point it’s reached. I bet that’s what the purchasers of those 54 million eggs were worried about.
But back to Delia. She’s just published a new cookbook called How to Cheat at Cooking. It’s designed to help people get meals on the table quickly using preprepared ingredients. Another aside. It’s the perfect illustration of why cookbooks are always so country specific. Imagine trying to hunt down frozen mashed potatoes or canned minced lamb in Mexico or even in the United States.
But back to the main point once more. In the course of the publicity for the book, she took on two icons of the British culinary establishment: Jamie Oliver (also famous for a much-publicized and not-entirely-successful effort to make British school food healthy) and Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall, champion of all bits of the animal. They’d come out urging Brits not to buy battery chicken.
Oh go ahead, says Delia. I don’t do organic. If there’s nice reasonably-priced organic, fine. If not, fine too. And those broiler house chickens have made chicken available to millions who would not otherwise be able to afford such luxury.
Well, that, combined with Delia’s spirituality and her love of soccer, is quite enough to make many people see red. Just scan the negative reviews on Amazon.
Now, I’m not a fan of spirituality and have no interest in soccer, but without having seen the book, I’m inclined to think the positive reviewers are right that it’s full of useful ideas. I have a couple of her earlier books and like them a lot.
I also suspect that I, like many of her fans, find her non-preachy voice and concern that everyone eat well, is a welcome change from much food writing.
And I don’t just suspect, I’m pretty certain that she’s winning the numbers game at least.
“How To Cheat At Cooking” was originally published in 1971, well before her fame as TV cook. There was a rumour during the peak of her influence that she (or somebody associated with her) was buying up 2nd hand copies as not to down-grade her TV product. But given the new release I doubt this to be true.
I haven’t seen the new release, but have seen the original. I think that the original was released at the same time as a few other similar titles, at a period when newly empowered women where going out and getting jobs, but still expected to cook and clean the home.
I wonder why she decided to produce this specific type of book?
I think there’s another flush of them in Britain at the moment. I’m on a food writer’s list and the perception amongst them seems to be that people despair of being able to make quick inexpensive meals. And she is quite likely much better at this kind of book, given her working girl background, than many of the writers whose feel for the life of everyday people is perhaps not quite as strong.
Guanajuato home owner and part-time resident, Ruthie Wornall, has been selling “3-ingredient” cookbooks (American style) since the late 1980’s. It is not cooking in the sense that some of us conceive of the activity but still, it gets a variety of foods on the table quickly and it is getting 4 1/2 and 5 stars on Amazon.com. Incidentally, 1991 dated books are going for US$150 and up.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/104-3234856-2364710?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ruthie+wornall&x=0&y=0
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0962446742/ref=sr_1_olp_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203645219&sr=8-8
Interesting observation, Kay. And I think those among us who are immersed in food need to understand that these books fill an important niche. I think the complexity of putting meals on the table is often under-estimated. Something for future posts.
Rachel