Sep
15
Written by:
host
15/09/2009 21:04
This was first posted in April 2008 … see also www.notjustfood.co.uk/media for a clip of me discussing same issue live on GMTV
Delia Smiths latest How to Cheat book has caused debate. Are people who can cook missing the point, is this a good introduction to cooking for those who would not otherwise dare to try?
I was asked to do a comparison between cooking Delia’s Shepherd’s Pie and using the same ingredients in non-cheat formats for GMTV.
Shopping took 1 hour 50 minutes for Delia’s recipe…because I had to use named products from M&S and Tesco. The first Tesco I chose didn’t stock have Aunt Bessie’s (the specified brand) frozen mash so I then had to go to a larger store a few miles away. I also had to call three other stores trying unsuccessfully to find frozen diced onion.
The premise of the book is that you stock up on store cupboard items to avoid doing M&S, Tesco and Iceland shops as I did. But the recipe for Shepherd’s Pie has Tesco fresh carrot and swede mix- with 2-3 days life, leeks and fresh thyme so the plan does not stack up.
The tinned minced lamb looked very unattractive, (New Zealand lamb, packed in UK- 70% meat rest gravy) and smelt like school dinners ( pre Jamie Oliver). The carrot and swede is in a 550g bag- the recipe calls for 175g as this is not simple maths i.e. ½ a pack - I had to get out scales. If you don’t have the ’skill’ to make shepherds pie from scratch…do you have scales?
The Aunt Bessie’s mash came in discs- the recipe calls for 16, making it impossible for you to subsititute with any other mash. The ingredients declare potato, butter, milk and salt - when cooked they turned orangey yellow and stayed in discs, so the pie looked factory made.
The cheat’s version took 18 minutes to prepare and cooking the same ingredients from scratch took just 25 minutes. The shopping for the ’slow recipe’ took just 15 minutes in one store. Unprepared carrot and swede could last more than 2 days in the fridge. I had to brown the mince but in Delia’s recipe, I had to brown the veg as the mince was cooked. In the fresh version I added the veg to the browning mince.
The cheat’s version cost a few pence off £5 to make the version using UK farm assured lean lamb and fresh veg cost just £3.85
The taste test was that the pre- prepped one smelt of school meals and tasted sweetened (the mince contains sugar) while the fresh one was quickly bagged by the crew to eat off air.
Delia has a reputation for well tested, trustworthy, if not particularly imaginative recipes but I don’t think this book delivers. It was neither store cupboard enough nor all fresh - it used 1/3 of a bag of prepared veg…what will happen to the rest? Using tinned minced lamb while most stores only offer tinned minced beef is not convenient. Using one brand of frozen potato and not giving weights so you could use prepared fresh mash or even ’smash’ seems unnecessary too.
I could not help but think, that if I could not make shepherds pie from scratch because of the extra 7 minutes required …surely I would just buy a ready-made pie….
In my opinion there are lots of other ways to encourage inexperienced cooks which give great results and are more likely to spur them on to try again. There are also a huge number of convenient, time saving ingredients like tinned pulses and a current favourite of mine the Waitrose ready made pastry case with a long shelf life which tastes like shortbread and can make a great dessert in 5 minutes.
Jane Milton works as a food consultant on a wide variety of projects for large and small companies. She is currently writing a book on things that influence what we eat. She also runs www.thefoodnetwork.co.uk and has a mail order chocolate brownie business www.cocoamoi.com
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