Smith - Frugal Food

Delia Smith

www.hodder.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 1976 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
An Hachette UK Company

Copyright 1976 by Delia Smith

The right of Delia Smith to be identified as the Author of the
Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

New edition 1987

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Illustrations by Vanessa Pancheri

Epub ISBN: 9781444717488
Book ISBN: 9780340712948

Hodder and Stoughton
An Hachette UK Company
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH

www.hodder.co.uk

All authors royalties from the sale of this book will go to Christian Aid and the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development.

My thanks to Colin Fisher of the Pye Research Centre, Haughley, Suffolk, for his invaluable comments: to Gwyneth Phillips for typing the manuscript: and, as always, to Caroline Liddell for her help with the testing.

Also by Delia Smith
and published by Coronet

One is Fun
Book of Cakes

You may be wondering how it is that a cookery writer who spends a great deal of her time encouraging people to eat perhaps a little more adventurously than they normally would could at the same time have any leanings towards frugality. The fact is I feel our days of unrestricted choice in eating are strictly numbered. There simply isnt enough food on this planet to feed all the people who live on it: rich nations like our own are just beginning to feel the pinch, while two-thirds of the worlds population continues to suffer from the grave effects of living below subsistence level.

It is a paradox which concerns me personally a great deal. Ultimately perhaps the problems will have to be solved on an international level, but governments only reflect the will of the people they govern. As individuals, are there really any of us who, if we found ourselves living next door to a family whose children were starving, would not give all the help we could? But the truth is we are living next door, on the next continent, on the same planet.

This book has been prompted partly by these considerations and partly by the practical point that in the future there will be less food around (at least of the kind we have been accustomed to)something that is not entirely unwelcome. One doesnt have to be a nutritionist to realise that our eating habits have got somewhat out of hand, with obesity and the diseases attributable to it having reached epidemic proportions. I feel the positive effect of this in time will be a material improvement in our health, as in the war years when we ate so much less. Also, believe it or not, I do feel that the less you have of something, the more special it isso you enjoy it more. We shall still be well-off compared with the greater part of the world, which is not to say that we should feel guilty about cooking good food but rather that we should have some sort of responsibility to make the most of it and not squander it.

Anyone who wants to, or is forced to, live really frugally (that is to say, at subsistence level) has no need of a cookbook. And at the same time Im quite sure there are many people who, because they are careful, can live more frugally than this book would suggest.

Who, then, is this book for? Quite simply for people like myself, those who have lived and cooked during the affluent years and now find themselves caught up in the spiral of inflation, rising prices and impending world food shortages.

In short, its a start. If you wish to trim your cooking (and spending) wings a bit, start here. Its quite easy, quite fun and, if my experience in preparing and writing this book is anything to go by, its really not half so morbid an exercise as you might think. In fact, once you become really calculating, boring old shopping can take on a new meaning.

No more will you simply go through the motions of loading up the supermarket trolley and day-dreaming in dreary check-out queues. Youll go forth into battle fortified, as it were, by the armour of your new-found attention to frugality! The seductive cunning of commercials will now meet its matchin you. Nothing will be tossed lightly into your basket: youll know how much it weighs, what it costs, and how much it cost last week.

You havent got the time? I know, I said it too. But suddenly I didnt have the money to save all this time weve become so besotted with. Actually Im not so sure that all this time-saving really does save time. I once watched a lady standing in a long check-out queue with just a large bag of frozen Brussels sprouts (they were at the time about 30 per cent dearer than the fresh ones). She was in the queue for a good 10 or 12 minutes; she could, had she so wished, have sat in her own kitchen and peeled fresh Brussels sprouts in the same time. Then take something like tea bags: theyll save you the bother of emptying tea leaveswhatever small amount of time that involvesbut youll pay twice the price for your tea.

However, before we start cooking, here are a few tips on thinking frugally.

I Your money or your time Really this is what is at the root of many of our economic predicaments. Labour-saving was the slogan of the sixties: leave it all to the kitchen gadgets, the machines, the tins and packets, and put your feet up. Well, even if you overlook the psychological repercussions for bored (if liberated) housewives, consider the economic implications for a minute. First of all, instant foods cost a fortune. Secondly, all those super gadgets cost a fortuneand then they break down, and when they do its ten to one you cant get the mending-man to come. Are you north or south Suffolk, madam? Oh, youre in the middle. He wont be in your area for ten days. So off you go to the launderette, get a parking ticket, plus the call-out charge for the repair man when he comes ten days later and the cost of the spare part. Just one (real-life) example of how much saved labour we have to pay for. The same applies to cooking: if you are willing to spend the time, you are bound to save money.

2 Getting out of the supermarket and back into the kitchen So our bored, liberated housewife needs a job (a) to pay for her labour-saving home and (b) to pay the interest. With the result that on Friday nights and Saturdays the supermarkets are packed with rushed, harassed, working wives and mothers stocking up on instant puds, apple pies, sponge cakes, frozen hamburgers, fish fingers and packaged meat, to name but a few expensive items. A few years ago I wrote a book to enable people to make the very best of all these things. But in the meantime our priorities, I feel, have been changing, and it is the kitchen now that demands more of our time and imagination. Hence the aim of this bookto make that time spent as interesting and worthwhile as possible.

3 Seasonal sense I need hardly mention how the price of oil has affected everything we consume, but just think how much more it now costs to fly all those tasteless out-of-season fruits and vegetables merely so we can choose whatever we want every single week of the year! Not only has all this jet-set food eclipsed the natural cycles of our diet, but also it has become so much harder to decide what to cook when theres absolutely everything to choose from. Nature is perfectly capable of providing us with a varied and interesting diet throughout the year, and by buying things in their natural season youll be getting them at their most plentiful and therefore at their cheapest. In June a few ungraded asparagus spears can be far cheaper than imported celery; in December home-grown celery is much less expensive (and has far more flavour) than a pound of imported tomatoes. And, personally, I enjoy the fun of anticipationI long for the first tender young peas, and equally I look forward to the (so underrated) root vegetables of winter.