Delia’s Complete Cookery Course

Delia’s Complete Cookery Course, Delia Smith, ISBN 13: 978 0 563 36249 4

Where would I be without this book or without Delia?

I can remember being in my young teens and spending a lot of time cooking in my parent’s kitchen whilst at the same time talking to the imaginary camera, describing everything I was doing, just like Delia. I hope that other people used to do the same and that I wasn’t being a particularly strange child.

I don’t think you can go wrong with a Delia recipe and, of course, she has been a central figure in the world of cooking for decades in the UK. This particular book was first published in 1978 and my copy, which I finally got in 2008, after many years of ringing or running to my mum’s to look at her copy, shows that it has been reprinted pretty much every year since then, sometimes as much as five times a year.

It’s a book I turn to if I need a recipe for a classic, as I know that Delia’s recipe will work. The pastry pages are particularly grubby from use. I have quite a number of Delia’s books; the How to Cook series, the seasonal collection and the Christmas book.  However, it is this one that has helped to form me as a home cook.  It is this book that I grew up with and it is these recipes that have provided much of the backbone to my adaptations.

There was quite a Delia backlash here in the UK when she launched her How to Cheat cookbook, but for me Delia still stands as an icon for home cooks and this book is one that I wouldn’t want to be without.

The River Cottage Family Cookbook

ISBN 0 340 82636 3

I think this is definitely one of my favourite cookbooks.  It is certainly the most splattered and the spine is beginning to disintegrate.  It is a brilliant cookbook for children to use as it explains everything very clearly, detailing how to do things in a very straightforward way.  For example it will say “oven gloves on” when necessary.  It gives a full list of ingredients and utensils for each recipe, which is handy as it gives kids the chance to prepare ahead and make sure they have everything to hand. At the end of every recipe it tells you how to eat what you have just made, which sounds a bit daft, but never really is.  They are serving suggestions and hints at what might go well with that particular foodstuff.

The book also explains about the key ingredients in cooking.  It has sections such as Flour, Milk, Eggs, Fruit etc, and at the start of each section it will have several pages discussing that particular ingredient. The meat section for example talks about intensive farming, free range and organic meat and where to shop for your meat and what to look for. It makes for interesting reading whether you are 8 or 80.

It is also, though, just a really good cookbook, and I use it all the time. Some of my favourite recipes are Nicola’s Zesty Flapjacks, raisin bread, chocolate chip cookies and the fruit jelly recipes.

I think this might be my desert island choice of cookbook if I had to choose.

The Dairy Book of Family Cookery

The Dairy Book of Family Cookery, 1983, Ebury Press, ISBN 0 85223 350 7

My mum has this book and it is one that I used to pick up again and again and find things to cook whilst she was at work.  I seem to remember that it was a book that you ordered from the milkman, when they still pounded the streets on their daily round.

I really love this book, it carries many nostalgic memories.  Not least that I was captivated by the tea set in the picture on page 263 of this book and have loved it ever since.  It was a tea set that I wanted to have when I grew up. I found a copy of this recipe book in the Albion Bookstore when Mr OC and I lived in Broadstairs in 1999 and quickly snapped it up.  Then the week we were packing up to leave Broadstairs and come back home to Shropshire I saw my first ever real life pieces of this tea set in the antique shop there.  I can’t remember what pieces they had on display now but I remember that they cost £50 and it was £50 that I didn’t have at the time. I walked away with a sinking heart and a feeling that I would never own the tea set that I so coveted. Then one day, some time later, my parents turned up with a big box. This box said “Colour TV Monitor” on the side.  I wondered what on earth I was going to do with this TV monitor and how to accept it graciously.  However, I opened the box to find an entire Royal Albert Petit Point tea service inside.  I don’t think I will ever receive such a lovely gift again.

So there you go, a recipe book can come to mean much more than the sum of its parts.

I still cook from this book regularly, but I have never cooked the Baked Fruit Cheesecake, which is the food item snapped on the petit point tea set on page 263.  Perhaps I should make an effort to change that.