Pondering the new Delia Smith, plus acceptable cooking shortcuts

I think I draw the line at presalted/prefabbed meat (for some kinds of stock I might make an exeption...), pickled mushrooms and pickled bruxelles sprouts, 'mystery meat' in frozen snacks. And I do like to stay away from those packages containing all the 'right' dried ingredients for a specific dish, with directions such as 'just add one onion, one tomato and mix the powder for the sauce with olive oil'. Brrrr!!!
The above may taste alright, but it's not real, you know what I'm saying?

I actually use mostly frozen vegetables except during farmer's market season partly because it is easier and I don't feel nutrient value is compromised but mostly because I find I waste so much food otherwise. I don't always have the expected time, energy, or inclination to cook those lovely fresh vegs I bought and they often end up being tossed.

I also use frozen potstickers, pre-made broth, canned beans, and bottled salad dressings even though I could (and have) make these from scratch.

Sometimes a survivalist streak surfaces and I find myself stocking up on things like freeze-dried shallots and canned milk.

Where is my line? I think it wavers depending on time of year and mood but I've noticed I don't buy some convenience foods that used to be part of my repertoire like macaroni and cheese, ramen, and I've stopped using boxed foods like cous cous and rice pilaf because it is just as easy to buy the main ingredient in bulk and add whatever spices I want.

Canned soups, lunchables, lunch-meats, American cheese, margarine, juice drinks, refrigerated "Pop'n Fresh" biscuits, and canned frosting are always across the line for me.

Frozen potatoes in a homemade bread? What was she thinking? Maybe she had some in her freezer and tried to come up with some way to use it. That's fine, we all do that but we don't televise our efforts.

OK: frozen greens, even spinach (sort of), frozen pastry, hollandaise sauce

NOT: canned vegies, except tomatoes and certain brands of beans, most soup stock

REALLY NOT: instant mashed potato

Brought up in Poland, in an era when the shops didn't use to carry the dizzying variety of food product they are now, I didn't know what to do with a stock cube until I was about 15. Not because I couldn't cook or because that particular article was not on the shelves - it was just natural in my Mum's kitchen to do all these things from scratch. Which was great and I do appreciate the difference between the real thing and the shop-bought one, but...I don't cook like that anymore - I cheat at cooking. Except I never really thought of it in that way. I take shortcuts when logical and the quality of the dish wouldn't be compromised otherwise, if the ingredients in my shortcuts are good quality and if the time saving is really worth it. After all, we don't all butcher our animals, bake our bread, milk our cows etc... so the idea is hardly new.
I mean, just go back to Nigella, not only in the latest, but previous books she wrote, or any other "TV chef" for that matter, and tips on where and how to take shortcuts were there. Except these would be merely propping a sound cooking process which I'm desperatelly lacking in the Delia's new venture.
I take quite a few shortcuts in cooking myself - most of the time you will not find me making my own pastry, baking elaborate desserts, making my own pasta, rolling my own cous cous, grinding curry paste etc. I have actually done all these things and will probably repeat that, but maybe not on an everyday basis. I use tinned pulses, tinned timatoes, passata and selected tomato pastes, jarred olives etc. Frozen grean peas are a wonderful invention and I don't bat an eyelid at jarred anchovies, artichokes or mayo.
I can't really imagine modern cooking without all these, but in my eyes at least, Delia has gone a bit too far and approached the subject from an angle I don't subscribe to.

In my kitchen, I cook out of necessity and expense first, convenience second. If we shop only the perimeter of our grocery stores, then we fill our carts with the basics: fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy and bakery. If we wander within, the prepackaged, processed and wholly expensive foods fall into our carts. But the interior of the store is closer to the checkouts, and therefore much easier and quicker. Sometimes, too much choice is a bad thing. I'd be a total lier if I didn't admit to purchasing prepacked foods on occasion, but I try not to make a habit of it, and meals are rounded out by fresh, healthy additions and sides.

My tolerance of prepackaged foods is stunted by Instant Rice, Microwave Egg Anything (breakfast), Fruit Juices (better to eat the whole fruit), and any canned vegetable other than tomatos (used for cooking, not in place of fresh served).

What really upsets me about the New Delia is that on the one hand, she says that organic produce and free range, ethically raised chicken is too expensive for poor people, but then she tries to push them to use overpriced, overprocessed prepared food! It doesn't make any sense. It even pains me to look at my collection of older Delia books. I am one of those who learned how to cook from her books and others so it is more than a little upsetting. I also dislike the religious programming inserted in between recipes. Save that for Songs of Praise, please!

At this point, I'm almost getting too silly in the things that cross my line. I'm still very much happy with my tinned tomatoes, but buying sandwich bread seems silly to me, since I know I can make it myself, though I still buy tortillas and baguettes (once I get a better oven, though...). I'll purchase fish in a can and some other veg, but not much any more, and I freeze most of my leftovers for bento and future "easy dinners". I am very anti-Sandra Lee, especially for her push of all things Brand Name - whomever thought it would be a grand idea to have a show all about melting Hershey chocolate and how many Nabisco cookies one can dip into said chocolate should be fired, or at least receiving one heck of a stipend from the companies. I'm not a fan of Rachael Ray, either, but at least she tends to use "real" foods (from what I've seen).

I generally agree with what you already have in your two categories, but I draw the line at frozen/canned vegetables. I just can't stand the texture of either and the sodium content of the canned ones are crazy! (Although I must admit that I do use canned hearts of palm--they don't come fresh, do they?)

I also like having a bag of frozen shrimp on hand, just to add a little variety to the my protein sources!

Other things I draw the line at: Baked good mixes, Salad dressing, Minute rice, canned/boxed broth, microwave meals (although I've been known to cheat sometimes with the last two)

Funny, I commented earlier today on Unclutterer that the recipes in my Sandra Lee slow cooker book are terrible, especially if you aren't used to the taste of processed foods (like canned cream soups). I could have eaten these things 10 years ago and thought they were okay but not anymore. I like the list you made, I use many of those things (though I haven't found a jarred spaghetti sauce that I like in the last few years). I do buy a few other frozen things as well - Trader Joe's frozen shrimp gyoza and frozen fish sticks are surprisingly good, and I keep their frozen meatballs on hand for when my picky toddler rejects the dinner I've made. Oh, and I use frozen pie dough :)

I agree with your lists for the most part. The only swap I would make is to move the spaghetti sauce to the unacceptable list because we just can't find one that we can stomach and move potato flakes to the acceptable list because my daughter prefers them. I know, I know, but every time I try to make them homemade she'll say that they aren't as good as her schools!! That kind of comment can discourage any cook!

I'd probably only be comfortable using things that it's not practical for me to make myself, like puff pastry or stock. I do use microwave meals sometimes, but I hate doing it because it doesn't taste any good to me.
Anyone who is horrified by the Delia examples above should also know that there's a recipe in her book for making chocolate cupcakes with frozen mashed potato. Like it says in the blog, what a weird way to make things easier for a reluctant cook.

I sat in a book store a few days ago and picked this up. The last book I had read was "Bad Food Britain" by Joanna Blythman. Delia's 'how to cheat' seems a perfectly judged response to the Britain Ms Blythman describes.
Anyone who goes into a London supermarket and looks at other people's trolleys will see stacks of ready meals.

I hate that Delia Smith has felt the need to publish this book/series, but I can see why she has. I don't like to think of myself as part of some kind of elite, but according to Joanna Blythman, anyone who reads and then goes on to actually cook recipes is unusual in Britain. Cook books sell by the thousands over here, but apparantly it's mostly porn, few of the recipes are ever cooked or eaten. Perhaps Delia's will.

I wouldn't have the money to buy ready meals even if I could afford them (a box of delivered oragic vegetables seems cheap in comparison). My mother gets anything with a yellow discount sticker on it, so she's foisted a few of these meals onto us. Usually they're pretty yucky.

I agree with the list, except that the few pre-made pasta sauces I do like are too expensive to be an option in the UK.

Now that we've become such ardent Okonomiyaki fans (thanks Maki!), I also bought ready mixed okonomiyaki flour for those times I can't get (or afford) nagaimo. I figured it would help the grated boiled potato version along. I guess this is a cheat - just haven't tried it yet.

i tend to make a huge pot of concentrated chicken or fish stock and then freeze it in containers to have "boullion cubes" at hand :))
in summer i take the most fragrant fresh strawberries from the market and puree it in processor with 1:1,5 sugar. Then freeze the puree in bottles.
and of course i use pre-washed greens, corn and tomato in tins!
In Russia we do not have a well-developed industry of pre-made meals yet, we do not even have canned bouillion! which is kind of nice from my point of view :)

To be honest my main interest/strength in the kitchen is baking, so I tend to get a little lost when cooking real food (you know, like something to eat for dinner instead of a cake or something) so due to my experience I am much more accepting of shortcuts to cook "real food," and less accepting of shortcuts used to cook pastries and things like that. But I guess it goes both ways since it seems to be a pretty common shortcut to use things like frozen dough for those people out there who prefer to make their own soup stock, and for me who would prefer to make my own pastry it is perfectly acceptable to use canned/boxed soup stock.

So I suppose I am probably more accepting of things like frozen foods (although I do not necessarily enjoy the way they taste, depending on what it is I might only eat it if I had to - poor student here haha) but the idea of eating grocery-store cake and Starbucks pastries makes me feel rather ill. HOWEVER, I do agree with you that a line has to be drawn somewhere, and I suppose that my personal approach would be to use as many fresh ingredients as possible and not stress over the one or two things I'm using that happen to be store bought. I think that's probably the easiest way for me to feel good about what I'm eating/serving others without driving myself crazy over it

I just do not think that Delia's new programme does anything to help people to cook. She may as well have given lessons on operating a can opener or defrosting by microwave. See my own post:

http://caughtinthemiddleman.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/cooking-up-a-storm/

I have been living in the UK for 5 years now,
I've heard everything about Saint Delia and it really makes me sick.

I cannot believe someone so pretentious on cooking can actually get people to believe in the load of shit comes out of her mouth.

She might be able to cook, but you know what? anyone that owns a couple of cookery books can read it out on the camera with a bunch of prepared ingredients and just chuck them on the pan add walnut oil and stir.

I've trained as a professional chef for different restaurants in Mexico. I love cooking and I am passionate about it.

Basically I don't understand How can she release a new book (that she actually published first 30 years ago) with instructions of how to mix (not to cook) ingredients forming an average meal. Her ways of telling us how to cook are obsolete, way too old.

Delia, if you get to read this or your fabulous PA, please: bear in mind that we are in 2008, we might not have time to cook but we are not stupid, that after you we have had another bunch of celebrity chefs and cooks that some of them are a million times better than you, that we've moved on and have learned how to boil and egg and even make a whole ethnic feast, You are obsolete, old, not to say ugly, fat and unreliable.

I suggest stay in your country house manage your amazing football team and shut your mouth and stop writing or re-publishing books. Listen to the new generations and get that you are expired

Sounds like this is the UK version of our Rachel Ray who has the loudest mouth on the planet and has no neck. The woman is just obnoxious. Some of the stuff she prepares I would not serve to a canine. But American domestic diva wannabees swarm to her.

So back to your original survey - I will buy frozen peas, and I do on occasion like something they call Tater Tots here. Little potato things shaped like little cylinders. But the Tots are only a sometime snack. I don't buy much else frozen. I do buy tinned tomatoes, tuna, mandarin orange slices, beets, and maybe a spaghetti sauce just to have on hand.

I would not go near canned peas or green beans if you paid me handsomely. And here we have refrigerated biscuits in a tube and refrigerated cookie dough. To me the stuff is just awful. Yet fat ass Americans eat it raw out of the package, and its popularity even spawned an ice cream flavor here. Frozen bread dough is another one on the bad list. Also do not buy frozen convenience meals, concocted frozen savory snacks or pizzas. There is a thing here called Pizza Rolls that are just the worst thing ever, yet people here down them by the dozens. Franky I'd rather have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on homemade bread rather than some of the garbage found in the freezer cases here.

Hmm, this got me thinking about my own "cheating" guidelines. I'm a busy, pragmatic cook, not really a food purist. Basically, if a cheat saves more time than it decreases quality, I'll happily use it. For me, roughly:

• Bagged salad greens: expensive but amazing for throwing a salad together. I see no reason not to use these, except cost.
• Sauces: varies. Some pasta sauces are really good, particularly if you doctor them up. For a time, I was commonly making pasta puttanesca by starting with Barilla's bottled puttanesca sauce, then adding tuna, anchovies, and lots of olives. Some of the Indian sauces out there are nice too. OTOH, I rarely use store-bought pesto (however, Buddhapesto, a local gourmet brand around here, is better than mine), and I can make a better Thai peanut sauce than the bottled ones in about 10 minutes.
• Canned beans can be a life-saver, particularly for chickpeas, which otherwise take forever to cook. Ditto frozen edamame.
• Pregrated Italian cheeses, OTOH...why bother? Fresh is so much better, and no big deal if you have a grater.
• I was ecstatic when I found that my Indian grocery carried panir and I didn't have to make it from scratch!
• I have a bonito plane, but I haven't had much luck with it or the dried bonito I've gotten, so I usually just buy hanakatsuo.
• I wish there were a "cheat" for fresh garlic that actually tasted good and saved all that peeling, but there isn't.
• I like some bottled salad dressings, but normally at home I make my own.
• I don't bake much, so I'm happy to buy bread. Ditto pasta: though I have made it from scratch, it's a lot of work for not much difference.
• I have a weakness for good bottled Japanese green tea, even though I could probably make something similar...

You get the idea; I'm by no means a purist, but I do try to skimp on time without sacrificing quality.