Delia: Not just for Christmas

Boxing Day pie - on Valentine's Day

It was the usual scenario - Monday's fridge was full of little bowls of cling-film wrapped leftovers from the Sunday roast.

"Could you make a Boxing Day pie?" asked H9 as I pondered possibilities.

Of course I could! Boxing Day pie is an institution in this household. I make it every year with the leftovers from Christmas Day. It is, to all intents and purposes, the Turkey Flan with Leeks and Cheese from page 214 of my very battered and adored copy of Delia's Christmas. My children have always called it Boxing Day pie because we don't have turkey at Christmas - usually a big chicken (or two) or one year a big salmon.

Why not make it on Valentine's Day? We all love it after all!

It's basically this. First you make a cheese pastry (175g self-raising flour, 75g butter, 50g cheddar, mustard, salt and pepper, water) which Delia rubs in and grates but I just blitz in a food processor. Line a 25cm quiche tin with the pastry and bake for 15 minutes at Gas mark 5/190 degrees C. I prop up the sides of the pie with foil and prick the base with a fork.

Into that you pile some leeks (cooked in butter on Boxing Day) or whatever green veg you have left over (I used steamed Cornish greens), bits of sliced chicken, leftover roast vegetables and about 400ml of thick Bechamel sauce to which you have added some grated cheddar and a beaten egg. Sprinkle cheese over that and bake again for 25 to 30 minutes.

It's lovely eaten warm or cold and is, to quote H9 "basically just a roast dinner in a pie".

SPICED BREAD AND APPLE PUDDING

A new Delia recipe wandered into my repertoire on Sunday, this time into the pudding department and from her recently refurbished Frugal Food book. I'm a big fan of bread and butter pudding (a good way to use up excess eggs from our enthusiastic hens).

This B&B pud is a layer of buttered wholemeal bread triangles on the base (butter side down), a layer of apple slices (I smugly used spiced ones I'd bottled last autumn - otherwise cook apple slices until soft in a little butter), then another layer of buttered bread triangles (butter side up). Dredge with soft brown or demerara sugar and cinnamon, then pour over 275ml of semi skimmed milk mixed with two beaten eggs. Leave to soak for a while and then dot with butter and bake at Gas Mark 4/180 degrees C until golden brown. Serve with vanilla ice cream or single cream.

It was delicious with a lovely custardy-appley flavour and golden crunchy spicy top. No picture because once it was cooked, we ate it!

Roast chicken and stuffing

Roast chicken and stuffing is possibly the best example - in this kitchen anyway - of KISS (keep it simple stupid).

You see my Other Half was pretty convinced that only Paxo could make good stuffing for roasted birds. So on Christmas Day, much against my better judgement, we had a packet stuffing to please He Who Would Like to Be Obeyed. It was okay but it didn't please the smaller more demanding palate (ie my eldest daughter) who, for her ninth birthday, insisted I make home made stuffing for her roast chicken.

I love a good stuffing (stop giggling at the back...) and I'm a big fan of Delia's chunky American style Christmas turkey stuffing and her chestnut stuffing. OH (foolishly) dislikes both. Actually it's not really a dislike, they just disappoint him, which is possibly worse.

So for Sunday's birthday lunch it was back to the drawing board. I consulted Delia, Tana, Gordon, Nigel, Nigella, Sarah Raven and (finally) Rachel Allen. In her Home Cooking book she has a simple sage and onion stuffing with variations.

"Oooh chorizo stuffing," I said to the OH, thinking of the lovely garlicky paprika aroma that would bring to the roasted result.

"No," said OH.

"Smoky bacon?"

"No."

"Oh."

So I applied the KISS principle. Straightforward sage, onion and breadcrumbs stuffing.

I followed Rachel's recipe which was to soften a chopped onion and a clove of garlic in a big lump of butter and a glug of olive oil and mix that with 100g of white breadcrumbs and come chopped sage and thyme from the garden. I put the result into a bowl and looked at it alongside my 2.4kg chicken. It looked insufficient.

So, dredging up long-lost memories of family roast dinners and the things my mother used to make, I remembered her method which was to chuck everything - slices of bread, onion, herbs, butter, sea salt, pepper - into her Kenwood blender and blitz. I used my food processor and the result was a pleasing stuffing mix which clumped nicely together.

I made pockets in the bird's breast and tucked most of the stuffing in there and the neck and there was still more, so I popped a fist-sized amount into the bird's cavity. (Writing all this seems a little like writing culinary porn...)

I roasted the bird (two hours, gas mark 5) and the result? Fabulous. A huge hit with everyone and decreed 'nearly' as good as school's* by the birthday girl.

So another kitchen lesson learned. KISS applies to stuffing birds too and (probably, but don't tell her...) mother knows best.

*School dinners set a very high standard here (Jamie take note).

Taking the pesto

I have a longstanding fascination with what other people eat. This overflows into supermarkets where I love to indulge in trolley gazing and in close analysis of other shoppers' shopping as it flows along the conveyor belt to the checkout.

The old ladies, for example, with their cakes and pouches of Whiskas. Fat chavs, in low slung jeans with low slung bellies clutching sulky sullen kids, with their heaped trollies of biscuits and burgers and smiling fried potato slices.

What do they think of the contents of my trolley? Well Tesco is pretty sure that I'm a vegetarian as I never buy meat there, but I do occasionally buy fish, so what does that make me? A piscatarian? (Or possibly a 'taking-the-piscatarian'.) Anyway, I don't buy many veggies there either as I either grow them or buy them from the Farmers Market.

So what do I buy from Tesco? Those round Finn Crisp crispbreads for a start. These I top with low fat soft cheese (NOT the high fat stuff which is too tongue cloggingly bleurch) and then a scrape of pesto. This is a case in point. It MUST be Tesco's own brand fresh pesto to which I am addicted. It is, in fact, the sole reason I go to Tesco and not Morrisons, Lidl or Aldi. And Delia Smith is totally to blame. I know in the past I was scornful of Delia's How to Cheat at Cooking book, but I did get a copy and she did recommend this pesto and (as expected) Delia was right and now I'm addicted. Which means I must occasionally darken the door of my nearest Tesco to get my pesto 'fix'.

This is quite simply the best pesto I have tasted. I could eat it from the pot with a spoon (and quite often do!) My children love it too, particularly dolloped into homemade minestrone soup or stirred into a quick tortelloni pasta supper. It's also lovely on top of cottage cheese on a nice crunchy skinned baked potato.

Which takes me back to the reason for this blog. What do you eat when you're in a hurry? If it's just me I'll probably eat the crispbread/cream cheese/pesto combo, but if there's a family to feed I have a couple of store cupboard fallback positions.

One is tuna noodles: Take a couple of sheets of dried egg noodles, chop a head of broccoli and add both to a pan of boiling water. Simmer for four minutes, drain and add a tin of drained tuna and a knob of butter. Top with plenty of ground black pepper. This quantity serves two adults and two small children. It's ready in five minutes and is a bit of a life-saver.

Tortelloni gratin: This is for those packs of filled tortelloni that supermarkets offer, but NEVER the ones with meaty fillings (too much like Whiskas). Ricotta and spinach is the best, or maybe the four cheeses or pesto versions. The beef ones are far too spooky. Simmer in boiling water for the recommended time. Meanwhile sweat shredded savoy cabbage, onions, leeks and chopped garlic in a little butter or olive oil until soft and unctuous. Add half a tub of creme fraiche (soft cheese or even cottage cheese) and as much of the aforementioned Tesco pesto as you wish. Mix in the tortelloni. Now you can either serve it as it is (which is quickest) or you can pile it into a gratin dish, top with a mixture of grated Parmesan/Cheddar/Gruyere and pop into a hot oven (gas 6, 200 degrees C) until golden brown and bubbling. This is lovely with a watercress/spinach/rocket type of salad. Serves four.

Assembly Line Delia

Delia’s Monday night cooking programme on BBC2 was, excuse the pun, food for thought. Not the Delia we’re used too. Not Christmas, Summer, Winter or How to Cook Delia. Instead this was Assembly Line Delia. Open a packet of this, a tin of that, add some frozen mashed potato and here you are, delicious food.

We were treated to, perhaps quite unnecessarily, visits to the footballing side of Delia and, poignantly, we visited the ‘Shed of Delia Past’. A museum of previous cooking series, with serried ranks of bowls, plates, spoons and serving platters lined up on shelves. I have to admit I looked at those and foresaw the auction in years to come as Delia fans fight over the sainted one’s wooden spoons the same as fans eagerly bid for Elizabeth David’s culinary history.

But Delia isn’t usually wrong. This is the woman who knew we would all want to scoff cranberries by the truckload. Supermarkets have talked of the ‘Delia effect’ where avid cooks rushed to buy the latest must have ingredient, like white eggs from the How to Cook series, chosen not because they taste better than the brown-shelled variety, but more by design as they looked stylish on the cover of the book.

Now Delia has turned her eye on ready-prepared ingredients where all the ‘boring stuff’ has been done by someone else in an industrial kitchen. To a purist who likes to know the exact provenance of his or her ingredients, it must have looked like madness. I cringed when she opened the tin of mince, for example. But, perhaps, I would have cringed less if the label on the tin had promised that it was British beef. I worry about such things. I also live in an isolated rural area. The nearest supermarket is 16 miles away and I don’t work. I can fry up a batch of mince and onions and I often do. I also cook in bulk, freeze it in family sized portions and assemble it at the last minute, exactly as Delia was doing on Monday. I also remember as a kid with a working mum, that mum did exactly that. Including the mashed potato. Mum used to make a big batch of mash, pipe it into rosettes on grease proof-paper lined trays, freeze it and use it exactly as Delia was doing on Monday.

And isn’t that better? That little bit of preparation, that extra bit of care, than just buying an off-the-peg ready meal shepherds pie and pinging it into the microwave?

Delia made a lovely looking fish pie with hot smoked salmon and quails eggs with a pot of ready made cheese sauce and the ubiquitous frozen mash. My sister’s a dentist with two kids and a non-cooking husband. I can see her making that pie. She can afford the ingredients, but not the time, and I could see her making that on a weekday. She can cook brilliantly, but who would want to after a day in which they had done 65 NHS dental check-ups? I’d make it too, but I’d probably cook the components myself because I have the time, but not the money.

I think that is where the genius of Delia lies. These recipes are cook-able by the non-cook and the strapped-for-time-cook as well as they competent time-rich cook. Buy all of the ready-prepared ingredients, or pre-prepare your own. It’s your choice, your kitchen and you are in charge.

Last night I made chicken and rice. In fact it was a Delia recipe, a variation on her famous Chicken Basque. I did a quick cook version using the Swiss Marigold stock she was seen to use on Monday. I used white basmati rice not brown, I did cook the chicken thighs from raw, but I have been known to make it with leftover chicken, and I used dried herbs. Had Delia been cooking it on Monday she would perhaps have bought ready-cooked supermarket chicken thighs. What is the difference? Perhaps what she was really doing was the equivalent of gourmet food from leftovers? Something that seems to have been forgotten these days when food is tossed away because some have forgotten about thrift and the art of using up what is left.

I’m a Delia fan and I’ll probably watch the whole series and buy the accompanying book. But I won’t slavishly follow her directions. I might use her ideas, but I can’t see me buying a pot of ready made cheese sauce. Oh, and I’ll freeze my own mash too.

Frozen Mashed Potato

Also known as Duchesse potatoes from the Good Housekeeping Home Freezer Cook Book 1972

6lb old potatoes peeled and boiled
2 oz butter
1 egg
1 level tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper
¼ level tsp grated nutmeg

serves 10

Mash the potatoes and add the remaining ingredients (no milk) and beat well. Line a baking tray with non-stick paper. Using a forcing bag fitted with a large star nozzle, pipe onto the tray about 20 raised pyramids of potato with a base of about 2 inches.

Freeze uncovered until firm. Remove from the freezer and pack onto a foil plate or container. Cover, seal and label.

TO USE: Use in Delia’s recipes or put on a greased baking sheet and brush lightly with egg. Put into a cold over and cook at 400 degrees F (Gas mark 6) until heated through and lightly browned.