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 author’s 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

PREFACE

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 isn’t 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 world’s 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 doesn’t 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 is—so 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.

INTRODUCTION

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 I’m 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, it’s a start. If you wish to trim your cooking (and spending) wings a bit, start here. It’s quite easy, quite fun and, if my experience in preparing and writing this book is anything to go by, it’s 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. You’ll 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 match—in you. Nothing will be tossed lightly into your basket: you’ll know how much it weighs, what it costs, and how much it cost last week.

You haven’t got the time? I know, I said it too. But suddenly I didn’t have the money to save all this time we’ve become so besotted with. Actually I’m 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: they’ll save you the bother of emptying tea leaves—whatever small amount of time that involves—but you’ll 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 fortune—and then they break down, and when they do it’s ten to one you can’t get the mending-man to come. ‘Are you north or south Suffolk, madam?’ ‘Oh, you’re in the middle. He won’t 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 book—to 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 there’s 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 you’ll 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 anticipation—I long for the first tender young peas, and equally I look forward to the (so underrated) root vegetables of winter.

4 Anti freeze Well, I’m afraid I am, although I admit it’s a personal thing largely for the reasons outlined above. Also I’m not convinced freezing does always save money. Each time I am reminded that 20 per cent of the population are freezer-owners I console myself with the thought that there are still 80 per cent who are not. My main grumble is that unless you understand temperature control with almost scientific dedication freezing causes loss of flavour, and as a cook I spend a great deal of time and effort nurturing flavour. One report in a consumer magazine pointed out that very often freezer families spent more on meat than other families—they bought more than they normally would in order to justify the freezer, and of course when buying whole sides they were landed with far more heads, tails and ears than they needed. Having said all this, it is true you can save a little money with fruit and vegetables, if you grow these yourself and produce too much for your immediate needs. If you already have a freezer and it’s saving you money, it can’t be a bad thing. On the other hand, if you don’t have one and are thinking about it, do ask yourself if you really want to eat your courgettes and strawberries in January and your red cabbage in June.

5 Saving it Energy has become a fashionable word of late. Before that saving kitchen energy meant sitting down to shell the peas. When the Government first urged us daily to switch something off, we listened a bit; then the enormous increases in charges started arriving through our letter-boxes and we listened a lot. After water and heating, the oven is the highest consumer of energy in the house, and heating up the whole capacity of the oven just to cook a quiche is no longer feasible. No doubt you all have devised ways of saving energy in the kitchen, but here anyway are a few suggestions.

(a) Keep the kettle regularly de-scaled—it will boil quicker.

(b) Invest in a steamer and cook one vegetable on top of another on the same heat.

(c) When baking jacket potatoes, push a skewer through the centres as this conducts the heat to the insides and speeds up the cooking time.

(d) Invest in an electric toaster—it uses far less energy than the grill.

(e) Try to use the oven to its capacity by planning to use it for more than one thing (e.g. baking in a batch, cooking two casseroles or cooking vegetables and soups in the oven if it’s on).

(f) If you are buying a new oven, consider a double one so that you can use the smaller oven for most things and probably cut costs by half.

6 A touch of spice One way to prevent life getting dull when you’re saving money on cooking is to stock up with a few herbs and spices. Don’t get me wrong: throwing in a hotchpotch of this and that is definitely not recommended. It is the subtle addition that adds a touch of luxury to the simplest dishes. First and foremost (I’ll say it yet again), do invest in a pepper-mill. Freshly ground black pepper adds a new dimension instantly to your cooking. Also keep some untreated pure rock salt (such as Maldon) in your spice cupboard—it’s more expensive than table salt but, because it’s saltier, it goes further. Coarsely ground black pepper and a sprinkling of crushed rock salt can put something like egg and chips in the four-star class! Spices are cheaper sold loose or in packets. Why pay for fancy jars? At the same time pester your local delicatessen or wholefood shop for unusual spices—the more we ask, the more we’re likely to get them.

Green-fingered cooks, or even those who aren’t (like me), should be able to grow fresh herbs, either in the garden or on a sunny windowsill in pots. There are a number of very informative books available.

Finally, one thing that I used to get a lot of letters about was olive oil and its price. It is delicious, but I agree that it is very expensive. A good alternative is groundnut oil, which I like because it has little flavour of its own and therefore doesn’t mask other flavours, like some abominable oils on the market at present. Groundnut oil is good for frying—and add a knob of butter for flavour.

I also use groundnut oil in salad dressing and in mayonnaise with a little crushed garlic added, again for flavour. If you have some precious olive oil, you can make it go further by adding 50 per cent groundnut oil to it. For my vinaigrette dressing I use I tablespoon of wine or cider vinegar, 6–7 tablespoons of oil, I crushed clove of garlic, I teaspoon of mustard, I teaspoon of crushed rock salt and freshly milled black pepper—then I shake everything together vigorously in a screw-top jar. In the summer a few chopped herbs will give it an extra-special flavour.

7 How to cook without wine I think it was Elizabeth David, one of our greatest cookery writers, who once said that if the British spent as much money on wine in the kitchen as they do on gravy powder, meat cubes and instant stock they would all enjoy better food. Well, I heartily endorse that, but just as all those chemically flavoured aids have gone up in price, so too has wine. But, again prompted by Mrs David, I have discovered that a very good alternative to wine in the kitchen is dry cider. In fact, I now rarely use wine, but I always have some dry cider handy for special dishes. I’ve experimented quite a lot and have found that a classic coq au vin or even boeuf bourguignonne has turned out beautifully with dry cider.

8 A question of cream As a cookery writer I can say quite confidently that nothing seems to get people’s economical backs up quite as much as cream in cooking. It’s perfectly all right to spend money on smoking, or crisps, or bars of chocolate, but cooking with cream is considered by some to be the ultimate in kitchen extravagance. One lady was outraged, I recall, by my making a bread and butter pudding on television with cream; I ought to have been teaching people to economise in this day and age. Well, perhaps in the context of this book the appearance of a little cream here and there does call for an explanation. For me, quite simply, cream is the one ingredient that makes frugality tolerable! If you like, you can substitute top of the milk for it.

9 What are we leaving? In one American university there is, would you believe, a department of Garbageology which regularly ‘borrows’ people’s dustbins and analyses their contents. They claim that it tells us a great deal about our modern way of life. In one American city they discovered that the average family wasted 10–15 per cent of all the food it bought (amounting in the whole city, over the year, to $10 million worth of food thrown away). And that was not bones, scraps or peelings but large pieces of once perfectly edible bread and meat, as well as unopened packs of vegetables and television dinners. They even found that, as the price of meat soared, so did the wastage! I mention all this only to underline the obvious point that frugality calls for good management, and an enthusiastic approach to leftovers (for which you’ll find some recipes later). It would be a tragic waste of that extra time we’re going to spend in the kitchen if 15 per cent of the food was thrown away afterwards.