Delia Smith is one of Britain’s wealthiest cookery writers, so it’s interesting to turn back the clock 30 years and see what occupied her mind in the 1970s, when many of the economic conditions affecting us now first came to the fore. Frugal Food‘s re-release next month, then, seems very aptly timed indeed.
Britain, as she explains in the preamble, had just come out of a period of relative wealth and ease. Food prices were starting to climb and there was talk of an impending food crisis, where there would not be enough food to feed an ever-growing population. Sound familiar?
The fact is I feel our days of unrestricted choice in eating are strictly numbered [she writes]. 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 the subsistence level. It is a paradox which concerns me personally a great deal.
But far from being pessimistic, Delia is optimistic about the opportunities future hardships could bring. Frugal fish, she points out, is often fresher and better than traditional cod or haddock, which must be dragged up from the depths of the ocean, endure long journeys back to port, and perhaps have been dead for three weeks by the time they arrive on our plates. At the same time, she sees food scarcity as a good opportunity for the well-fed populations of the west to shed some excess inches from their collective waistlines.
Blagger got hold of a 1976 edition of Frugal Food for mere pennies, and it makes for fascinating reading. Written in what was apparently a very different time to our own, the chapter introductions describe a world in which the man goes out to work and the woman (‘bored, liberated housewife’ in her words) stays at home and, crucially, does all of the shopping and cooking. It is the pre-microwave era; a time in which only 20% of the population owned a freezer (and Delia was not one of them).
Every 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 cases loss of flavour, and as a cook I spend a great deal of time and effort nurturing flavour.
But you don’t buy Delia for her philosophy: you buy her because the recipes simply work, and in Frugal Food she presents a wealth of simple, easily-adapted ideas for eating on the cheap. A whole chapter on eggs will quickly prove its worth for any self-sufficientist with a small home flock, like us, while others on fish and vegetarian cooking show you not only how to more inventively use the less desirable options on a sweep through the supermarket aisles, but also how best to recycle leftovers into an appealing meal.
In short, it’s highly recommended, at least in its original format, which you can now snap up for a few pence plus the cost of postage.
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