Eating Albion

All the noise about Delia Smith’s comeback extravaganza has been like when Dylan went electric - the shock, the horror! Mainstream media highlights include an interview with Lynn Barber in this month’s Observer Food Monthly, a journalist well known for being dropped deep behind ‘party lines’, and she takes no prisoners in this either. I bet you could have cut the atmosphere in the room with a butter knife. Nigel Slater, being a more effete soul, chose to sit on the fence a bit in his leader article. Also, for reasons best known to the Guardian Art Director, the Guardian decided to Photoshop Delia’s face onto Vermeer’s The Milkmaid. Eh?

Anyway, what’s interesting is that Delia’s comments have dealt food media a sucker punch – in short, I think most of them feel betrayed. It’s a case of ‘et tu Brute?’  And this recipe is bordering on food blasphemy. As with the Rt Rvd Rowan Williams’ recent controversial speech, bits of what she said have been broken off and fashioned to fit other people’s agendas and opinions. Some people see it as a voice against the ‘food fascists’, the organic lobby, global warming - such is the modern multi-strata media space.

Delia, by her own admission, says she is ignorant of the politics of food. But oh dear, Delia sweetheart, that’s where the discourse now is! A lot has changed since the late 90s. There’s now a large part of the population that actually do care about how their food is produced and want to know about that, not just how to prepare it and how it ‘looks’. Providence is as important as preparation to swathes of today’s consumers. You can do a small test of this by looking at how many supermarket higher-end brands have a picture of the farmer who (may) have produced the product on the packaging. It may be poorly cooked, but at least it’s poorly cooked Gloucestershire old spot.

David Cameron spoke rather well on the subject of food on Farming Today last week, in a piece that the Radio 4 website soundbited as ‘hug a foodie’. Listen here (towards the end). He even name-checks his local butcher Martin Slater in Chadlington. Natch, being a Westminster man he managed to cover all bases, tickling the foodie trouts, value shoppers, local businesses and supermarkets at the same time. But at least he seemed clued up on the issues and had a genuine passion for well-produced British products and an understanding of what the consumer wants and how what we buy is a statement about our beliefs. Delia, if anything, is a throwback to a time when people were more ignorant of these issues; when it was all Abigail’s Party and the home was an impenetrable fortress unaffected by the outside world.

A foodie friend who I met for dinner last week said, “Have you tried the recipes? They’re awful. It’s not cooking, it’s just assembling your own ready meal from ready-made ingredients at twice the cost of the raw ingredients,” and the shepherd’s pie recipe above bears this out. Look, everyone cheats a bit - shortcuts, tips and tricks and such have been used in cooking since day one - but follow this to the extreme and you could say that even using recipes is cheating because someone’s telling you how to do it rather than finding out for yourself. But I just can’t shake the feeling that Delia’s cheats are somehow more… well, bordering on lazy.

I’ll end with an analogy for the young ‘uns. Most computer games come with cheat codes: infinite ammo, invulnerability, the ability to skip to any level, God mode, etc. From Commodore 64 pokes to Playstation’s secret combos, you can always cheat. The point is, if you’ve ever played a computer game with all the cheats on, it’s the most boring thing in the world. I think the same applies in cooking.