Voilà, Andy D:

Some years back, having come out of a relationship on December 5th, and not having a dining table anymore I turned my back on traditional Christmas fare.

My dinner consisted of the National Dish of Britain.  Chicken Tikka Masala, Pilau Rice, Sag Aloo and Onion Bhagis.  Delicious it was too   

Not having a dining table I ate it off the coffee table whilst watching either Chicken Run or some Wallace & Grommit.

And it was an OK day, in fact quite liberating.

Stuart, I like John Torode, I think he is really cool, but ... you know how the Ozzie's are about their meat pies, and the Scots about their meat pies ... it just seems shortcrust pastry AND potatoes on top somehow, seems, well, a little bit too much on the old carbo loading?  A little lacking on our five portions a day?  Mind you, I do love a Scottish mince and onion suet bake roll.  But never will I counternance a deep fried Mars Bar.

My Lady Antheil! As if!



Spoon-stirred and quivering? 

Ahem. Anyway. Those beans there are enough left over for me to be baking them tonight, with lots of tomato ick and sticky black sugar and a bit of chilli sauce in an attempt to create Boston Baked Beans a la martle. Nice small joint of halal lamb to go with. It's looking oh, so good. 

I avoided all of these programmes (it's the series entitled Delia, with the pre-prepared stuff) but I remember it having summoned up the very heights of apoplexy in some corners.
I'm not going to use any of the recipes that she's talking about, but I can recognise that it's a very good place from which to start.
Delia says that cookery isn't being taught in school any more, but as I remember it, my Home Economics classes weren't all that much use anyway.
There was so much emphasis on cooking everything from scratch that it made anything that I attempted in Home Economics either totally unrealistic or rather basic and not terribly interesting. Starting off with pre-prepared ingredients makes a lot of recipes more attainable. And it's also harder to have a disaster.
Where I think she goes awry is the suggestion that already seasoned cooks are going to suddenly breath a sigh of relief because they can use these products without fear of approbation. I think that's being greedy and aiming at an audience base that's far too broad. She's got a couple of generations of home cooks in the bag with her previous books and serieseses, so why try to take them with her?
Interesting to see her experimenting with the fourth wall in a way I've never seen her attempt before. How to Cook was such an old-fashioned series in many ways, but the popularity of more relaxed formats (and I suspect the out-takes that get featured on the BBC from time to time all the time) have obviously made her want to try this. I could have done without the sheer quantity of autobiographical material. A little is quite nice, but if the whole series is like this it's going to get tedious quite quickly.

I'm going to make a very small very basic fish pie tonight. I'll get a fillet of smoked mackerel out of the freezer, make a white sauce and some mashed potato, assemble and bake. That's as quick and easy as I'll get tonight.

Tonight I'm going to lovingly massage a couple of boned chicken thighs with oil, salt + pepper, and some ras el hanout. It will then be slapped onto a smoking hot griddle and charred until it's cooked through (but no longer!).
I'm planning to serve it with some steamed cabbage (I really have to start shopping around for more interesting vegetables) and some potato left over from yesterday. I'm planning to form the potato into sort of pancake things, start them off frying in butter on top of the stove, then top them with grated parmesan and finish them off in the oven.
Enough talking!
To the BatKitchen!

Martle, I detect a certain lack of enthusiasm for what's on your plate ce soir