I grew up in the kind of household where pudding mostly meant cucumber or, if it was a special occasion, Petits Filous. So the date I knew I would reach What’s New In the Dairy – chapter 17 of Delia’s How to Cook – was long ago circled in my calendar in little lovehearts. When things were tough, I would flick ahead to these pages and purr gently to myself.
The pictures in this section are very close to pornography. Pecan shortbreads, eton mess, Fromage Frais, coffee cappuccino creams … each page is another delight. The buttermilk scones with raspberry butter in particular look so good that there are now little patches of water damage on the page from all the drooling.
So I was a little disappointed to be asked to make Yoghurt Fool with Rhubarb. Amid a series of supermodels, the fool photo looks distinctly dowdy, but I’m glad I was asked, because it’s a delicious and refreshing pudding and pretty much the only one in the chapter that you could crank out on a weekday evening.
After a few runs I’ve got it down to about 50 minutes, but the actual preparation takes 10 minutes all in all, so it’s ideal to prepare: whack it in the oven and then cook your main course, stuff finished product in fridge, serve dinner and then, hey presto, there’s dessert with hardly any extra effort at all. Really, all you do is wash and chop some rhubarb, cook it in the oven with sugar and ginger, then add it to your Greek yoghurt. But before starting on your fools, your scones and the rest, first, you must know your semi-skimmed milk from your single cream.
Embarrassingly for someone whose in-laws are dairy farmers, what I know about dairy wouldn’t fill a small cup, though I do have strong views about culling badgers. I was taken aback to learn that “quark” is not just the name of the Ferengi barman out of Star Trek but a type of “soft white cheese” that is, according to Delia, “ideal for slimmers”. More upsettingly, I had no idea that creme fraiche had a longer shelf life than other creams once opened, which means I have been throwing out half-used jars of perfectly good stuff for longer than I care to think about.
So discombobulated am I by all this that when Delia tells me that “whole milk is so good for growing children”, I wonder briefly if I have misunderstood how it is that babies are made.
One misconception that How to Cook and this chapter in particular deals with is the controversy over fat. Delia spends large chunks of her oeuvre reassuring readers that the experts are prone to fads as far as healthy foods are concerned, and that there are many more reasonable ways to stay healthy than worrying too much about dairy.
We now know that Delia, who spent years fending off angry letters about excessive butter in her recipes, was more right than she could have known. Though it was saturated fats that were public enemy number one when my copy of How to Cook went to press, we know now it is sugar that is the real health hazard, and only a desire to preserve the reputations of a few senior nutritionists had kept fat on the naughty step for so long.
At least, I think that’s the case. It might have swung around to fat again, or burned toast, or roast potatoes, or maybe it’s wine this week. I just hope we don’t decide the problem is dairy again, because I really have eaten an excessive amount of cream this week.
- Stephen Bush is cooking his way through Delia’s Complete How To Cook (BBC Books, £40) in a year; You can watch Delia Smith’s free Online Cookery School videos at deliaonline.com; @deliaonline
