Veering away from restaurant news this time (woah!) and we thought we'd have a muse on the icon that is Delia Smith and her (most) recent announcement that she's quitting TV for good (this time. Really truly. She's gone. See ya). She claims - not without foundation - that much of the cooking on TV these days is about entertainment, rather than education. She is looking to the future by continuing to educate via her website and online videos (although one could argue that these days it's all one and the same, TV and online, but she is nothing if not a visionary).
Having been on our screens for the best part of 37 years, it's fair to say Delia knows her onions, pickled, ceviche-style, however you like them. She has seen all the trends come and go and has remained what she started - a straight-and-true cookery teacher aiming to convey the basic foundation skills so that we can learn to cook at home with confidence. But we think it's also fair to say that we the public have also come a long way since 1973 and anyone who can't boil an egg by now might be safest out of the kitchen. Delia's assertion that cookery these days is only entertainment is somewhat off the mark; what about Robert Carrier, Fanny Cradock and their peers? The entertainment factor was certainly higher than the cooking factor, due to availability of ingredients, weirdness (in Fanny's case) of recipes, cost and confidence - you weren't watching because you longed to make green mash for your next dinner party - but education still played a large part in these shows as foreign ingredients made their mark and TV cooks needed to both educate and entertain in order to maintain audiences and get information across.
Cookery shows these days have grown in line with our own kitchen ambitions. Perhaps it's true to say we've outgrown Delia. You can get the basics anywhere you care to look - books, YouTube, apps - but as a whole our palate has grown more sophisticated and we want to be inspired and entertained by the latest gadgets and techniques out there. Ok, a large part of the population still can't boil that damn egg - arguably it's not because the information isn't easily accessible- but the cooking spectrum is now much wider: home cooks vary from the plain and comforting right up to those talented and enthusiastic enough to start underground dining clubs, pop-ups and online videos about their food. Consequently cookery programmes have grown more diverse: You might watch Heston or Masterchef for some new techniques you may or may not have the confidence to show off at home, you might watch the Hairy Bikers or Jamie for familiar but easily-accessible updated classics, Lorraine Pascal or Eric Lanlard if you're a patisserie nut... Perhaps what is missing is the show for those somewhere in the middle - interested in sourcing new ingredients, not necessarily up for buying every gadget there is, but enthusiastic enough to invest time and money in their dinner whose knowledge is far beyond the basics, but time might put a dampener on efforts (lightbulb moment. Hello TV producers...?) .
Will we miss Delia from our screens? Is it simply a generational thing - she's our mums' icon, we're looking to the future with Heston, Jamie et al? Do we still need that kind of kitchen foundation cooking or should we be searching for the next new thing to stimulate our tastebuds and wow our minds?
