FFS - Delia........and her "easy" spag bol............

[FAQ]

by the time you've brought the water to boiling and coooked the pasta you could have cooked proper stuff!

hmmm there's a few dragons round here that could do with a good headbutt

dragonbutter .. how did you offend me?

you remember. somebody said they'd never heard of me and you know what i thought? that one.
i've only gone and done it again to soupdragon!
when will i ever learn?

iota you are filth

oh yes ... that wasn't offence though .. that was self-deprecation

LOL Iota

delia needs to retire

ahhh soupy .. she's just a swishy-tail show-off

[swish]

pffffff

she's MELTING!!!

won't somebody put me in their fridge overnight? [dribble]

i will, but i'm afraid it may already be too late. you appear to ahve caramelised.

I am an "older person" and if you want to make really really good bolognaise sauce you do have to cook it for longer than half an hour. It's nothing to do with age - more to do with liking things to taste really good!

You can make a very nice pasta sauce with mince in less than half an hour - but it's not bolognaise, however old you are!

This programme just sounds embarrassing.

Is she [checks behind bushes for lawyers] feeling quite all right?

V. ironic because I have a dog-eared copy of Delia's "complete cookery course" I think it's called which I've often used over the years because the recipes are reliable even though not terribly thrilling. In the book is a stonking good recipe for bolognese, with bacon and chicken liver (iirc) and other good things.

Good fast food is great - Nigel Slater is my hero. Good food often doesn't need a lot of time (though bolognese can't be hurried).

But tinned mince? Yikes.

I agree spag bol needs to be cooked for at least two hours but is even nicer for hours in a slow cooker, the meat is really melt in the mouth tender then rather than rubbery and the flavour of the sauce is much nicer too imo.

yea, imo if you've got wine in there then slooooooow is best. dh making boeuf bourgignon just now and we won't eat it until tomorrow evening. cook it for a while tonight, switch off oven with meat in overnight and then some more tomorrow. YUM.
if you want fast, steak is no time, fish is done in minutes, risotto half an hour, stir fries the same. plenty of nice quick things to eat, i think.

thanks for hte reminder! i need to get up and pour the marinade over the stewing meat - going to go into a slow cooker.

You can cook food without wine?

How does that work?

well i'm presuming these half-hour spag blogs don't have wine in tehm, it would taste a bit raw, wouldn't it?

I haven't watched the new Delia programme on principle - i think she has really sold out big time. I have always used her recipes in the past, and found them to be reliable,tasty, and a lot of them, actually quite quick! Also, in the past she has laid a lot of emphasis on using fresh ingredients in season, and good quality utensils and ingredients.

This programme, however, is asking us to do the complete opposite - to use ready-made stuff, produced by supermarkets who don't care about seasons, producers or food miles. Everything she seems to be using is over-packaged and over-priced. The only people who will benefit (apart from Delia) are the large supermarkets, who are already doing very well at the expense of small, local producers.

Quick spag bol??? Sounds a bit like flavoured mince.

Yep, flavoured mince with (presumably, as aitch points out) no wine.

Yum.

I'm real feel quite let down by all of this. Her older recipes are good - solid and realiable and they work.

Doesn't mince cooked quickly go all rubbery?

we don't know!!! the quick-cook mince contingent has gone to bed. but i can't imagine it's good. it can't be, can it? but then i really don't like mince broken up that much, i like bits so i suppose i always have to cook it for a while.

tell you another good quick tip, i did this tonight. good quality italian snags, you know those herby ones. squeeze out the innards, roll into small balls and fry until coloured. meanwhile whack a pepper on the burner to blacken and soften. take skin off, chop, and put it in with your 'meatballs', add a can of chopped toms or chopped fresh toms and simmer for a bit. have with pasta. whole thing shouldn't take more than half an hour. in fact, i tend to have some pre-done peppers sitting around in oil in the fridge for this sort of thing.