Frugal Food & The Frugal Cook Reviews
Recipes from Delia Smith & Fiona Beckett Plus Economical Cookery
Jan 18, 2009
Economic cookery or eating frugal food during the economic downturn, treating food as on the main flexible item of household expenditure, may be popular cookery for 2009. Frugal Food (Hodder & Stoughton, 2008) by Delia Smith and The Frugal Cook (Absolute Press, 2008) by Fiona Beckett are timely additions to the British cookery book market, bearing witness to frugal desires.
Frugal Food by Delia Smith
Making home-made sausages and dishes with pulses are probably now embedded in British cookery with credit to publishing Delia Smith's Frugal Food the first time around in the 1970s. Reissued in 2008, Frugal Food still includes “1976 was the year of the spade” and the original 170 recipes, home cooking from 1970s Britain, including bubble and squeak and many soups.
Readers of Frugal Food, as glossy in format as Gordon Ramsay’s Healthy Appetite, may consume the food styling yet none of the recipes are shown cooked in photographs. Witty writing by Delia Smith about the enjoyment in frugal food is convincing.
The Frugal Cook by Fiona Beckett
Award-winning food and drink writer Fiona Beckett has a significant publishing record of recipe books from Steak, Sausage and Mash to Matching Food and Wine & Cooking with Wine. Fiona’s latest book The Frugal Cook draws heavily on her blogspot writing “Buy cleverly, Waste less, Eat well” and has been well received by reviewers in many online food forums.
Straightforward presentation of cost-saving ideas and recipes with provenance in British cookery, such as inspiration from Jane Grigson’s Fish Cookery, are at the heart of The Frugal Cook. Unlike competing cookery books, including Delia’s Frugal Food, there are no food shots, yet Fiona Beckett’s The Frugal Cook, remains a smart read for intelligent frugal cookery.
Economical Cookery
An alternative to the buying a reissued 1970s cookery book or a brand new frugal offering, is to search out vintage cookery books from the 1960s and 1970s which will capture this frugal cookery spirit. One find in an antiques centre is Economical Cookery, published in the 1960s. Some of the recipes, including using chicken livers, kidney and oxtail, may not appeal to everyone's tastes and there are many gems in the vintage recipes.
Local Oxfam book shops may stock the original best selling Frugal Food by Delia Smith, published in 1976. Frugal cooks can weigh up buying a recycled book against a new purchase on frugal cookery.
Smith, Delia, Frugal Food London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2008 ISBN: 978-0340918562 £17.99
Beckett, Fiona, The Frugal Cook Bath: Absolute Press, 2008 ISBN: 978-1904573852 £14.99
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