OFM Awards 2022: OFM Icon – Delia Smith
Delia Smith has sold over 21 million copies of her cookbooks and inspired generations of British home cooks. Her first name was included in the Collins English Dictionary in 2001, defined as "recipes in the style of the British food writer" and with the highlighted phrase "make a Delia". She was made a Companion of Honor to the late Queen for her services to the kitchen in 2017, shortly after she featured in Sir Peter Blake's collage of great British icons on the cover of the album Sgt Pepper the Beatles. /p>
Delia, now 81, left school at 16 without a diploma to train as a hairdresser. She got her first restaurant job in Paddington in 1962. In 1969 she was hired by the Daily Mirror as a food editor, and got her break from television in the 1970s with his own show Family Fare followed by cooking demonstrations on the children's program Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. Within a decade, she was a prime-time staple. His 1995 Winter Collection was the fifth bestseller of the 1990s and caused a national cranberry shortage. She retired from television in 2013 to focus her energies on Norwich City FC, which she co-owns and chairs with her husband, Michael Wynn-Jones, and her lifelong interest in meditation and spiritual growth reflected in his recent book, You Matter.
I guess you don't feel like an icon, but it must be gratifying to know that he there is a generation of young British chefs – Angela Hartnett, Tom Kerridge – who think of you in these terms? I don't know, but it is. It's quite different from what it was before. These days I help run the catering at the football club and one of the things I love about it is working a lot with young chefs. They keep me updated.
Are you more of a hands-on person? I'm not the kind of person who can do everything unless it's practical. It could be quite irritating for some people in the club. But that's how I'm made. It's too late to change.
You played a big part in at least one revolution in British food and cooking and lived it. When did it start for you? I remember a conversation I had in the 1960s. I was talking to a historian about food, and I said, "What annoys me is that everything is French, all the terms of kitchen. English cuisine does not come into play. And he said, "Well, that's because in France they had an industrial revolution, like we did. But then people went back to the land. In England, that never happened, so the art of passing cooking from mother to daughter was interrupted.The historian also said that in the 18th century Britain ate better than any other country, including France. therefore led you to research the 18th century in the books of the British Library. And you only had to watch the cartoons of the time to see that it was true.
You were growing up during post-war rationing. It seems that these years and the decades that followed have deepened this disconnect between the British and their kitchens? It was a pretty dark time, from the point of view of food. You had women's magazines showing people how to make things with baked beans and corn flakes s. What really changed were newspapers, like the Observer, with Jane Grigson at the time, writing in color magazines. But still, for most people, it was a matter of rubbing their noses against this distant food culture, without knowing the basics. I just felt like I'd like to do something about it.
Like everything in Britain it was pretty class based at the time , is not it ? Yes, it was definitely elitist. So, for me, it was about trying to bring people back to the drawing board. Because I thought if you knew the basics of something, you could skip to the important stuff.
Delia Smith has sold over 21 million copies of her cookbooks and inspired generations of British home cooks. Her first name was included in the Collins English Dictionary in 2001, defined as "recipes in the style of the British food writer" and with the highlighted phrase "make a Delia". She was made a Companion of Honor to the late Queen for her services to the kitchen in 2017, shortly after she featured in Sir Peter Blake's collage of great British icons on the cover of the album Sgt Pepper the Beatles. /p>
Delia, now 81, left school at 16 without a diploma to train as a hairdresser. She got her first restaurant job in Paddington in 1962. In 1969 she was hired by the Daily Mirror as a food editor, and got her break from television in the 1970s with his own show Family Fare followed by cooking demonstrations on the children's program Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. Within a decade, she was a prime-time staple. His 1995 Winter Collection was the fifth bestseller of the 1990s and caused a national cranberry shortage. She retired from television in 2013 to focus her energies on Norwich City FC, which she co-owns and chairs with her husband, Michael Wynn-Jones, and her lifelong interest in meditation and spiritual growth reflected in his recent book, You Matter.
I guess you don't feel like an icon, but it must be gratifying to know that he there is a generation of young British chefs – Angela Hartnett, Tom Kerridge – who think of you in these terms? I don't know, but it is. It's quite different from what it was before. These days I help run the catering at the football club and one of the things I love about it is working a lot with young chefs. They keep me updated.
Are you more of a hands-on person? I'm not the kind of person who can do everything unless it's practical. It could be quite irritating for some people in the club. But that's how I'm made. It's too late to change.
You played a big part in at least one revolution in British food and cooking and lived it. When did it start for you? I remember a conversation I had in the 1960s. I was talking to a historian about food, and I said, "What annoys me is that everything is French, all the terms of kitchen. English cuisine does not come into play. And he said, "Well, that's because in France they had an industrial revolution, like we did. But then people went back to the land. In England, that never happened, so the art of passing cooking from mother to daughter was interrupted.The historian also said that in the 18th century Britain ate better than any other country, including France. therefore led you to research the 18th century in the books of the British Library. And you only had to watch the cartoons of the time to see that it was true.
You were growing up during post-war rationing. It seems that these years and the decades that followed have deepened this disconnect between the British and their kitchens? It was a pretty dark time, from the point of view of food. You had women's magazines showing people how to make things with baked beans and corn flakes s. What really changed were newspapers, like the Observer, with Jane Grigson at the time, writing in color magazines. But still, for most people, it was a matter of rubbing their noses against this distant food culture, without knowing the basics. I just felt like I'd like to do something about it.
Like everything in Britain it was pretty class based at the time , is not it ? Yes, it was definitely elitist. So, for me, it was about trying to bring people back to the drawing board. Because I thought if you knew the basics of something, you could skip to the important stuff.
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