Delia's Complete How To Cook: Both a guide for beginners and a tried & tested recipe collection for life

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Delia fulfilled a long-term dream in March 2001 to be directly in touch with her readers when Delia Online was launched. An archive of over 1400 recipes, Cookery School videos, how to guides, bakeware and equipment, ingredient information, a Q & A column and regular features on what is in season and where to find the very best products. Delia offers an evolving online archive of over 45 years’ work. Grimmer, Dan (11 August 2011). "Delia Smith steps down from Norwich City catering role". Eastern Daily Press . Retrieved 15 December 2017. The end result was a bit of a mixed bag…but I probably could have guessed that might be the case. With the ten recipes tried, only two have the potential for me to keep or make again. In 2012 Smith was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of the last six decades. [21] Delia received the Guild of Food Writers prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at its 25th Awards Ceremony in June 2023. The award was given in recognition of her imagination and creativity, her dedication to good, honest food and her uncomprimising attention to detail.

Davies, Caroline (2 April 2016). "New faces on Sgt Pepper album cover for artist Peter Blake's 80th birthday". The Guardian.In its exuberance and sincerity, You Matter is emphatically the work of an autodidact, and perhaps this is one way in which it connects, as unlikely as this sounds, to the rest of her career. She left her school in Bexleyheath at 16, and went to work first as a hairdresser. But having grown interested in cooking, at 21 she started again, this time as a dishwasher in a small restaurant in Paddington, a role that gave her the opportunity to learn on the job (eventually, she graduated to waitressing, and thence to the kitchen). Meanwhile, she spent her free time devouring cookbooks in the reading room at the British Museum, trying out the recipes she found on the family from whom she rented a room. In 1969, she was taken on by the Daily Mirror’s magazine, which is where she met Michael; the first thing she wrote was a recipe for kipper paté. From there, she moved to the Evening Standard and into television (her first appearances were on the BBC’s Look East). Again, she learned as she went along. “That was the best job,” she says, of the Standard. “I used to get a lot of letters, and I learned how to write recipes from those. Someone once asked: ‘You say the tomatoes must be peeled, but how?’ From that moment, I never wrote a recipe without explaining every part of the process.” Smith became a recognisable figure amongst young people in the 1970s and early 1980s when she was an occasional guest on the BBC's Saturday morning children's programme Multicoloured Swap Shop, giving basic cooking demonstrations. In 1996, Smith was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Nottingham, a fellowship from St Mary's University College (a college of the University of Surrey) and a Fellowship from the Royal Television Society. In 1999 she received an honorary degree from the University of East Anglia and in 2000, a fellowship from Liverpool John Moores University. In February 2013 she announced that she had retired from television cookery programmes, and would concentrate on offering her recipes online. [13] The "Delia effect" In January 2010, the BBC aired 5 x ½ hour programmes, Delia Through the Decades, exploring her 40 career and the way she has affected the nation’s eating habits.

In 1996 Delia was awarded an Honorary degree by Nottingham University, a Fellowship from St Mary’s College (a college of the University of Surrey). The same year she entered the Royal Television Society Hall of Fame. In 1999 she received an Honorary degree from the University of East Anglia and in 2000, a Fellowship from John Moores University in Liverpool. In 2013 Delia was presented with a BAFTA Special Award in honour of her outstanding contribution to television cookery and services to broadcasting. DELIA’S HOW TO CHEAT AT COOKING was published in Spring 2008 by Ebury Press and became the fastest selling title in Random House’s history. Six related programmes appeared on BBC2. Smith was baptised in the Church of England, and attended a Methodist Sunday School, a Congregationalist Brownie group and later a Church of England youth group. At the age of twenty-two, she converted to Catholicism. Her first two short religious books, A Feast for Lent (1983) and A Feast for Advent (1983), are readings and reflections for these seasons. In 1988, she wrote a longer book on prayer, A Journey into God. Smith and her husband, Michael Wynn-Jones, presenting Norwich City player Emiliano Buendía with the club’s player of the season trophy, 2021. Photograph: Stephen Pond/Getty Images DELIA’S HAPPY CHRISTMAS, was published by Ebury Press (October 2009). She made a 1 hour Christmas special capturing an audience of nearly 4 million viewers.

Ingredients

Delia returned to television in 1990, this time to help us through the daunting task of cooking for Christmas. The book of the series, DELIA SMITH'S CHRISTMAS has sold over 1,500,000 copies. In 1985 Delia wrote a book which her readers had been requesting for some time - a collection of recipes for the single person entitled ONE IS FUN! This became a BBC Pebble Mill television series, repeated six years later in 1991, and the book has sold over 650,000 copies. It has been translated into German, Swedish and Italian. In February 2005, Smith attracted attention during the half-time break of a home match against Manchester City. At the time Norwich were fighting an ultimately unsuccessful battle against relegation from the Premier League, and to rally the crowd, Smith grabbed the microphone from the club announcer on the pitch and said: "A message for the best football supporters in the world: we need a 12th man here. Where are you? Where are you? Let's be 'avin' you! Come on!" Norwich lost the match 3–2. [16] Smith denied suggestions in the media that she had been drunk while delivering the speech though she did concede that "maybe in the heat of the moment I didn't choose the best words". [17] [18] Wallop, Harry (3 March 2010). "Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal to star in Waitrose ads". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 7 March 2010.