Delia Smith was born in
Surrey,
England in 1941 and was brought up in
Kent. When she was 16 she
dropped out of
school without any
qualifications and went through a few
jobs before washing up at a restaurant. Following her
boyfriend's constant talk of his
ex-girlfriends's skills in the
kitchen she started
learning to cook.
As everyone does, she made
mistakes in the kitchen. One of them being the Great
Rice Pudding Disaster where she
forgot to add an
ingredient -
sugar
Now Delia Smith is the author of quite a few
cookbooks (her first,
How to Cheat at Cooking, was published in 1973), a
columnist (
Sunday Mirror (1969) and the
Evening Standard (1972-84)) and has her own
cookery shows. She places quite a bit of
importance on
eggs -
sizes,
freshness and cooking them. She also focuses on the basics -
equipment,
methods and
ingredients. She's been cooking for over 40 years. Apart from being a
cook, she is also a big
football fan. She is a
director of the
Norwich City FC.
In my
house her
Complete Cookery Course was (and still is!) something of a
Bible for when one was wondering about how to make something or for
basic information about
ingredients or
conversion between
metric and
imperial systems. From what I can gather online, her word goes for most of
Britain -
according to Biography.Com the
noun and
adjective "
Delia" was added to the
2001 edition of the
Collins English Dictionary because it had passed into
everyday useage.
See Also:
http://www.deliaonline.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/celebritychefs/smith.shtml
http://www.biography.com/search/article.jsp?aid=9486613&search=