Celebrity interview - Delia Smith

Britain's favourite cook Delia Smith explains why she's decided to return to the limelight with her new book How To Cheat At Cooking, and a new TV show. She reveals some of her secret kitchen shortcuts and why she hasn't jumped on the organic bandwagon. By Hannah Stephenson

She is probably the most reliable cook in the UK, guiding many people for more than 35 years in all things culinary, taking us through every stage in sensible, steady, measured tones. At dinner parties, guests have inquired "Is it Delia?" when served some delicious dish. The word Delia appears in the Collins English Dictionary, defined as any basic British dish or recipe devoid of frills. Good food is synonymous with her name.

While other TV chefs have criticised Ms Smith over the years - Antony Worrall Thompson dubbed her the Volvo of cooking, reliable but dull, while Gary Rhodes accused her of insulting the intelligence of viewers when she demonstrated how to boil an egg - she has made more money and enjoyed more success than any of them.

So she must surely be prepared for some sniping from food critics who look at her new book, How To Cheat At Cooking, her first in five years.

For someone whose whole ethos has been about real food and cooking properly, it seems to go slightly against the grain. However, she merely says: "I've always had flak from food snobs. What's new?"

The book, a completely updated version of her first cookery book, How To Cheat At Cooking, published in 1971, features new shortcut ingredients including frozen mashed potato and other freeze-blasted veg, tubs of cheese sauce plus branded store-cupboard staples such as Heinz tomato frito.

Meeting Delia today, she's dressed simply in black V-neck sweater and jeans, with an eye-catching black and white spotted scarf around her neck. She looks much the same as she did in her last How To Cook TV series in 2002 - and nowhere near her 66 years.

The new book is aimed at two types: busy people and people who are afraid of cooking. It won't gain you Michelin stars, she agrees, but it will provide tasty food in minutes.

Looking through the book, I know it's going to be my "bible". Mushroom risotto in four minutes? And no endlessly standing over the stove stirring? Magic.

Stores must be bracing themselves for the "Delia effect" - historically, sales of ingredients she has mentioned on her shows have soared, including cranberries and sea salt.

"The big risk is will they stock the things I have in the book?" she muses. "To put something on the shelf you've got to take something off."

The book was followed by a BBC series in March, simply called Delia, which shows how to make shortcuts in cooking as well as glimpses of her life outside the kitchen.

"It was quite difficult because I don't do very much," she says. "My life isn't full of incidents. They filmed me going to football, going to Mass and going to see friends."

The series comes six years after she announced she was retiring from TV and went on to devote more time to her beloved Norwich City Football Club. She and her husband, Michael Wynn-Jones, are joint majority shareholders and Delia has developed the restaurant and catering side of the club.

When she quit TV, she said: "Now people want to be entertained, whereas I was trying to teach how to cook, that's where it's different."

So, why has she returned? "I felt six years ago that I hadn't got anything else to say. There was a whole new generation coming along and a younger generation of cooks to teach them while I was enjoying helping to run the catering in the football club."

But after stepping back from TV, she found a gap in the market.

"We have evolved into a new lifestyle. Mothers and fathers go out to work, people lead quite full and busy lives. If I wanted to invite people for supper, it would mean a day off work, doing the shopping and preparation and I would find it quite hard. Takeaways and ready meals are expensive. Why not try and find an easier way?

"I started by collecting shortcut recipes for a book and then I got excited about it and felt, 'this really is something new'. I felt it should be television as well because the power of television communicates the subject more quickly and instantly than you can with words."

Today, she's careful what she says when asked her views on the current batch of TV chefs.

"That's the question I'm told never to answer, but I absolutely adore Jamie Oliver because I think he's an outstanding young man. I don't cook any other people's recipes now because I feel I should be trying to do something new. But I love Nigel Slater.

"When Gordon Ramsay does a cookery demonstration on his show it's so funny - he just goes "In, frying pan, oil, sizzle, done". It's great and it's clever. People who watch entertainment are still learning about food."

To ensure she can be fit enough to take on big new projects, she has a personal trainer three days a week who fast-walks Delia through the meadow at the back of her garden near Stowmarket, Suffolk, as well as exercising with weights.

She regularly gives her husband sea bass or wild salmon from the freezer, cooked from frozen, with frozen veg which she says are nutritionally intact and better than veg you've left in your fridge for the last few days.

But Delia hasn't jumped on the organic bandwagon. If the non-organic carrots look better than the organic ones next to them, she'll go for the non-organic variety.

"I'm a cook. I only think cooking. I try to buy British, although it's not always possible."

Would she buy non-free range chicken?

"In my book, I've recommended free range chicken. It's about flavour. I believe in the way things are reared, that they are going to have a better flavour, but I also understand that we still have child poverty in this country.

"Don't ask me, I'm not an expert on these things, I'm just a cook. But I would personally advocate that you only buy free range chicken."

Delia was born in Woking, Surrey and left school without a single O level. She had a variety of jobs before starting work at a tiny restaurant in Paddington, London, firstly as a washer-upper and later helping with the cooking, but she is largely self-taught.

She was later taken on as the cookery writer for the Daily Mirror's magazine, where she met her future husband, deputy editor Michael Wynn Jones. The job was a springboard to further columns and a TV career.

A devout Catholic, Delia attends Mass every day and has 45 minutes of absolute silence in the morning and evening, which she finds therapeutic.

Her passion is still very much with the football club - another restaurant called Yellows has been opened and she's now doing How To Cheat dinners for guests at Norwich, featuring supper, a signed book and a Q&A session.

The club is a place where she can really let her hair down. Chants of "There's only one Gordon Ramsay" from opposing fans don't faze her.

"When we played Chelsea in the Premiership, our lot were singing, 'We've got a super cook, you've got a Russian crook.' Football is a wonderful thing for society."