Delia Smith looks at the decade that

started with a bang and ended in a crunch

The series celebrating Delia Smith’s inspirational cookery reaches its last episode, the Noughties, and looks at the decade that started with a bang and ended in a crunch. Delia goes back to basics with How To Cook, and later gets a little naughty herself with How To Cheat.

She takes tea with Stephen Fry and puts the record straight on that famous “Let’s be ‘avin ya” moment at a football match.

She also revisits some of her favourite recipes from the decade – fast roast chicken and shami kebabs – and celebrates her all-time favourite fast food, the omelette.

With contributions from Victoria Wood, Sir Terry Wogan, Fay Ripley and Richard Curtis, this final episode of Delia Through The Decades looks back at how a girl who left school with no qualifications went on to become the nation’s favourite cook.

Delia Smith revisits three of her favourite recipes from the Nineties as the series celebrating her inspirational cooking continues. The Nineties was the decade when Girl Power bounced in, the Iron Lady was bounced out and “Cool Britannia” ruled the airwaves. Baywatch surfed the beach and the world started to surf the net.

During this decade, Delia turned her attentions to Christmas with a TV series and cooking bible that guided home cooks through the challenges of the festive season. Delia followed up with summer and winter collections and tonight’s programme features three of her favourites from that time – chicken basque, Piedmont peppers and chocolate bread and butter pudding.

The Nineties was also the decade of the “Delia effect”, when the merest hint of a new ingredient, from cranberries and limes to coriander and liquid glucose, caused mayhem in supermarkets. The decade also saw a TV phenomenon that Delia was very much a key part of – the rise of the cookery show. There are contributions in this episode from Rick Stein and Gary Rhodes, plus Delia fan Richard Curtis who, with his wife Emma Freud, persuaded her to take a starring role in Comic Relief.

Nearing the end of the Nineties, Delia launched her How To Cook mission, which is covered in next week’s programme as the focus turns to the Noughties.

Delia Smith goes back to the Seventies in tonight’s programme

The Seventies was a time of power cuts, picket lines, punks … and pate! And it was the decade when Delia Smith first came to the nation’s attention.

Delia started her first “proper job” as a cookery writer for the Mirror Magazine where she met her future husband, Michael. When the magazine folded, Delia needed a new job and bravely took on the challenge of writing and devising six recipes a week for the London Evening Standard, drawing on her resources to come up with new ideas, often at the last minute.

In tonight’s programme, Delia trusts her initiative once more to revisit a perennial favourite using the seasonal vegetables in her kitchen garden – a delicious red onion and parmesan salad with sage.

In 1973, Delia’s friend and TV producer Frances Whitaker suggested her to the BBC, which was looking for a new face following years of Fanny Cradock. Before she knew it, Delia was given her own series, Family Fare. Frances and Delia go back to the old studio where they used to broadcast and relive the nerves and near misses of those one-take episodes.

Delia and her mother re-watch the very first episode of Family Fare and Delia cooks one of her favourite candlelight dinner dishes from that series – pork chops braised with wild mushrooms. Originally, she made it with cream and button mushrooms but, in tonight’s programme, she updates it with crème fraiche and porcini.

During the Seventies, Delia also published four books. She has selected her personal favourite from that time – a coffee and walnut cake – to bake again.

There is also a contribution tonight from David Attenborough, who helped Delia get her next project on to the BBC – Delia Smith’s Cookery Course.

Delia Smith truly is a national treasure. In a career spanning five decades, she has ruled the roast as the queen of home cooking. This new series celebrates Delia’s incredible career and the many ways in which she has shaped both what people eat and how they cook it. Each episode is packed with fantastic archive footage, as Delia revisits her favourite recipes from each decade and recreates some with a contemporary twist.

The opening programme goes back to the roots of Delia’s mission to revive good old homely cooking. Her passion stemmed from watching her mother and grandmother concoct beautiful dishes from home-grown ingredients during the war.

Delia revisits the London restaurant – then called The Singing Chef – in which she worked as a waitress during the Swinging Sixties and whose wonderful chef was an early inspiration. She recreates roast duck in cherry sauce, a dish she cooked many times while working there.

Delia describes her epiphany as she researched 17th- and 18th-century recipe books in the reading rooms of the British Museum and recreates one of the first recipes she tried out from those old books, an 18th-century apple flan. This research inspired her belief that British cookery could be brought back to life if only someone would take up the challenge to popularise it. In homage to the Sixties and the trend for flambéing food, Delia also cooks up a soufflé omelette citron flambé.

During the Sixties, Delia worked as a food stylist in the advertising industry. She had her own slice of music history handed to her on a plate when, in 1969, she was asked to create a “gaudy cake” for the cover of The Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed. This led to a meeting with a literary agent who became a lifelong friend and has since played a huge part in her remarkable literary and television career.

Next week’s episode heads back to the Seventies, when Delia first arrived on Britain’s television screens.