Remaking Christine

Delia has a relatively new advertising gig with Waitrose, Britain’s most upscale grocery store chain. 

Under the multi-media scheme, she and fellow British celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal, creator of the three-Michelin starred Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, encourage people to cook at home mainly through TV ads, Internet streaming videos, and printed recipe cards that instruct people how to make them using ingredients found within the Waitrose aisles.

I picked up two of Delia’s recipes recently and pushed my trolley through the Waitrose in Eaton Village and picked up everything I needed to produce Half-time Saltimbocca Pork with Parma ham, sage and Marsala as a main course and English Summer Pudding as a dessert when our American friends were in town.

Both dishes were remarkably easy to assemble, a feature I am rapidly discovering is a Delia hallmark.

The “half-time” in the pork recipe’s title refers any cook’s ability to whip it up during the break between football halves and eat it atop dressed greens while watching the second 45 minutes of the match.

The summer pudding involves lining a bowl with crust-less white bread and filling it with berries (black and red raspberries, red and black currants, strawberries and blueberries) warmed with some sugar so that their juices flow bright red and infect the bread with their crimson as it sets overnight in the fridge.

One of these dishes was fabulously balanced between sugary and sour, soft and subtle.  But the other was far too sweet for my taste, and unfortunately, I’m not talking about the pudding. 

The pork medallions with sage and Parma ham was a fine combination – much like veal or chicken would be in any Italian saltimbocco preparation.  Delia has you make the accompanying sauce from just sweet Marsala and butter, as it is one standard preparation of Saltimbocca alla Romana.  So I guess I cannot wholly fault Delia for the overly sweet sauce to this otherwise salty dish. 

But for my taste, I think the next time I need a quick half-time meal, I’ll dilute the marsala with some broth, enrich it with some demi-glace or maybe tart it up a bit with some dry white wine or lemon juice.

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This entry was posted by Christine on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Delia Smith, Pork Marsala, Pork cutlet, Pork loin, Recipe, Saltimbocca, Sauces, Summer pudding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.