Mary Berry

Who can resist a person with a name like Mary Berry?  We were introduced to her on the Great British Baking Show and have become quite fond of her.  She reminds me very much of Julie Andrews and is a refreshing contrast to Paul Hollywood.

Mary Berry and her hunk of lamb on the right

On YouTube, you can find 1970s cooking programs from Thames TV with a much younger Mary Berry who doesn't sound at all like the current one as she hurriedly chatters away showing the program host how to make Irish Stew.  (She shows how to take the fillett off the scrag end of the lamb's neck and shoulder "for them what doesn't like bones".)  Now after 40 plus years of practice, she has slowed her speech to a confident and comfortable drawl -- although I suppose drawl isn't quite the correct term to use with the English -- and she talks to the audience with a twinkle in her eye and not to her hunk of lamb.  The 1970s programs emphasize how to keep food costs low.  They mention that making your own steak and kidney pie is half the price of buying one.  Today the Great British Baking Show is profligate in its use of expensive ingredients.  We live in a very different time.

In any case, here are a few of the retro recipes, all I believe from Mary's Good Afternoon cookbook emphasizing the use of cheaper cuts of meat and cooking from scratch to save money, although she didn't come from a poor family.

1. Slade Pie.  This is a large rectangular Cornish pasty named after a woman she knew who made it.  The crust is half lard and half margarine.
2. How to Make Homemade Marmalade.  Mary uses Seville oranges and one pound jam jars with snap-on plastic lids.
3. Cooking with Lamb.  The lamb is from New Zealand and she stuffs a boned shoulder with bread crumbs, apricots, onion and parsley.  She'd serve it with layered potatoes and onions that she cooks in the oven along with the roast "to save a bit of fuel."  And she does a lamb breast with curry, saving the "free" drippings to fry the onions.

As a comparison, here are some of Mary's recent TV programs.

1. Fish pie with soufflé topping - Mary Berry's Absolute Christmas Favourites: Episode 1 - BBC Two.  Mary uses smoked and fresh haddock along with leeks and dill in a cream sauce with plenty of pepper.  She tops it with hardboiled eggs and a "soufflé of bread cubes and parmesan cheese.  This could be one of our seven fishes!
   
2. Mary Berry's Foolproof Cooking Episode 5.  Mary cooks home made tomato soup and bacon/tomato/broccoli pasta with pesto.  She still believes in "waste not, want not" and chops up the broccoli stem.  Then she makes a salmon, fennel and pea risotto and finally a passion fruit "pud".  I'd like to try the last one if only I could find passion fruit.
   

I might have to go back to the 1970s videos to get some real old-fashioned British recipes.  These days even the English have more sophisticated tastes.

You can learn more about Mary's ancestry (her great great grandfather was a baker) in Who Do You Think You Are: Mary Berry.