In an age when everyone can literally shop around the world for ingredients at supermarkets, where they can buy instant meals or their salads and vegetables ready prepared, when every other shop in the high street is a take-away or fast food outlet. Delia's How to Cook returns to the roots of cooking to rediscover the joys and simple pleasures of food. Delia's How To Cook is based on respect for ingredients and the sad fact that many people have never been taught how to deal with them. In this the first of two volumes, Delia starts at the very beginning, explaining in detail the staple ingredients of all cooking, eggs, flour, potatoes, rice and pasta. Here, with her typically friendly and accessible approach, she guides beginners through many of the basic techniques that will serve them for a lifetime of cooking, right from boiling and poaching an egg, through bread and pastry making, to sauces and cooking all kinds of rice perfectly every time. For those who have mastered the techniques - and for those who are already accomplished cooks - How to Cook provides a sparkling collection of recipes, incorporating new ideas such as fat-free white sauces, chips you don't have to fry and souffls that don't collapse, all presented in Delia's inimitable style that inspires total confidence and removes fear from cooking.