Nigella Lawson is one of those people you just like watching on TV. She could be making a tuna noodle casserole with Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, but the way her satiny voice describes food and ingredients, you'd think she was making the most delicious dinner ever created. I find myself frequently hypnotized by her way with words and she never fails to make cooking feel like a sensual experience.
Part cookbook, part dissertation to the merits of understanding food, Nigella wins you over in the very first paragraph:
"Cooking is not about just joining the dots, following one recipe slavishly and then moving on to the next. It's about developing and understanding of food, a sense of assurance in the kitchen, about the simple desire to make yourself something to eat. And in cooking, as in writing, you must please yourself to please others."
I did not find a vast array of recipes that I will use without fail in this book. What I did find was the assurance that it's OK to trust your instincts in the kitchen and that a recipe doesn't have to be followed to the letter. As time goes by, I often find myself following recipes less and less. How to Eat gave me a new take on things. As Nigella says in the preface, "You need to acquire your own sense of what food is about rather than just a vast collection of recipes."
How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food by Nigella Lawson
First Published: 1999 in Great Britain (I read the American version published in 2007)
Pages: 474
Genre: Cookery
Audience: Adult
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