Rating: 
Summary: A cookbook that doesn't belong just in the kitchen
Review: I have a special shelf for cookbooks in my living room...right next to the kitchen, as should be. For some reason, "How to eat" by Nigella Lawson, has been lying around the floor in my bedroom, or on the sofa in the living room, or wherever else apart from the kitchen, for the last couple of years since I bought it. What I'm trying to say is that this book is not just a simple cookbook, but more a description of the pleasure of good eating, & of preparing good food for yourself & for people you love.On the other hand, the actual recipes (at least the ones I've tried so far, which are quite a few) seem to work, even from the first time you try them. I mention this because I've heard & read all sorts of comments about whether N.Lawson's recipes work or not. Maybe this is because Nigella Lawson has become a celebrity in England--imagine: she writes well, cooks well, & to top all that, she's beautiful too! How can you beat that? This is why 2 camps seem to have emerged--a "pro-Nigella" camp & an "anti-Nigella" camp!! This is all ridiculous, of course. The point is that Nigella Lawson has written, at least in my opinion, one of the best cookbooks of recent years. Down to earth, with good & long-winded explanations, written in a direct, friendly style, with such love for good food that even reading the book makes you want to rush to the kitchen & start creating a feast. "How to eat" is about comfort-eating at its best, & for me at least, it serves as comfort-reading too...
Rating:
Summary: if I had to choose one cookbook, this would be it
Review: I love to cook, consider myself somewhat skilled at it, and have received a slew of cookbooks over the years. This is the only one I use on a regular basis, as Nigella is a great and entertaining writer, and her recipes are interesting and easy to follow. What makes this cookbook different from the myriad of others out there is that instead of giving you a strict set of directions to follow (reducing cooking to chemistry class), she encourages cooking to your own taste, purchasing the best ingredients, and developing technique. She's actually quite funny and engaging, and I read the whole book cover to cover when I first got it. Her approach makes "How To Eat" much more valuable to an experienced cook or even someone learning to than other books, as it makes you a better cook. I was honestly a horrible baker until I tried out some of her recipes; they've all turned out great and were remarkably easy. Ms. Lawson may be trendy and famous now, but it is actually warranted, and her show and cookbooks are far more useful and entertaining than those by various other celebrity chefs out there.
Rating:
Summary: Both fun to read and cook from
Review: An excellent cookbook - but to use the word "cookbook" to describe it is almost an injustice because it is so much more. This is an exploration of food and the pleasures of both preparing food and eating it. This is more a novel with intricate plot twists than a boring cookbook with stodgy lists of recipes and ingredients. Indeed, the best thing about this book is the way you can pick it up and just read it - just like your favorite novel. The author is cheeky and delightful and my favorite part is her treatise on low fat cooking - how it is (at least for many people, me included) a reflection of vanity. The recipes are simple to follow and the writing that accompanies the recipes inspires confidence and joy as well as the compelling urge to prepare what she is writing about right then and there, no matter what time it is. The desserts are killer - the sticky chocolate pudding cake is easy to prepare and the results are fantastic - both gooey and rich and I am ashamed to say that I ate enough of it for at least three people. But in all honesty, I think that the author would approve of my gluttony. I tried the golden vegetable root stew and although apprehensive when first preparing it, I served it to my friends and it was a hit, it tasted exotic and complex. However, I was perplexed as to why she added zucchini to the recipe since the zucchini had turned to an urecognizable sickly yellow mush by the time the other vegetables were tender. But it did give the stew a nice (although unintended) thickness. The chocolate raspberry cake was also quite good although not nearly sweet enough for my tastes (but then again, I love cavity-inducing sweetness). An excellent book and I recommend it for anyone who loves to eat and also for people who don't because you will learn to love to eat once you are done reading it.
Rating: 
Summary: Not terribly useful
Review: I have noticed that negative book reviews on amazon seldom get "helpful" ratings. I suspect that open hostility against personable folks is not really a good way to get a point across. So I have re-written this review to be less hostile and more educational. Anyway... I cook three to four times a week. Most of what I cook is from scratch. I bought this cookbook based on the ratings it received on Amazon. I generally like reading about cooking as much as cooking. Several pages into this book I began to realize that I had made a purchasing mistake. My biggest irritation is that this book is organized into "meals" based on occasions/number of guests. For example "Spring Lunch to Lift the Spirits for 6" or "White Trash Lunch for 6" which I find particularly offensive when coming from someone English. I like cookbooks that offer full meal sugesstions in the back of the book and allow me to peruse based on the type of recipe (either by main ingeredient or by course). This book does have some good recipes but they are layered in between some equally ghastly ones as the British have done terrible things with the concept of Curry - I suggest Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks when cooking Indian. OK, I am going to get mean now so understand that the reason for this meanness is that I bought an expensive cookbook and I am not in a financial position to make this kind of mistake very often. This book is rife with mistakes that only someone who spends very little time in a home kitchen could make. The first thing I noticed was her suggestion that fresh Lovage, an herb, should be substituted for celery. Have you ever found Lovage in the grocery store? Another suggestion is for putting just about everything in the freezer including unused egg whites. Egg whites will survive the freezer but they will pick up any freezer tastes, especially if you are storing stock and meat. The professional critic whose review appears up above is flat wrong about the value of recipes and concise instructions. Ms. Lawson actually suggests that when having guests you should cook ahead so that if it flops you can throw it out and start over! Finally, as if I needed to be more hostile, the commentary in this book is pretentious and difficult with constant blundering attempts at sexual innuendo, for example, "... or maple sugar for the most fabulous, smoky gleaming meringue of all time, the color of oyster satin underwear". In reference to above frozen egg whites, she complains that her freezer is beginning to look like a "sperm bank". One reviewer said that this book sits on a shelf in his living room. A perfect place for this book even though there is not one illistration in the book. For real recipes and methods I recommend "The New Joy of Cooking" with its organized and uncluttered structure as well as great depth. I doubt that there is one technique of Ms. Lawson's that you will not find covered thoroughly in the Joy and that only exhausts 1% of the Joy's depth. Leave the underwear in the drawer and the cookbook in the kitchen.
Rating:
Summary: Making food sensual and fun
Review: I resisted buying any of Nigella Lawson's books until recently, simply because she's gotten so much attention I guess. And that unblinking on-camera stare is rather unnerving. I finally broke down and bought this one after reading a newspaper interview she did. I'm very glad I did.
The simple reason why she has become such a smash hit, besides her beauty and unconscious-or-not flirtiness on camera, is that she is a wonderful writer. This is one of my favorite books to simply curl up with and read when I'm feeling slightly blue around the edges. In that kind of mood, the recipes are almost secondary. She has a marvelous way of describing the tastes and smells and emotions invoked by food - the likening of the color of macaroons to 'oyster silk underwear' that someone else here objected to is a case in point. It precisely invokes the silky, refined texture as well as the color.
Part of the reason I like this book so much is that she eats the way - for sensual enjoyment. (And, like her I try to incorporate some 'temple food' type days of abstination to keep the weight under reasonable control.) Some people simply eat for the sake of sustenance, or to maintain (fearfully, more often than not) a precarious 'healthy balance'. Those are not very fun ways to face food, and certainly not Ms. Lawson's way. She is certainly not a food snob either - even beyond the infamous Ham in Coca-cola.
About the recipes: keep in mind that this book was originally published in the UK, so some ingredients, or the availability thereof, differ in North America (her editors could possibly have done a better job on that front). I'm used this this type of situation since I live in Switzerland, where I constantly have to make minor regional adjustments to recipes published elsewhere (we don't have 'all-purpose flour' or 'self-raising-flour' or 'baking soda' or 'corn syrup' here, but it's easy to substitute). I can't remember how many recipes I've tried, but all have turned out well. I've used her How To Be A Domestic Goddess book more for cooking since I tend to follow recipes more for baking rather than 'regular' cooking.
One of my favorite recipes in How To Eat is the extremely simple yet absolutely delicious lemon linguine. It uses so few ingredients, and is assembled within seconds after the pasta is cooked, and explodes with flavor in your mouth. To me, it sort of epitomises the best of Nigella-style food.
Rating:
Summary: A Rare Book on Strategies and Great Common Sense
Review: Nigella Lawson outlines life strategies for buying, preparing, and eating food in 'How to Eat The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food'. She thereby does something rare and valuable for younger people starting out on life on their own or with new partners. She also warms the hearts of us old geezers who run through hunderds of books of recipes, techniques, and food characteristics, with little advice on how to use all this stuff. The closest I have seen in recent books to what Ms. Lawson does so well is in the opening chapter of Alton Brown's book on Kitchen Tools where he describes how to pare down you collection of tools to just those you really need and use. Ms. Lawson goes much deeper into uncharted territory. In comparing culinary wisdom to medical expertise, I would describe people such as Mario Batali and Nobu Matsuhisa as great specialists and Martha Stewart and Ina Garten as talented general practicioners who can give excellent diagnoses for the best pie crust or the perfect roasted turkey, but they simply don't touch the question of why do I want to make a pie crust, when, and how often. In this simile, Nigella is the holistic practicioner who treats the whole body. One of her first principles is the position that one should be much more concerned with repeating the basics and thereby doing them very well, to the point where your confidence with the techniques makes them second nature. The closest I have ever come to seeing this advice elsewhere is when Daniel Boulud says that the difference between a professional chef and the home chef (or the culinary journalist for that matter) is that the professional has prepared dishes thousands of times over and in that way has acquired a knowledge of their techniques and materials which a nonprofessional cannot match. I can add this to the number of lessons one can learn from professional chefs. I am in almost total agreement with practically every general strategy Ms. Lawson discusses. I sympathize totally with her devaluing the very tiring mantra of always cooking what is best and what is in season. This is fine if you live in Apulia or Napa Valley, but it is a bit rough on the old green veggie regimen if you live in London or Philadelphia. The failure to fully develop this theme in Ms. Lawson's later volume 'Forever Summer' and other problems with that volume lead me directly to this book, as I was surprised at the other book's deficiencies, given Ms. Lawson's reputation and attention in the popular media. Ms. Lawson also writes as part of the community of culinary writers and not as if she is coming up with all sorts of good stuff out of her own ingenuity. Other writers state that they are building on other work, but are shy about citing specific references. Nigella is proud of her mentors, as well she should be, since they include people like Elizabeth David, Claudia Roden, and Marcella Hazan. Oddly, this is not to say Ms. Lawson's works are directed to the same end as the books of these notables. In a sense, she is taking the basic research of the regional specialists and translating it into advice for the rest of us. The book is divided into eight (8) rather unconventional chapter subjects, each one discoursing on a particular food strategy or principle. The chapters are: BASICS, ETC. develops the principle cited above that it is a good thing to prepare the same recipes often. Nigella here offers her candidates for some of the most important recipes for everyday use.
COOKING IN ADVANCE is her solution to the anxieties of cooking for entertaining. While others have mined this principle broadly, Lawson goes deeper into the issues of cooking without stress so you can make and recover from mistakes to gain your own style.
ONE AND TWO addresses the issues of cooking for others and revisits the 'tyranny of the recipe' and the 'absence of slowly acquired experience on the other'.
WEEKEND LUNCH offers this venue as a less stressful occasion for entertaining than the dinner party.
DINNER addresses the dreaded full court dinner party and weans us away from a type of restaurant dish which requires deft saute action in the kitchen while your guests are at the dining table.
LOW FAT is Ms. Lawson's take on weight maintenance and reduction. I am pleased to see that she focuses on the simplest fact that weight change equals food in minus calories consumed by activity.
FEEDING BABIES AND SMALL CHILDREN is a refreshing topic. It is a great pleasure to see this subject addressed by a main stream author and not just in a speciality title. I have always puzzled over the tyrrany of kids culinary proclivities and why adults so willingly caved into them. Ms. Lawson offers some advice on the matter. This is a very good book and I now know how Ms. Lawson has earned her good name in the culinary writing business. This doesn't mean I will stop referring to my Eric Rippert or even my Jamie Oliver, as these people are the really creative culinary figures from which Ms. Lawson and the rest of us will borrow, but I will look on their offerings in a new light. I highly recommend this book and that you read it from cover to cover, even the rug rat material. You never can tell.
Rating:
Summary: My number one all-time cookbook
Review: I bought this several years ago - before the current Nigella "it girl" phase (which I find more than vaguely annoying), and this cookbook gets far more use than anything else I own. This remains true despite the fact that I a) don't eat a lot of red meat and b) don't go in for rich desserts - both of which abound in her books. However, her writing is so compelling, and her recipes are so clear and inevitably successful that cooking one of her recipes is more like a warm chat with an old friend than effortful kitchen work. The measurements are for the most part forgiving, her style relaxed, and the focus of the book truly is on "how to eat" - not "how to make high-style restaurant food". Winners: spiced prunes with barbados cream; Anna's chickpea and pasta soup; beef braised in beer; cod with parma ham over lentils; pasta carbonara; cinnamon-hot rack of lamb... All of these I make on a regular basis, and they always turn out amazingly well. Plus, it's a great read. What more could you want!
Rating:
Summary: A cookbook that doesn't belong just in the kitchen
Review: I have a special shelf for cookbooks in my living room...right next to the kitchen, as should be. For some reason, "How to eat" by Nigella Lawson, has been lying around the floor in my bedroom, or on the sofa in the living room, or wherever else apart from the kitchen, for the last couple of years since I bought it. What I'm trying to say is that this book is not just a simple cookbook, but more a description of the pleasure of good eating, & of preparing good food for yourself & for people you love. On the other hand, the actual recipes (at least the ones I've tried so far, which are quite a few) seem to work, even from the first time you try them. I mention this because I've heard & read all sorts of comments about whether N.Lawson's recipes work or not. Maybe this is because Nigella Lawson has become a celebrity in England--imagine: she writes well, cooks well, & to top all that, she's beautiful too! How can you beat that? This is why 2 camps seem to have emerged--a "pro-Nigella" camp & an "anti-Nigella" camp!! This is all ridiculous, of course. The point is that Nigella Lawson has written, at least in my opinion, one of the best cookbooks of recent years. Down to earth, with good & long-winded explanations, written in a direct, friendly style, with such love for good food that even reading the book makes you want to rush to the kitchen & start creating a feast. "How to eat" is about comfort-eating at its best, & for me at least, it serves as comfort-reading too...
Rating:
Summary: some thoughts on lovage and egg whites
Review: ummm - you can grow lovage in a garden, if you have one, or in a pot on your window sill - otherwise use celery instead. I think it is great that she makes a suggestion for a herb to grow in your garden... I freeze egg whites (in small glass jars - be sure to that when you put the glass jar in the freezer for the first time that you do not tighten the lid until at least after everything has been frozen and then you can tighten the lid. This will lessen the chances of the glass jar cracking in the freezer...) and have never ever had egg whites picking up bad odors.
Rating:
Summary: a wonderful read
Review: Nigella's writing is truly a delight to read! her recipes in this book are also quite good although some may be a little bland and uninteresting. Nevertheless, she sure does make one want to just run to the kitchen and make something scrumptious!
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