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Summary: Intelligent advice, great food. Nigella is cool!
Review: Please let me say first off that I adore Nigella. She is like the cool sister you never had. She offers up recipes for just about anything you would ever want to cook, as well as her opinions in a certain way that makes me look to her a bit like one would a mentor. It's because she knows a lot about food, and has a great deal of life experience, from travelling and working as a restaurant reviewer, to share. For example, she's firm in her belief that a salad should be green or red. Choose. Either make it with lettuces or make a beautiful tomato salad -- better yet, set the ripe tomatoes in the center of the table with a knife, and let your guest have at it. It's something I'd never thought about before, and now that I have, I agree.
I consult this book for inspiration, comfort, advice, and sometimes just to fantasize about a proper British Sunday meal or some other menu. The book is interesting and fun to read, and does inspire confidence. My latest success related to this book came after consulting it for my four-year-old's birthday party. The crowning jewel was a brilliant-green Jurassic cake laden with miniature plastic toy dinosaurs and a palm tree -- it was a huge hit. (Cheese biscuit "W"s too.) I appreciate how Nigella stresses that her recipes and suggestions are meant to serve as guidelines, not rules written in stone. In fact, some of the recipes I would change and have, tweaking and improving upon them for my tastes. It's more about the approach to food and eating. Nigella is smart, smart, smart, and truly a breath of fresh air.
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Summary: A Culinary Coup
Review: How to Eat is what a cookbook should be, just like Nigella Lawson's cooking show redefines all cooking shows. The recipes are divine and organized cleverly into useful chapters like "Quick and Easy Dinners After Work." The "Cooking for Children" section is also really useful. I've made several dozen meals from her cookbook and so far, all are winners. Her Basic Roast Chicken is divine--the best I've ever eaten, much less made. She is passionate about food, but in a down-to-earth, healthy way. She's also not afraid of fat!
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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.
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Summary: I love this book.
Review: This author makes cooking comfortable. Her book explains things in a very simplistic and pleasant manner. Her approach gives the reader a sense of calm. All in all, it makes the reader feel at ease.
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Summary: The Domestic Goddess and her cooking
Review: Nigela Lawson is a phenomena. She is a gorgous forty year old woman who is, perhaps intelligent is a bit strong, but she radiates self confidence and personality. She lives in a beautiful London home with a great garden. Each episonde of her television program shows her home and it shows her having bright young things round to an evening meal.The only problem is the food she produces. The recipes consist of very simple food preparation with some flavour additions. Thus one of her recipes consists of fried chicken with a sauce made of cold yogurt mixed with coriander. Pleasant enough but not the apex of cooking in our time. In fact her recipes are all similiar. They sort of taste okay but the real substance to the Nigela phenomena is not the food, its Nigela the goddess and her rather attractive home. Not that any of this is bad. It is good that a slightly more substantial woman than Twiggy can make it to the top. It is an excellent role model. But what it is about is image and presnetation over the recipes.
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Summary: Great cookbook for people who like to cook and entertain
Review: This is a great book. I love watching her TV show and am always looking for new ideas and parties to throw with new foods. I think this is a great book for people who know some about cooking and it really explains it step by step. If you have two left feet in the kitchen you may want to start out with a small menu before you go to a larger party menu. This is a great cookbook with an eclectic offering of menu choices from comfort foods to fine dining. Hope you enjoy this book as much as I do.
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Summary: Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant !
Review: I bought this book (as well as How to be a domestic goddess) after watching Nigella Bites because I really liked her informal style and the fact that she could throw together such amazing meals whilst running after 2 kids. I've always harboured ambitions of throwing impromptu dinner parties whilst looking after my 10-mth old and was inspired watching her show! The book is really easy reading and the recipes are organised into menus for weekend lunches, dinners for 8 or dinners for one/two as well as recipes for kids. I am not a serious cook and before this book, I rarely baked. But even I can whip up pretty impressive dinner party fare using Nigella's recipes. Her 10-minute chocolate pudding really is 10-minutes and tastes/looks great! I couldn't do Martha Stewart but with this book I've yet to find a dish that I can mess up!
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Summary: She brings the sensual art of cooking and eating to life....
Review: Nigella Lawson is addictive, which is a good thing. This is a book that is long needed because I think (especially Americans) that most people have forgotten what cooking and eating is all about. Anyone who has seen her cook knows that she understands the sensual and alas spiritual aspects of cooking and eating food. This isn't about sex, but the art of food itself. And in an era of junk food and eat and run she is a refreshing bit of culinary sunshine. In fact I would suggest that this is a book that is as much about psychology and philosophy as it is about food and its preparation and enjoyment. And anyone who has seen her show on cable knows that she isn't afraid of food. She doesn't have that love hate relationship or a false mode that I think many television goddess types have. She is one cook-author whom I am assured doesn't purge after each taping and consuming of the food she has made. And her recipes work! They are as doable as they are good and nice to look at. I also like the fact that she has a variety of recipes and ideas and not just a certain genre. Quick ones. Make ahead ones. Ones for parties and gatherings of a few to many. One thing I hope people get from this and all her books is her sense of enjoyment. Be it the shopping, or preparing. I wish everyone could also see her television show which we watch on the Style channel because she does shows that deal with the contents of her freezer-refrigerator-pantry and while she certainly covers these subjects in this and her other books there is something visually and audibly tactile about her showing what's good to have on hand. I look forward to each new book she brings me since I learn so much. She also gives the term-title domestic goddess the respect it deserves...........
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Summary: buy it now!!!!
Review: Okay. So I had heard of Nigella Lawson and had been meaning to buy a cookbook or two of hers, especially Domestic Goddess. I finally got around to it, and decided to get this one as well, because I thought, frankly , that the price was right (it's cheaper on UK site, if you don't mind making the conversions from grams to ounces - not brain surgery)and it might have a couple of good recipes.
Well, I was surprised at how much I really love this cookbook. It is like a cooking bible. I have over 100 cookbooks, so I do not say this in jest. I love the way that the book is organized and sectioned off, from dishes for solo or duo diners, to dishes that are lowfat and food that can be cooked with children. It is really cleverly designed. The recipes range from elaborate dishes, to the roast asparagus that I prepared the day that I got the book. She writes in a very chatty style which is like having a mom or sister or friend in the kitchen with you, sharing her secrets. This cookbook is awesome. You have to get it!!!
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Summary: Use common sense with the oven temps here!
Review: I just made the lamb shoulder (425 degrees for 30 mins per pound??) Needless to say, my kitchen was smoke filled after 15 mins and dinner was ruined. I live in the US, and wonder if there was a mistake in the metric translation. Browsing the other recipes, I discovered most of the oven temps seemed awfully high - especially for braising (400 degrees F)! Please use common sense and don't make the same mistake I did.
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