How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food [Hardcover]

"Cooking is not about just joining the dots, following one recipe slavishly and then moving on to the next," says British food writer Nigella Lawson. "It's about developing an understanding of food, a sense of assurance in the kitchen, about the simple desire to make yourself something to eat." Lawson is not a chef, but "an eater." She writes as if she's conversing with you while beating eggs or mincing garlic in your kitchen. She explains how to make the basics, such as roast chicken, soup stock, various sauces, cake, and ice cream. She teaches you to cook more esoteric dishes, such as grouse, white truffles (mushrooms, not chocolate), and "ham in Coca-Cola." She gives advice for entertaining over the holidays, quick cooking ("the real way to make life easier for yourself: cooking in advance"), cooking for yourself ("you don't have to belong to the drearily narcissistic learn-to-love-yourself school of thought to grasp that it might be a good thing to consider yourself worth cooking for"), and weekend lunches for six to eight people. Don't expect any concessions to health recommendations in the recipes here--Lawson makes liberal and unapologetic use of egg yolks, cream, and butter. There are plenty of recipes, but the best parts of How to Eat are the well-crafted tidbits of wisdom, such as the following:

• "Cook in advance and, if the worse comes to the worst, you can ditch it. No one but you will know that it tasted disgusting, or failed to set, or curdled or whatever."
  

• On the proper English trifle: "When I say proper I mean proper: lots of sponge, lots of jam, lots of custard and lots of cream. This is not a timid construction ... you don't want to end up with a trifle so upmarket it's inappropriately, posturingly elegant. A degree of vulgarity is requisite."
  

• "Too many people cook only when they're giving a dinner party. And it's very hard to go from zero to a hundred miles an hour. How can you learn to feel at ease around food, relaxed about cooking, if every time you go into the kitchen it's to cook at competition level?"
  

--Joan Price --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

"Her prose is as nourishing as her recipes — it should please mere readers, serious cooks and happy omnivores."
—Salman Rushdie

"I love Nigella Lawson's writing and I love her recipes."
—Delia Smith

"One of the best and most influential of British food writers — bound to become a staple cookbook for a whole generation."
—Ruth Rogers, The River Cafe Cook Book

"Cerebral and scintillating advice — peppered with wit."
—Sunday Times

"A gloriously sensual wander through the possibilities of food. The recipes read more like seduction than instruction."
—Independent --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

"[Nigella] brings you into her life and tells you how she thinks about food, how meals come together in her head . . . and how she cooks for family and friends. . . . A breakthrough . . . with hundreds of appealing and accessible recipes."
–Amanda Hesser, The New York Times

"Nigella Lawson serves up irony and sensuality with her comforting recipes . . . the Queen of Come-On Cooking."
–Los Angeles Times

"A chatty, sometimes cheeky, celebration of home-cooked meals."
–USA Today

"Nigella Lawson is, whisks down, Britain’s funniest and sexiest food writer, a raconteur who is delicious whether detailing every step on the way towards a heavenly roast chicken and root vegetable couscous or explaining why ‘cooking is not just about joining the dots’."
–Richard Story, Vogue magazine

First paperback publication – in a high-quality trade paperback edition – of Nigella Lawson’s hugely successful cookbook. Over 45,000 copies sold in hardback. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

"Although it’s possible to love eating without being able to cook, I don’t believe you can ever really cook unless you love eating."
–Nigella Lawson

Earthy, witty, and totally passionate about eating, British food phenomenon Nigella Lawson has taken North American kitchens by storm with the huge success of her television show, Nigella Bites.

How to Eat is the book that started it all–her signature, all-purpose cookbook that became a blockbuster bestseller on its publication in England and has now sold hundreds of thousands of copies on both sides of the Atlantic.

How to Eat is Nigella at her best and most complete. Here is her total (and totally irresistible) approach to food, in which she lays bare her secrets for finding pleasure in simple things that we cook and eat every day: no fussy instructions or overachieving recipes, just a joyous celebration of home-cooked dishes that are easy to make and serve–and

deliciously satisfying to eat.

Best of all, Nigella knows that the kitchen isn’t always an oasis of tranquility. Her world is the real world: where children are waiting to be fed, where unexpected guests arrive on the doorstep at dinnertime, where you run out of that key ingredient just after the stores close. That’s why How to Eat has chapters for different needs and situations, including meals for one and two people, low-fat cooking, weekend dining, and cooking for babies and small children.

With her easy, conversational style, Nigella makes you feel as if she’s right there in the kitchen with you as she shares 350 mouthwatering recipes that range from the truly sublime Tarragon French Roast Chicken to a totally seductive Chocolate Raspberry Pudding Cake. She eases you through every preparation detail–from coordinating the oven settings and timing for dishes that must be served together to suggesting the perfect wine for the meal at your next dinner party. All of the recipes are accessible and, with short lists of ingredients, easy to adjust to suit different tastes and occasions.

With advance preparation tips and great leftover ideas, Nigella shows how to get the most from the pantry and the refrigerator as you move beyond recipes to develop your own sense of what food is about.

Whether used in the kitchen or read like a good novel, this book will spark a joyful rediscovery of eating and really enjoying food–and its preparation–as a wonderful part of your everyday life.

'[Nigella] brings you into her life and tells you how she thinks about food, how meals come together in her head. . . and how she cooks for family and friends. . . . A breakthrough. . . with hundreds of appealing and accessible recipes. ' -Amanda Hesser, The New York Times 'Nigella Lawson serves up irony and sensuality with her comforting recipes. . . the Queen of Come-On Cooking. ' -Los Angeles Times 'A chatty, sometimes cheeky, celebration of home-cooked meals. ' -USA Today 'Nigella Lawson is, whisks down, Britain's funniest and sexiest food writer, a raconteur who is delicious whether detailing every step on the way towards a heavenly roast chicken and root vegetable couscous or explaining why 'cooking is not just about joining the dots'. ' -Richard Story, Vogue magazine

NIGELLA LAWSON, a former columnist for London’s Evening Standard and the Times, is host of Nigella Bites on the Style network and a freelance journalist for Vogue magazine.

Fried Prawn Cakes

250 g fresh raw prawns
1 clove garlic, chopped finely
2 spring onions, chopped finely
1/2 teaspoon salt
60 g plain flour
4 teaspoons sherry
olive oil

Shell and mince the prawns. Mix or blend them with the garlic, spring onions, salt, flour, sherry and enough water to make a batter. Let stand, covered with clingfilm, for 1 hour. Then fry, in drops of 1 teaspoon, in olive oil (though not extra virgin) poured to a depth of 5cm in a pan, for about a minute each side.

To serve, add some lime juice and chopped coriander to a bowlful of Hellman's. (Normally I can't see why everyone is so keen on the stuff, but it lends itself well to this kind of adulteration; anyway, fried fish cakes of this sort seem to be able to handle the peculiar emulsification of factory-made mayo.) Or just squeeze the prawn patties with fresh lime as you eat them. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.